The Stein Rokkan Memorial Lecture 2021

Lars Mjøset is professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo. He has published extensively on topics such as political economy, economic sociology, comparative historical sociology, the philosophy of the social sciences, and the history of Norwegian social science. Mjøset has also worked considerably with Stein Rokkan's theories, and further developed them and applied Rokkan's framework on other regions of the world.

This year's Stein Rokkan Memorial lecture will summarize Rokkan’s methodological innovations of 1976. In November 1976, Stein Rokkan arranged a symposium in Italy on the macrohistorical study of European developments, and presented the paper “A Geoeconomic-Geopolitical Model of Sources of Variations across the Territories of Western Europe: Note for ISSC-MSH Symposium on Wallerstein and Anderson”. The 1976 paper presents a wide array of methods for tracing processes over time and for constructing typologies and sketches for the first time his “basic grid”, a periodized list of the main explanatory factors of his Europe project.

The Rokkan lecture will illustrate Rokkan’s own use of his methodological innovations in his comparison of the Nordic countries. The main topic, however, will be the potentials of Rokkan’s methods (basic grid, typological mapping and sequencing) in the analysis of world regions that Rokkan himself never analysed. The lecture will provide illustrations from Mjøset's ongoing project that analyses state formation and nation building in the Middle East.

The Lecture will also be livestreamed and recorded https://uib.zoom.us/j/66147835599?pwd=ZDJSTS9DMXVzRjlKdithcGg0cU04UT09