Historical Sociology Research Articles

Falsificationism redux: in search of explanatory rationality in historical sociology

ABSTRACT Those who study unique events and processes cannot manipulate the world to ‘test’ theories, to ensure conclusions are rational, as falsificationism prescribes. This has left historical sociologists and kindred researchers to use hermeneutics, forms of counterfactual reasoning, and covering laws, but these techniques do not ensure explanations are accountable to the object of inquiry. I repurpose the falsificationist principle of negativity to serve rational theoretical redescriptions of this class of objects. We must work in a theoretical medium, as the main criticism of falsificationism maintains. Theoretical prejudices can nevertheless be held in check, making space for new conclusions, via the double break characteristic of scientific reflexivity. A directional dynamic toward rational explanations can then result by starting with negative cases, which inherently bring case-theory misfits into focus, and applying immanent critique to cycle from worse to better such fits. This allows us to manipulate our theories to ‘test’ the world.

The Social Dialectics of AI

In this deep dive into the world of artificial intelligence, Pietro Daniel Omodeo employs the frameworks laid out in Matteo Pasquinelli's The Eye of the Master to weave a sociological history of AI that begins with the class struggles of the Industrial Revolution and continues into the context of early twentieth-century computing, which eventually gave rise our current Information Age. "AI," he concludes, "sheds light onto the intellectual component of labor in all ages."

Thinking with and beyond Castoriadis: Conversation with Peter Wagner

Abstract This conversation between Peter Wagner and members of the Social Imaginaries Collective addresses two aspects of Wagner’s project. First, it enquires into the significance of Cornelius Castoriadis’s project for Wagner’s social theory and historical sociology. Second, the conversation turns to Wagner’s reflections on the ongoing significance of Castoriadis’s thought to the pressing political questions of our times, including the ecological crisis and post-communist societies.

Как можно понимать и как тогда практиковать историческую социологию

The essay presents its author's understanding of historical sociology, as well as a view on how to practice historical sociology. The preconditions that have been necessary for the emergence of historical sociology from the American intellectual tradition are the following: first, to overcome the ‘historiosophical ahistoricism’ of classical sociology and the ahistoricism of early empirical sociology in the United States. Second, the emergence of ‘social history’ in Europe under the influence of the Great War and the social sciences rejecting the idea of progress in its evolutionary and revolutionary interpretations. The essay provides a detailed investigation of the features of the ‘new historical science’ in comparison with its traditional counterpart, as well as exploring the similarities and differences between social history and historical sociology. Social history is considered as an intermediate link between the classical ‘sociology of history’ and American historical sociology. Following social history, historical sociology turns to comparative studies and quantitative methods, but at the same time does not abandon hermeneutics. Historical sociology presupposes a mutual weakening of the nomothetics of classical ‘grand theories’ and the ideography of traditional history. It also implies a full-fledged sociological investigation of historical phenomena using procedures accepted in empirical sociology, rather than the reinterpretation of historical research in sociological-theoretical terms. This results in the emergence of special (rather than general) processual and medium-level theories of social change based on historical facts. Historical sociology focuses on theoretical generalizations, which clearly distinguishes it from social history. The essay investigates the different approaches and purposes of using the comparative historical method - and the quantitative methods that complement it. In turn, their utilization leads to problems with the acceptance of their results by traditional historians specialized in a single country and on studying primary sources in the original. Instead of concluding, the author discusses his experience and participation in the institutionalization of historical sociology in Russia and points out the problems hindering it.

Цивилизационный анализ в исторической социологии и объяснения «советского коллапса»

The article deals with attempts to explain the collapse of the Soviet version of modernity –and the disintegration of the USSR—in (post)-Sovietology and historical sociology. It is argued that (post)-Sovietological studies were often characterized by a certain degree of ideological bias. In these studies, the example of “Soviet collapse” was generally used for a confirmation of earlier approaches to Soviet history. At the same time, they mostly focused on the immediate preconditions of that event rather than on long-term historical processes. The shortcomings of this approach can be overcome if we draw on historical sociology. The article considers the prediction of disintegration of the USSR offered by Randall Collins and Johann Arnason’s analysis of the Soviet version of modernity. Both sociologists characterized the Soviet collapse in the context of long-term historical dynamics. While Collins’s approach demonstrates a peculiar geopolitical determinism, Arnason singles out various factors of the dynamics of the alternative version of modernity. In the first half of the 1990s, Arnason applied his model of imperial modernization to the Soviet system, but later emphasized the civilizational aspects of communist modernity. This can also be seen in his evaluation of the Soviet collapse. In the literature on Soviet collapse, a contrast between the USSR and China is often highlighted, with structural and particularly economic factors being commonly highlighted. In contrast, the article argues that—for a comprehensive understanding of transformation processes in China—we need to consider the cultural sphere by drawing on sociological civilizational analysis.

Рождение социологии спорта и Лестерская историко-социологическая школа

The paper describes the origins of sports sociology in Great Britain within the “Leicester School” of Historical Sociology of Norbert Elias, explaining the causes for the strong influence of the ideas of Elysianism on the present-day international sociology of sports. The overall development of the historical and sociological “Leicester School” of the 1960s and 1970s, its influence on the sociology of Great Britain, as well as the role of Elias and Ilya Neustadt in its formation are shown. The contemporary historical and sociological tradition of social analysis, inspired by the ideas of Elias and called the ‘sociology of process’ or ‘figurative research’, is described. Its key features are indicated: focus on relations–in–progress, relativism, studies of phenomena in their dynamics, the collection of historical materials, comparative analysis, and interdisciplinarity. The seminal works of Eric Dunning and Elias on sports sociology are considered, in addition to the early development of this field of studies. It is noted that both authors viewed sport and leisure activities as a means to understand society and proposed a sociological interpretation of sport as a tool for the civilizational process. Their work was based not only on a theoretical framework, but also on extensive historical research. This contributed to the early acceptance of the ideas of Leicester School during the establishment of international sports sociology in the 1960s. The paper is based on an informal interview in 2010 with Eric Dunning, the founding father of the British Sociology of Sport, co-author and student of Norbert Elias.

Fields, Frontiers, and the Making of the Food and Agriculture Organization

ABSTRACT The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), once the overlooked stepchild of post-war global governance, is now at the centre of attention among historians, parsing the key figures, central policies, and ongoing challenges across the FAO’s embattled life-time. However, to date, there has been little engagement with the material, territorial and ecological preconditions that required the construction of global food governance in the first place. The present article contributes to FAO scholarship via a more grounded historical sociology of agriculture and international (dis)order. To do so, I frame the evolution of the modern ‘global countryside’ through four distinct yet inter-locking frontiers: territory, commodity, technology, institutions. In using the case of US state-formation as a springboard, I argue that the contradictory entanglement of territorial and commodity frontiers during the settler-colonial period led to a collective anxiety about US (and global) agrarian development, which called forth ever-more innovative solutions through the expansion of technological and institutional frontiers. This spiral of emergence, entanglement, crisis, and resolution culminated in the first post-war conference on international cooperation, and the eventual consecration of the FAO. Yet the contradictions of the post-war international system – at once deeply inter-dependent yet radically hierarchical – ultimately doomed the hopes for a more cooperative global food order. A more critical approach to the making of the FAO thus offers important lessons on the current dilemmas facing today’s global food system.

Weakening of the state by occupying more lands: evidence from the Five Dynasties

Can wars truly build states and rationalize their structures? This study focuses on the administrative origin of state-building and finds historical evidence that seems contrary to the idea of "war-making states". As states acquire more territory, they become increasingly vulnerable to setbacks in subsequent military activities, even when facing state failure or demise. Drawing upon geospatial data spanning from 906 to 969 AD during Chinas Five Dynasties and utilizing a difference-in-differences method, our study reveals that (1) states did not progressively expand in size due to continuous warfare, and (2) larger territorial acquisitions were associated with decreased probabilities of state survival, as expanding net territorial areas corresponded to higher likelihoods of state failure in the following years. (3) The relationship between civilian and military systems within a state profoundly impacts the validity of the "war-making states" hypothesis. This study highlights that war makes states more susceptible to collapse if the military system dominates the civilian bureaucracy. Conversely, if the civilian system controls the military and forms a centralized regime, the "war-making states" hypothesis holds true. These findings revise the prevailing hypothesis of "war-making states" in historical sociology, showing that the "war-making states" hypothesis depends on a specific political structure and bureaucratic system.

Dvojí život historické antropologie.

Since 1989 modern western methodological approaches, including historical anthropology, have been adopted in Czech academic circles, both spontaneously (among historians) and in institutionalised form (the case of ethnology). Very often, however, historical anthropology has been taken up only as an external label that has not meant any real change in research methods. This has simply encouraged the replication of the formal and informal ties and institutions inside the academic community that originated in the period of "normalisation" and that undermine the possibility of the real transformation of our academic environment. The author therefore attempts to distinguish in terms of both theory and method between two types of "historical anthropology": chronologically the first type has been closer to historical sociology (and directed in its way to the history of mentalities), while the second drew inspiration from social anthropology and led towards micro-history. In the Czech environment the ethnologists are closer to the first and the historians to the second, but often without either group being aware of the fundamental difference between the two types.

Sociology in the 21st century: between fragmentation and integration

The article is analyzing current sociology in the context of fragmentation and integration periods in the discipline history. The first integrative wave in the history of sociology was in the 1920s– 1950s. It appeared in grand theories by P.Sorokin, T.Parsons, the Frankfurt school which united heterogeneous ideas from classics in models of society as system. After the paradigm crisis of the 1960s– 1970s and following spread of postmodernist discourse, the second integrative wave arose in form of theories overcoming gaps between concepts of determinist structures and constructivist agency (J.Habermas, A.Giddens, P.Bourdieu) as well as in form of metatheorizing (G.Ritzer, P.Sztompka, J.Alexander). Today’s fragmentation of sociology under conditions of metaparadigm crisis and post-globalization is provoked by the rising postcolonial discourse, by attempts to stigmatize western classics and to create theoretical alternatives to the ‘global North’ domination in knowledge production as well as by spread of conceptions opposing social reality of networks and flows to classical sociality of structures and agency (M.Castells, B.Latour, J.Urry, K.Knorr Cetina). The third integrative wave is expected to come in the 2020s displacing tendencies of disintegration, discrimination, growing gaps and rising barriers. Now theories are relevant as they create a coherent configuration of four types of structures: institutions, interactions, networks, and flows. The new subject matter for theorizing is constituted by their interconnections in forms of fields of structurations, scapes of assemblages, communications, platforms, projects, and events. A metaphor of augmented reality is integrating different concepts of social reality and it is overcoming constitutive distinctions in the last century sociology: between system and lifeworld, locality and globality, the private and public, the material and symbolic, the real and virtual, the physical and digital, etc.

The necessary scholarship of Dale W. Tomich

In this brief introduction, we highlight the critical contributions of the esteemed scholar, historical sociologist and theoretical historian, Dale Tomich, whose scholarly interventions have contributed to changing the field of plantation slavery, studies of capital and historical studies in general. We emphasize his key historical and methodological interventions, particularly the importance of studying locales at several intersecting scales, underscoring the world economy as ultimately the main unit of analysis as it operates differentially across the Atlantic and beyond. Moving among these interconnected and relational scales we argue has allowed for a more complex understanding of how even ‘small islands’ like those in the Caribbean facilitate ‘huge comparisons,’ influence and are shaped by deterritorialized forces emanating from the world economy. Tomich’s work we argue, theorizes and historizes from the top to the bottom and vice versa, a necessary labor for apprehending how subject-citizens navigate their worlds in their various locales.

From Manichaeism to Politics: an Ideological Instrumentalization of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s Social Anthropology by the Ukrainian Leftists

In the history of Ukrainian sociology, the legacy of Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841-1895) is primarily analyzed in terms of his socio-political writings or early methodological ones. However, when considering Drahomanov's long-term and internationally recognized contribution to social sciences and humanities, it is his works at the intersection of folklore studies and social anthropology that are much less often in the focus of sociologists' attention. An important component of these works was Drahomanov's prolonged interest in dualistic heresies and the views on social reality as divided between truth and falsehood, transmitted by the. This interest, which guided the scholar’s research interests for twenty years, had far-reaching consequences for the politicization of the Ukrainian national movement at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The author argues that Drahomanov's folklore and social-anthropological writings, which attracted the attention of researchers of Gnosticism and dualism like C.-G. Jung, as well as contemporary anthropologists, led him to the conviction that the traditional Ukrainian folk worldview tends towards a dualistic, Bogomil-Manichaean, origin-based perspective on the world. He used this conviction for political purposes, and the younger generation of activists of the Ukrainian national movement, who gave rise to radicals, socialist revolutionaries, and social democrats, widely exploited this socio-anthropological discovery for their own political agitation. The conclusions of the study lay the groundwork for further movement in several possible directions: research of the left-wing press to identify specific strategies for the application of the dualistic myth in propaganda, providing a more general historical-cultural context for contemporary studies of populism in Ukraine, as well as a general revaluation of different components in Drahomanov's legacy in the contemporary history of Ukrainian sociology.

El brazo político del campo científico: la Sociedad Brasileña para el Progreso de la Ciencia durante el gobierno de Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022)

The aim of the article is to explain the political intervention of the scientific field in the context of Jair Bolsonaro's government (2018-2022) in Brazil. The article is tributary to the analytical perspective of present-tense historical sociology, based on a temporal conception as a historical category and methodological perspective. In this sense, it analyzes a) the characterization of the right-wing forces in the Bolsonarist government, the main political and economic agents that support it, and the policies promoted for the area of science and technology; b) the social and political dimensions of the organization and political action of the Brazilian scientific field, taking into account its main organization, the Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (SBPC) and its demands at this juncture in the face of the reduction in funding for the area and violations of academic freedom. About sources, the participation of SBPC referents and other relevant political and economic agents in the traditional media and in non-traditional spaces, as well as periodical publications in the field of science and technology. As well as periodical publications from the field and the state; official reports and statistical data.

Climate Science, the Military-Industrial Complex, and the Political Economy of Knowledge-Making: Beyond the Capitalist Ontology of Nature?

Climate science is one of the main political drivers of today's world, informing critical scholars and social movements alike. Yet, many scholars associate it with projects of domination (the Cold War, capitalism, imperialism) while relying on it to elaborate a critique of capital. This article proposes a new historical account of climate science. Drawing from archival findings, interpreted with historical sociology combined with the critique of political economy, the article shows that a conflict developed at the National Academy of Sciences during the Vietnam War, between scientists who wanted atmospheric research to be under the auspices of NATO, as proposed by the "father of the H-bomb" Edward Teller, and others who favored global cooperation, led by meteorologist Jule Charney. The resolution of this conflict had consequences for both the institutional framework and the content of what is today understood as climate science. It is argued that this conflict was part of the social movements of the time, and had momentous consequences for knowledge-making by rejecting the association of atmospheric science with the military-industrial complex, an essential component of capitalist accumulation. Most notably, it resulted in the conceptualization of the atmosphere as a commons, which undermines its treatment as a sink, private property, or commodity, and qualifies it as a potential informer of the allocation of resources in an emancipated society. Therefore, the article sheds light on the resonance between climate science and current social movements and critical scholars: the constitution of climate science was in mediation with a worldview that was critical of aspects of the capitalist political economy and its ontology of nature.

Sociologia histórica e interpretação do racismo no Brasil

This article examines the contributions of so-called historical or processual sociology to the analysis of racism in Brazil, based on four central concepts: revolution, reproduction, formation and event. The central argument is that the processual analysis of events, in the different approaches selected, offers some alternatives for tackling the main obstacle faced in the field of the sociology of racism: jointly explaining the formation of racial inequalities and their social production in the interaction and sociability between agents. It is suggested that the specific objective of historical sociology in this field of research is the racialization of the social experience of time, that is, the constitution of racialized temporalities.

Whither Digitality? The Relationship Between Orality, Literacy, and Digitality, Past and Present: From Spoken Traditions to Digital Media

Orality, literacy, and digitality are forms of knowledge and communication based on speech, reading and writing, and electronic technologies using binary formats, respectively. This article reviews four possible relationships between them: Is literacy (and by extension digitality) the superior form, is orality superior, are all three mostly interchangeable, or do they all change each other as they emerge historically? These different positions imply different histories: linear, contingent, and epochal. This article considers the future of digitality by reviewing these relationships, past and present. These four intellectual positions did not arise neutrally. In fact, the superiority of literacy is rooted in Eurocentric views of technological progress and colonial power. Because this positionality is crucial to understanding the historical relationship among them, the article draws on the philosophy of science of dialectical realism to look for the similarities and differences between the positions, as well as the contradictions. It is a bold call for the comparative historical sociology of digitality (and everything else).

Du Boisian sociology after Du Bois: Frazier, St Clair Drake, and the global and comparative study of race and empire

AbstractIn this paper, I focus on two thinkers who I contend can be read as Du Boisian sociologists: Franklin Frazier and John Gibbs St. Clair Drake. I argue that both Frazier and Drake are often (mis)represented as being ethnographic sociologists of racism in the American inner city who owe their intellectual training and lineage to the Chicago School. By contrast, I argue that Frazier and Drake, while interested in race in the American inner city, both viewed American racism as only one piece in a global jigsaw puzzle; both advocated for comparative and historical sociologies of race and empire which would highlight—to quote Frazier (1973, 339)—that although racism “in the United States has many unique features, it is […] a phase of a world process.” Excavating this world process, to both Frazier and Drake, necessarily entailed studying the global color line beyond its expression only in the United States. Frazier and Drake ought to be read, therefore, primarily as Du Boisian sociologists, not simply as parochial ethnographers of the inner city. The data for this paper come from the Du Bois, Frazier, and Drake papers housed in archives at the University of Massachusetts‐Amherst, Howard University, and the Schomburg Centre.

Sociological Roots of the Emergence of Terrorism in Indonesia: An Interdisciplinary Approach

This study aims to analyze the sociological measurement of the emergence of terrorism in Indonesia, as well as the development of terrorism and its prevention. The purpose of the research is to look at the sociological roots in more detail to find more comprehensive steps in preventing terrorism in Indonesia. This study uses qualitative description. The research method uses library research which obtains secondary data including literature books, laws and regulations, official documents, and other relevant data. In this writing, the author uses a sociological history approach. The result of this paper is that terrorism has many dimensions, namely the local dimension, the regional dimension, and the global dimension to unravel the sociological roots of the emergence of terrorism in Indonesia, then the overcoming steps need cooperation from all parties, the government, the community, and the international world because the overcoming action is not by using repression so that it can violate human rights, but also using a socio-cultural approach by inviting all components including the so that the seeds of terrorism that exist in society can be minimized, and cut off the roots of its development to grow radicalism in common life.

A discussion on coloniality and global social theory

AbstractThe conversation between Ali Meghji and Manuela Boatcă focuses on how modernity/coloniality may (or may not) be a productive sociological concept in the remit of global social theory and wider political movements. Speaking from within different locations in the imperial core (England and Germany respectively), we discuss how the concept of modernity/coloniality has traveled over to our respective European contexts, and the ways it has informed our sociological approaches to matters such as inter‐imperiality, creolization, decolonization, global racisms and anti‐racisms, and historical sociology. The conversational approach is meant to tease out the multiple ways that modernity/coloniality can inform different—albeit related—aspects of sociological work, and also the varying contexts from which global social theory can be produced.

MEDICAL PLURALISM IN BRITISH PUNJAB: NECESSITY OF COEXISTENCE, CONVERGENCE IN DIVERSE SOCIO-CULTURAL FABRIC

This research paper explores the coexistence and convergence of plural healthcare practices in British Punjab with a prime focus on the need for a diverse social order to accommodate multiple healthcare setups. The interdisciplinary conceptual framework of this research rests on the debate around the dynamics of medical pluralism and its implications for healthcare delivery, while combining medical anthropology, and historical sociology. to understand. The objective is to explore how different medical systems, both indigenous and contemporary, influence and interact with each other, hence serving as the driving forces towards their coexistence and sometimes convergence of these systems. The findings reveal a complex and dynamic landscape of medical pluralism in the then British Punjab, with traditional Ayurvedic, Unani, and homoeopathic practices showcasing interactions between traditional and Western medical practices. The findings reveal that recognizing and integrating various medical traditions and practices is crucial for ensuring accessible and effective healthcare services for the population.