Summary Social History - Macraild and Taylor
Introduction
Social history essentially involves an expansion of the historian’s range of concerns beyond the
activities of social and political elites. It is concerned with describing the experience of various
social groups. Social historians are concerned with topics such as education, sport, leisure,
reading habits, crime and deviance and the growth of towns.
Chapter 2: Fruit of a ‘special relationship’? Historical Sociology
§ Introduction
One of the most prominent British sociologists, Anthony Giddens, went so far as to say: “What
history is, or should be, cannot be analysed in separation from what the social sciences are, or
should be… there simply are no logical or even methodological distinctions between the social
sciences and history.” Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and Herbert Spencer (1870-1903), were
critical of the way that history was currently being practiced, history and sociology, in particular,
have always enjoyed a ‘special relationship’. Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, the
founding fathers of sociology, were all concerned with historical problems and themes.
§ The temporary separation of history and sociology
The interest of Marx, Durkheim and Weber in historical questions was continued by subsequent
sociologists and anthropologists. However, around 1920, anthropologists, such as Franz Boas
and Bronislaw Malinowski, started to carry out fieldwork in contemporary tribal societies or the
city, this was the birth of empirical sociology. The new empirical sociology, both in Britain and
America, was very much a product of the social situations in which it was produced, namely, as
the focus of this research has been on the living and working conditions of the contemporary
urban poor; which led many sociologists to become increasingly concerned with the present.
Not all sociologists lost interest in historical questions. One of the most notable examples of an
attempt to combine history and sociology before 1945 came from the German scholar Norbert
Elias. He published The Civilizing Process in German in 1939, however, it was largely ignored
until it was published again in 1979.
Elias’s vision of a close relationship between history and sociology was not destined to be fulfilled
until much later. Although historians and sociologists never lost touch, there were few examples
,of work that combined both disciplines until the late 1950s. Someone who critiqued the trends of
American sociology was C. Wright Mills in his The Sociological Imagination (1959). Mills
identified three tendencies in the 1950s American sociology. Firstly, there was a historical
tendency, exemplified by the work of Comte, Marx, Spencer and Weber. Secondly, there was a
systematic tendency, employing theory of ‘the nature of man and society’ or ‘grand theory’, as
exemplified by the sociologist Talcott Parsons. Thirdly, there was an empirical tendency,
employing empirical methods to study contemporary society. Mills mostly criticizes Parsons.
According to Mills, any version of historical sociology, or any theory of society, must be based on
both theory and observation.
Talcott Parsons was the dominant American sociologist at that time and he was mostly
concerned with how social order was maintained in conditions of modernity. Additionally,
together with Robert K. Merton, he has been credited with bringing functionalism back into
sociology. Functionalism is a concept from Durkheim, which holds that any social practice that
endures can be explained in terms of the function it performs in maintaining a society. Parsons
sought to join functionalism with action theory, a theory that emphasizes the intentional
behaviour of individuals, which, in turn, stems from the work of Weber.
§ Differing reactions to the growing convergence between history and sociology
There is much disagreement amongst historians and sociologists about the relationship between
history and sociology. While some welcome convergence between the two, some wish to keep
them separate. Given that there is no hard methodological divide between the two disciplines,
what exactly is the difference between sociology and history? The historian Peter Burke provides
a good starting point for discussion on this point: “sociology may be defined as the study of human
society, with an emphasis on generalizations about its structure and development. History is
better defined as the study of human societies, with the emphasis on the differences between
them and also on the changes which have taken place in each one over time”. The most basic
form of this disciplinary divide characterises historians as storytellers and sociologists as model
builders. And while history is concerned with the past, sociology is concerned with the present.
However, is there such as straightforward delineation between the two disciplines? The
traditional conception of the two disciplines has held that history should be concerned with
events (the ‘particular’ → idiographic) while sociology should be concerned with generalisation
, (theory/generalisation → nomothetic), this distinction was first made by Windelband in 1894.
The other distinction that is usually made in connection to this is that history is diachronic
(analyses change) and that sociology is synchronic (analyses societies in static form). These
‘traditional’ distinctions, however, have been questioned by many scholars.
For example, Peter Burke has strongly welcomed the convergence of history and sociology.
Philip Abrams, on the other hand, like Anthony Giddens, holds the view that there is no effective
distinction between the two subjects. His argument is that, despite the apparent differences
between historians and sociologists, they are united by a common project (defining the
relationship between the individual and society, or more generally, as the problem of agency and
structure) and he contends that “in my understanding of history and sociology there can be no
relationship between them, because in terms of their fundamental preoccupations, history and
sociology are and always have been the same thing”.
§ Historical sociology
Historical sociologist Theda Skocpol offers four suggestive definitions of what historical
sociologists do. Firstly, they ask questions about social structures or processes understood to
be concretely situated in time and space. Secondly, they address processes over time, and take
temporal sequences seriously in accounting for outcome. Thirdly, they attempt to attend to the
interplay of meaningful actions and structural contexts. Fourthly, they seek to highlight the
particular and varying features of specific kinds of social structures and patterns of change.
Scholars who have been agreed to belong to the discipline of historical sociology are, for example,
W.W. Rostow, Immanuel Wallerstein, Michael Mann and Theda Skocpol. These are scholars
whose work operates at the macro level of historical explanation. Thus, they offer explanations
of the movement from antiquity to feudalism, feudalism to capitalism or entire ‘world systems’
(Wallerstein).
Are there more things that historical sociologists have in common? The founding fathers of
sociology were concerned with explaining the transition from an agrarian society to an industrial
society. Skocpol points out that historical sociologists continue to research the nature and
consequences of the capitalist and democratic revolutions in Europe. However, this does not
mean that historical sociology must be confined within one of the traditions of the founding fathers.
