Configurational Comparative Methods

Charles C. Ragin spent most of his youth in Texas and the southeastern United States. He attended the University of Texas at Austin as an undergraduate and received his BA degree in 1972 at the age of 19. That same year he began graduate work in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received his PhD in 1975. From 1975 until 2001, he lived in the Midwest, teaching first at Indiana University and then at Northwestern University. He headed west in 2001, where he spent just over a decade at University of Arizona-Tucson. In 2012, he joined the faculty at the University of California-Irvine, where he is currently the Chancellor′s Professor of Sociology. He is best known for developing a methodological alternative to conventional research methods, using formal set-theoretic techniques for comparative research. His many publications address broad issues in politics and society, with topics ranging from the causes of ethnic political mobilization to the shaping of the welfare state in advanced capitalist countries. He has written several books including Intersectional Inequality: Race, Class, Test Scores and Poverty (with Peer Fiss, 2017). Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond (2008) Fuzzy-Set Social Science (2000). His book The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (1987) won the 1989 Stein Rokkan Prize of the International Social Science Council of UNESCO. In 2014 he received the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Award of the American Sociological Association. He is married to Mary Driscoll, and they have two sons, Andrew and Daniel.

One chapter (chapter 5 by Ragin) very useful and of high quality, some of the other chapters less so

• INTRODUCTION - Benoît Rihoux and Charles Ragin1. Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as an Approach - Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Gisèle De Meur, Benoît Rihoux & Charles Ragin2. Comparative Research Design: Case and Variable Selection - Dirk Berg-Schlosser & Gisèle De Meur3. Crisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (CSQCA) - Benoît Rihoux & Gisèle De Meur4. Multi-Value QCA (MVQCA) - Lasse Cronqvist & Dirk Berg-Schlosser5. Qualitative Comparative Analysis Using Fuzzy Sets (FSQCA) - Charles C. Ragin6. A Commented Review of Applications - Sakura Yamasaki & Benoît Rihoux7. Addressing the Critiques of QCA - Gisèle De Meur, Benoît Rihoux & Sakura Yamasaki8. Conclusions - The Way(s) Ahead - Benoît Rihoux, Charles Ragin and Sakura YamasakiFURTHER RESOURCES FOR CONFIGURATIONAL COMPARATIVE METHODS - Damien Bol and Sakura YamasakiGLOSSARY - Sakura Yamasaki, Benoît Rihoux, Gisèle De Meur and Charles C. RaginTHEMATIC AND AUTHOR INDEXABOUT THE AUTHORSA Commented Review of Applications - Sakura Yamasaki, Benoît RihouxAddressing the Critiques of QCA - Gisele De Meur, Benoît Rihoux, Sakura YamasakiComparative Research Design: Case and Variable Selection - Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Gisele De MeurConclusions - The Way(s) Ahead - Benoît Rihoux, Charles Ragin, Sakura Yamasaki, Damien BolCrisp-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis - Benoît Rihoux, Gisele De MeurMulti-Value QCA (mvQCA) - Lasse Cronqvist, Dirk Berg-SchlosserQualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) as an Approach - Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Gisele De Meur, Benoît Rihoux, Charles Ragin