Philip Gorski
Philip S. Gorski (Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley 1996) is a comparative-historical sociologist with strong interests in theory and methods and in modern and early modern Europe. His empirical work focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. Other current interests include the philosophy and methodology of the social sciences and the nature and role of rationality in social life. Among his recent publications are The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Growth of State Power in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2003); Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion (Stanford, 2004); and “The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological Explanation,” Sociological Methodology, 2004.
Philip Gorski co-runs the Religion and Politics Colloquium at the Yale MacMillan Center.
Publications
Books
- Gorski, Philip S. and Samuel L. Perry (2022). The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Gorski, Philip S. (2017). American Covenant: A History of Civil Religion from the Puritans to the Present. Princeton: Princeton Univerity Press
- Camic, Charles, Philip S. Gorski and David M. Trubek (eds.) (2004). Max Weber’s Economy and Society: A Critical Companion. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.
- Gorski, Philip S. (2003). The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Articles
- Gorski, Philip S. and Samuel Nelson (2014). “Conditions of religious belonging: Confessionalization, de-parochialization, and the Euro-American divergence”, International Sociology, Vol. 29, No.1: 3-21.
- Gorski, Philip S. and Gülay Türkmen-Dervişoğlu (2013). “Religion, Nationalism, and Violence: An Integrated Approach”, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 39: 193-210.
- Gorski, Philip S. (2004). “The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological Explanation,” Sociological Methodology, 34 (1): 1-33.
- Gorski, Philip S. (2000). “The Mosaic Moment: An Early Modernist Critique of Modernist Theories of Nationalism,” American Journal of Sociology, 105 (5): 1428-1468.
Courses and Seminars
Undergraduate
- SOCY115, Contemporary American Society.
- SOCY120, Social Change.
- SOCY246, Sociology of Religion.
Graduate
- SOCY510, Religious Nationalism.
- SOCY519, The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.
- SOCY551, Comparative and Historical Methods.
- SOCY560, Comparative Research Workshop.
- SOCY656, Professional Seminar.
Affiliations
Yale