John Torpey
Biographic Data
| ID | 91012 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John Torpey |
| GIVEN NAMES | John |
| FAMILY NAME | Torpey |
| SIGNATURE | TORPEY J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The Graduate Center, CUNY |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 60 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 226 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 58 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A Comparative Analysis of Hate Crimes Against Asians in the USA, 1996–2022
From White Supremacy to a Multiracial Mainstream in Hawai'i: How the Color Line Can Change
Contemporary racial theorization about American society assumes the universality of White dominance as its point of departure. We argue here that Hawai'i is an exception, where White supremacy has given way to a multiracial mainstream, shared by the Chinese, Japanese, and Whites. This was a surprising development in a state founded in settler colonialism and racial capitalism, which was moreover a racially hierarchical plantation society until th…
The Domestication of Competition: Social Evolution and Liberal Society
A tale of two epicentres: Lombardy and New York City at the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic
The paper explores the tale of two 'epicentres’ – metropolitan New York and Lombardy – and seeks to depict the socio-demographic patterns that characterise the worst cases of infection, hospitalisation, and death during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. By drawing upon secondary data concerning sub-territorial units within the two regions – ZIP-code level and counties in New York and municipalities in Italy – the paper compar…
About Nation‐Building
Editors' introduction to the special issue on the sociology of digital technology
A sociological agenda for the tech age
Representing Mass Violence: Conflicting Responses to Human Rights Violations in Darfur
Max Weber and the Idea of Progress
This paper examines Max Weber's understanding of progress and his evaluation of how much of it there has been in human history. Weber largely dismissed the idea of progress, arguing that modern Kulturmenschen die ‘tired of life’ — beset by meaninglessness — rather than, like the peasant, ‘satiated with life’ — that is, filled with the meaningfulness of a life lived with and for others. Weber's perspective, which imputes a sort of generic meaningl…
The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State
This book presents the first detailed history of the modern passport and why it became so important for controlling movement in the modern world. It explores the history of passport laws, the parliamentary debates about those laws, and the social responses to their implementation. The author argues that modern nation-states and the international state system have 'monopolized the 'legitimate means of movement',' rendering persons dependent on sta…
Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World
Pinker and progress: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Pr…
Axial Age
This entry addresses the recent discussion of the axial age among social theorists. It argues that the idea of the “axial age,” as conceived by Karl Jaspers, was an attempt to create an idea of humanity as “unity in diversity” in the aftermath of the “German catastrophe.” In contrast to Jaspers's understanding of the axial age, which stressed the commonalities in the responses of different world civilizations to the challenges of the middle centu…
The End of the World as We Know It: American Exceptionalism in an Age of Disruption
This essay explores the recent election of President Donald J. Trump against the background of the idea of American exceptionalism. It posits that there have been a variety of versions of the notion of exceptionalism, one of which involves the question, “Why is there no fascism in the United States?” It argues that Trump may render invalid the assumption behind that question and that at best during his tenure we are likely to have a continuation …
The “Axial Age” vs. Weber’s Comparative Sociology of the World Religions
Max Weber’s studies of the religions of China, India, and ancient Palestine and of the “Protestant ethic” were oriented toward illuminating their “economic ethics” – the ways, in other words, in which their doctrines did or did not conduce to birthing “modern rational capitalism,” as Weber identified the new economic order. Defining the explanandum in these terms was testimony to Weber’s preoccupation with questions raised about the modern world …
American and French Revolutions: Impact on the Social Sciences
Enlightenment: Impact on the Social Sciences
German Europe
Religion and the Occupy Wall Street movement
The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 and its corollaries, Occupy Sandy and Occupy Debt, have been largely understood as secular movements. In spite of this, religious actors not only participated, but in some cases played an integral role within the movement, lending material support, organizing expertise, and public statements of support. We rely on interviews with faith leaders (N = 13) in New York and Oakland, and engage in an analysis of p…
Inside Concentration Camps: Social Life at the Extremes
Zivitofsky and the Politics of Passports
In Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of a 2002 law, Section 214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003, which required consular officials to mark the word "Israel" as the birthplace of U.S. citizens who were born in Jerusalem if they requested that designation. The U.S. State Department refused to comply, pursuant to a policy of neutrality by the executive branch of the U.S. governm…
Huizinga on America
The Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, perhaps best known for his writings on the Middle Ages and on play in human life, also wrote rather extensively on the United States. He both followed and, in certain respects, sharply criticized Alexis de Tocqueville's views on America, while ultimately echoing many of Max Weber's views of the United States and more generally of the rationalization of modern life. Given that Huizinga is known primarily for his…
Regula Ludi. Reparations for Nazi Victims in Postwar Europe
This book offers a thoughtful and thorough examination of the processes whereby “reparations” emerged as a means of compensating the victims of the Nazis in postwar Europe. It provides extensive evidence to show that reparations were a fundamentally political phenomenon, both reflecting and promoting profound tendencies in post–World War II Western political culture. In particular, the study covers these processes in France, Germany, and Switzerl…
Inventing the axial age: The Origins and Uses of a Historical Concept
The Post-Secular in Question: Religion in Contemporary Society
Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate 'Means of Movement
Following the imagery of 'expropriation' used by Marx to describe the process of capitalist development and by Weber to characterize states'monopolization of the legitimate use of violence, I argue that modern states have also 'expropriated the legitimate means of movement' and monopolized the authority to determine who may circulate within and cross their borders. Against this background, we should reconsider the metaphor of 'penetration' typica…
Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance
Inventing the axial age: The Origins and Uses of a Historical Concept
Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: Reflections on Reparations
A (Post-) Secular Age: Religion and the Two Exceptionalisms
This paper explores the recent debates over secularization and particularly the familiar claim that the United States is significantly more religious than European societies. It argues that that conclusion is essentially correct but also that it must be qualified in many ways
Revolutions and freedom of movement: An analysis of passport controls in the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions
Coming to terms with the communist past: East Germany in comparative perspective
As so often after the collapse of authoritarian regimes, the post‐communist societies of eastern Europe confront the problem of dealing with alleged regime‐sponsored criminality by their predecessor rulers. This article examines the various approaches taken toward this problem in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and (east) Germany, with special emphasis on the anomalies presented by the latter case. It is argued that the different approaches take…
A sociological agenda for the tech age
Through Thick and Thin: Surveillance after 9/11
The End of the World as We Know It: American Exceptionalism in an Age of Disruption
This essay explores the recent election of President Donald J. Trump against the background of the idea of American exceptionalism. It posits that there have been a variety of versions of the notion of exceptionalism, one of which involves the question, “Why is there no fascism in the United States?” It argues that Trump may render invalid the assumption behind that question and that at best during his tenure we are likely to have a continuation …
The Problem of 'American Exceptionalism' Revisited
In this paper, I address the problem of the usefulness of the notion of American exceptionalism by examining the views of a number of classical theorists concerning the peculiarities of American history, emphasizing particularly its religious background. Ultimately, I follow Aristide Zolberg in arguing that there are as many 'exceptionalisms' as there are cases under examination, and that the proper mode of studying these questions is unavoidably…
The Debate over African American Reparations
This article offers an overview of the debate over reparations for African Americans in the United States. We state the point in this way because there is little consensus about the cause of action for which reparations are sought, whether for slavery or segregation; for that matter, there is little agreement on the type of remedy reparations might effect. This raises the question of political mobilization for and popular views of reparations for…
Introduction: Habermas and the Historians
In his most recent attempt to sustain the memory of Auschwitz, tided The Drowned and the Saved, Italian author Primo Levi describes an encounter with a fifth-grader in which the boy offered an elegantly simple plan for escaping from the concentration camp. After examining the layout, the youngster averred that Levi could simply have cut the guard's throat, stolen his clothes, cut off the power to the searchlights and the electrified fence, and th…
Paying for the past: The movement for reparations for African-Americans
(2004). Paying for the past?: the movement for reparations for African-Americans. Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 171-187
Aller et venir: "Le Monopole Étatique Des " Moyens Légitimes De Circulation
Le vagabond est suspect par définition " Daniel Nordman 1 2 Dans ses oeuvres, Karl Marx a tenté de démontrer que le processus de développement capitaliste impliquait l'aliénation des " moyens de production " des prolétaires par les capitalistes 2 .Les prolétaires furent privés de la capacité de produire pour eux mêmes et dépendaient des salaires versés par les propriétaires des moyens de production pour leur survie.En décalquant cet argumentaire,…
A Comparative Analysis of Hate Crimes Against Asians in the USA, 1996–2022
Max Weber and the Idea of Progress
This paper examines Max Weber's understanding of progress and his evaluation of how much of it there has been in human history. Weber largely dismissed the idea of progress, arguing that modern Kulturmenschen die ‘tired of life’ — beset by meaninglessness — rather than, like the peasant, ‘satiated with life’ — that is, filled with the meaningfulness of a life lived with and for others. Weber's perspective, which imputes a sort of generic meaningl…
Pinker and progress: Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. New York: Viking, 2011. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Pr…
Religion and the Occupy Wall Street movement
The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 and its corollaries, Occupy Sandy and Occupy Debt, have been largely understood as secular movements. In spite of this, religious actors not only participated, but in some cases played an integral role within the movement, lending material support, organizing expertise, and public statements of support. We rely on interviews with faith leaders (N = 13) in New York and Oakland, and engage in an analysis of p…
Inside Concentration Camps: Social Life at the Extremes
Product Review: Through Thick and Thin: Surveillance after 9/11
Alexis de Tocqueville, Forgotten Founder
Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe
Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War
Ethics and Critical Theory: From Horkheimer to Habermas
The absence of Horkheimer's “Materialism and Morality” from his collection of essays Critical Theory suggests a troublesome truth about the Marxist tradition. Marxism has either dismissed moral philosophy or decried it as ideology. Horkheimer's appropriation of Kantian ethics probably seemed too old-fashioned to the editors. The piece must have appeared to be a digression from the “real” concerns of left politics. But recendy there has been a new…
Ethics and Critical Theory: From Horkheimer to Habermas
The absence of Horkheimer's “Materialism and Morality” from his collection of essays Critical Theory suggests a troublesome truth about the Marxist tradition. Marxism has either dismissed moral philosophy or decried it as ideology. Horkheimer's appropriation of Kantian ethics probably seemed too old-fashioned to the editors. The piece must have appeared to be a digression from the “real” concerns of left politics. But recendy there has been a new…
Introduction: Habermas and the Historians
In his most recent attempt to sustain the memory of Auschwitz, tided The Drowned and the Saved, Italian author Primo Levi describes an encounter with a fifth-grader in which the boy offered an elegantly simple plan for escaping from the concentration camp. After examining the layout, the youngster averred that Levi could simply have cut the guard's throat, stolen his clothes, cut off the power to the searchlights and the electrified fence, and th…
Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings
These essays reveal another side of Horkheimer, focusing on his remarkable contributions to critical theory in the 1930s. Max Horkheimer is well known as the director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and as a sometime collaborator with Theodor Adorno, especially on their classic Dialectic of Enlightenment. These essays reveal another side of Horkheimer, focusing on his remarkable contributions to critical theory in the 1930s. Includ…
Coming to terms with the communist past: East Germany in comparative perspective
As so often after the collapse of authoritarian regimes, the post‐communist societies of eastern Europe confront the problem of dealing with alleged regime‐sponsored criminality by their predecessor rulers. This article examines the various approaches taken toward this problem in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and (east) Germany, with special emphasis on the anomalies presented by the latter case. It is argued that the different approaches take…
The Rush to German Unity
Belonging in the Two Berlins: Kin, State, Nation
The abortive revolution continues: East German civil-rights activists since unification
Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent. The East German Opposition and Its Legacy
Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and Its Legacy
The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp
Revolutions and freedom of movement: An analysis of passport controls in the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions
Le contrôle des passeports et la liberté de circulation. Le cas de l'Allemagne au XIXe siècle
■ John Torpey: Le contrôle des passeports et la liberté de circulation. Le cas de l'Allemagne au xixe siècle Cet article utilise des lois sur le contrôle des passeports comme, une loupe permettant de voir de plus près les vicissitudes de la libre circulation en Allemagne au XIXe siècle. L'auteur soutient que l'on peut dégager une logique à laquelle obéissaient les restrictions sur la circulation qui sont passées du niveau local au niveau «nationa…
Aller et venir: "Le Monopole Étatique Des " Moyens Légitimes De Circulation
Le vagabond est suspect par définition " Daniel Nordman 1 2 Dans ses oeuvres, Karl Marx a tenté de démontrer que le processus de développement capitaliste impliquait l'aliénation des " moyens de production " des prolétaires par les capitalistes 2 .Les prolétaires furent privés de la capacité de produire pour eux mêmes et dépendaient des salaires versés par les propriétaires des moyens de production pour leur survie.En décalquant cet argumentaire,…
Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate 'Means of Movement
Following the imagery of 'expropriation' used by Marx to describe the process of capitalist development and by Weber to characterize states'monopolization of the legitimate use of violence, I argue that modern states have also 'expropriated the legitimate means of movement' and monopolized the authority to determine who may circulate within and cross their borders. Against this background, we should reconsider the metaphor of 'penetration' typica…
Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate “Means of Movement”
In his writings, Karl Marx sought to show that the process of capitalist development involved the expropriation of the “means of production” from workers by capitalists. The result of this process was that workers were deprived of the capacity to produce on their own and became dependent upon wages from the owners of the means of production for their survival. Borrowing this rhetoric, Marx's greatest heir and critic, Max Weber, argued that a cent…
The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State
In order to distinguish between those who may and may not enter or leave, states everywhere have developed extensive systems of identification, central to which is the passport. This innovative book argues that documents such as passports, internal passports and related mechanisms have been crucial in making distinctions between citizens and non-citizens. It examines how the concept of citizenship has been used to delineate rights and penalties r…
What future for the future? reflections on The Black Book of Communism
Containing Nationalism
Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: Reflections on Reparations
Passports and the Development of Immigration Controls in the North Atlantic World During the Long Nineteenth Century
Theorizing Historical Consciousness
Peter Seixas: Introduction. I. Historiographies and Historical Consciousness. * Chris Lorenz, Professor of Philosophy and Medothology of History, Leiden University and Free University of Amsterdam. 'Towards A Theoretical Framework For Comparing Historiographies: Some Preliminary Considerations'* James Wertsch, Department of Education, Washington University, St. Louis. 'Specific Narratives and Schematic Narrative Templates'* Jorn Riisen, Institute…
Introduction: World civility
Paying for the past: The movement for reparations for African-Americans
(2004). Paying for the past?: the movement for reparations for African-Americans. Journal of Human Rights: Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 171-187
Elster's transitional justice
Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War
Sociology (42 works) · Political science (41 works) · Law (31 works) · Politics (21 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · History (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Economics (9 works)