Based on original research in the SSRC’s archives, Rafael Khachaturian chronicles the rise and influence on its Committee on States and Social Structures (CSSH), including its most prominent publication, Bringing the State Back In. Both a sequel and a rejoinder to the work of the prior Committee on Comparative Politics, CSSH brought together Marxist and Weberian perspectives to examine the state’s relation to, and autonomy from, class structures. Khachaturian concludes by arguing that CSSH’s incorporation of critical New Left perspectives into professional social science had the effect of occluding the more overtly political dimensions of those critiques.
