Ho-fung Hung makes the case for the continued relevance of comparative-historical sociology to our “Interdisciplinarity Now” theme. In ways related Steinmetz’s earlier contribution to the series, Hung illustrates the multiple ways in which the combination of historical work with a macrosociological framework yields deep insights into long-term processes that generate inequality and the responses to it. He also argues that this long-term and large-scale perspective is critical in the formation of policies and the strategies of social movements that pursue progressive social change.
Ho-fung Hung
Ho-fung Hung is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Associate Professor in Political Economy at the Johns Hopkins University. He is also a former International Dissertation Research Fellowship (IDRF) fellow as part of the 2002 cohort. He researches global political economy, protest, and nationalism. He is the author of the award-winning Protest with Chinese Characteristics (2011) and The China Boom: Why China Will not Rule the World (2016), both published by Columbia University Press. His articles have appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Development and Change, New Left Review, Review of International Political Economy, Asian Survey, and elsewhere. His analyses of the Chinese political economy and Hong Kong politics have been featured or cited in The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, BBC News, The Guardian, Folha de S. Paulo (Brazil), The Straits Times (Singapore), The South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Xinhua Monthly (China), and People’s Daily (China), among other publications. He is currently working on a new project that looks at the social and geopolitical forces behind the conjoined development of neoliberalism in the United States and China since the 1990s.