Bruce Curtis

Biography

Much of my work concerns the historical sociology of state formation. My doctoral work criticized Marxist reproduction analyses of the development of public education through comparative historical investigation. Involvement in the debate around domestic labour under capitalism, led me to think about the historical sociology of household formation and the relations between the domestic domain and the political. Historians criticized my early historical sociology as based on secondary sources (their own work!), which led me to the archive, and which gave me an enduring case of what Arlette Farge called ‘le gout de l’archive.’ My understanding of state paper collections was shaped by engagement with the ‘Foucault wave,’ with the work of Norbert Elias, and by Corrigan and Sayer’s analysis of state formation as cultural revolution. Together with the sociology of Marx, Simmel and Bourdieu, this mix encouraged attention to the emergence, stabilization, and dominance or disappearance of social forms, figurations, and practices. My most marked post-2000 ‘reading experiences’ have been with Kant, Gadamer, the proto-sociology of the Enlightenment, French political theory, and the historical sociology of Arpad Szakolczai.

Research Interest

Sociology & Anthropology