Research Interests

Theory and Methodology

Comparative/Historical Sociology

Sociology of Culture and Religion

Current Research Projects

• Handbook of Cultural Sociology.
My UC Davis colleagues Laura Grindstaff and Ming-cheng Lo and I are working as co-editors on a handbook of cultural sociology that will include a series of some 65 short essays (around 5,000 words each). The shorter length of essays compared to many handbooks will allow a greater breadth of topics to be addressed. Essay contributors will include both eminent scholars and emerging lights in sociological analysis of culture. The handbook is slated to be published by Routledge in 2010.

• "Patrimonialism in America.”
This project is part of my broader effort to retheorize modernity by exploring its hybrid institutional forms and how their characters are shaped by antecedent social patterns. The analysis of state-centered patrimonialism in the U.S. as a modern society is intended to explore how state claims to monopolize resources have been brought to bear in ways that simultaneously privilege certain social classes and groups, while promoting economic and societal development. One paper resulting from the project, ““Patrimonialism under the Sign of Modernity: The Case of the U.S. Public Domain from Colonial Times to the Late 19^th Century,” was presented at the conference, "Patrimonial Politics, Then and Now," Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, May 9, 2008. Subsequent research papers are planned to analyze other institutional domains in the U.S. where patrimonial processes obtain.

Selected Publications

Hall, John R. (forthcoming, July 2009). Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity. Cambridge, England: Polity.

Hall, John R. (2007). “Historicity and sociohistorical research,” pp. 82-99 in William Outhwaite and Stephen P. Turner, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Social Science Methodology. London: SAGE Publications.

Hall, John R. (2007). “History, methodologies, and the study of religion.” pp. 167-88 in James Beckford and N.J. Demerath III, eds., The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (London: SAGE Publications, 2007).

Hall, John R. (2003) "Religion and violence: social processes in comparative perspective," In Michele Dillon, ed., Handbook for the Sociology of Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hall, John R., Mary Jo Neitz, and Marshall Battani (2003). Sociology on Culture. London: Routledge.

Hall, John R., with Philip D. Schuyler and Sylvaine Trinh (2000). Apocalypse Observed: Religious Movements and Violence in North America, Europe, and Japan. London: Routledge.

Hall, John R. 1999. Cultures of Inquiry: From Epistemology to Discourse in Sociohistorical Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.