Abstract
In this article, we recover Barrington Moore Jr.’s historical-comparative sociological perspective by using two of his works: the famous Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy and Injustice, identifying the most striking differences concerning their approaches. If, in the former, the starting point is the singularities for the construction of more general theoretical propositions, the latter is a work that starts from a theoretical debate marked by greater abstraction to land, in a second moment, on a kind of medium-range theoretical analysis, focusing on the dimension of collective action. We also try to discuss, in a third act, the way in which the books that are the results of doctoral theses by Elisa Reis, Otávio Velho, and Werneck Vianna formalize sociologically a fruitful dialogue with Barrington Moore Jr.’s perspective to think the modernization process in Brazil.
Keywords: Barrington Moore Jr.; Historical Sociology; Elisa Reis; Otávio Velho; Werneck Vianna