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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2010

Larry J. Griffin  and
Marcel van der Linden
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Introduction
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International Review of Social History , Volume 43 , supplement S6: New methods for social history , December 1998 , pp. 3 - 8
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Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1998

References

1 See, for instance, the following English language publications: Moore, Batrington, “Strategy in Social Research”, in Moore, B., Political Power and Social Theory (Cambridge, 1958), p. 131. Published discussions of the history-social science dialogue/dilemma are extensive. Notable contributions includeGoogle ScholarHughes, H. Stuart, “The Historian and the Social Scientist”, in Riasanovsky, Alexander V. and Riznik, Barnes (eds), Generalizations in Historical Writing (Philadelphia, 1963), pp. 18–59;Google ScholarCahnman, Warren and Boskoff, Alvin, “Sociology and History: Reunion and Rapprochement'(pp. 1–18) and “Sociology and History: Review and Outlook” (pp. 560-580) in their edited volume Sociology and History (New York, 1964);Google ScholarBerkhofer, Robert, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York, 1969);Google ScholarBeer, Samuel, “Political Science and History”, in Richter, Melvin (ed.), Essays in Theory and History: An Approach to the Social Sciences (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 41–73;Google ScholarErikson, Kai, “Sociology and the Historical Perspective”, American Sociologist, 15 (1970), pp. 331–338;J.H. Hexter, “History and the Social Sciences”, Richter, Melvin (ed.), Doing History (Bloomington, IN, 1972), pp. 107–134;Google ScholarStone, Lawtence, “History and Social Sciences in the Twentieth Century”, in Delzell, Charles F. (ed.), The Future of History (Nashville, TN, 1977), pp. 3–42;Google Scholar Theda Skocpol, “Sociology's Historical Imagination” (pp. 1–21) and “Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology” (pp. 356–391), in idem (ed.), Vision and Method in Historical Sociology (New York, 1984); Sztompka, Piotr, “The Renaissance of Historical Orientation in Sociology”, International Sociology, 1 (1986), pp. 321–337;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAbbott, Andrew, “History and Sociology: The Lost Synthesis”, Social Science History, 15 (1991), pp. 201–238; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarQuadagno, Jill and Knapp, Stan, “Have Historical Sociologists Forsaken Theory? Thoughts on the History/Theory Relationship”, Sociological Research and Methods, 20 (1992), pp. 481–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 This rapprochement, and, indeed, historical sociology's current visibility and prestige, has roots now more than a generation old: Robert Bellah, Reinhard Bendix, S.N. Eisenstadt, Norbert Elias, Seymour M. Lipset and Barrington Moore, and others, continued to infuse their sociology with history in fruitful and exciting ways throughout the 1950s and 1960s and into the 1970s. Coupled with the fact that accepted (and largely ahistorical) sociological theories and approaches were unable to anticipate or satisfactorily account for the social conflict and transformations of the 1960s, the example and influence of these scholars are likely responsible for what became a striking, perhaps even profound and possibly irreversible, turn to history in the 1970s and 1980s among sociologists. Hete we should particularly acknowledge the herculean efforts of Charles Tilly — efforts seen both in his own research going back to the 1960s and his more recent programmatic statements such as As Sociology Meets History (New York, 1981Google Scholar) and Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984). If Tilly deserves special mention, he was clearly aided in his “subversive” quest by a whole host of others, perhaps most importantly by Theda Skocpol, again both in her own research onGoogle ScholarStates and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, 1979) and in her influential edited volume, Vision and Method in Historical Sociology; by Immanuel Wallerstein in his conceptualization and analysis of The Modern World System (New York, 1974)Google Scholar, and, again, by Barrington Moore, whose Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston, 1966) continues to excite and stimulate more than thirty years after it first appeared. Powerful and effective defenses of a historically oriented social science were also published by Arthur Stinchcombe,Google ScholarTheoretical Methods of Social History (New York, 1978) andGoogle ScholarAbrams, Philips, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology”, Past and Present, 87 (1980), pp. 3–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Historical Sociology (Ithaca, NY, 1982)Google Scholar.

3 , Abrams, “History, Sociology, Historical Sociology”, and Historical Sociology.Google Scholar

4 Goldthorpe, John H., “Current Issues in Comparative Mactosociology: A Debate on Methodological Issues”, Comparative Social Research, 16 (1997), p. 17. Earlier, Goldthorpe made similar assertions that elicited strong commentary from historical sociologists. SeeGoogle Scholar, Goldthorpe, “The Uses of History in Sociology: Reflections on Some Recent Tendencies”, British Journal of Sociology, 42 (1991), pp. 211–230. Subsequent comments by Joseph Bryant (pp. 3-19), Nicky Hart (pp. 21-30), Nicos Mouzelis (pp. 31-36), and Michael Mann (pp. 37-54), and Goldthorp' response (pp. 55-77) are found inCrossRefGoogle ScholarBritish Journal of Sociology, 45 (1994)Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, Kiser, Edgar and Hechter, Michael, “The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology”, American Journal of Sociology, 97 (1991), pp. 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See, for example, Bernert, Christopher, “The Career of Causal Analysis in American Sociology”, British Journal of Sociology, 34 (1983), pp. 230–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 This argument is taken from, and elaborated in, Griffin, Larry J., “Temporality, Events, and Explanation in Historical Sociology: An Introduction”, Sociological Methods and Research, 20 (1992), pp. 403–427CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Zaret, David, “Sociological Theory and Historical Scholarship”, American Sociologist, 13 (1978), pp. 114–121;Google ScholarIsaac, Larry W. and Griffin, Larry J., “Ahistoricism in Time-Series Analyses of Historical Process: Critique, Redirections, and Illustrations from U.S. Labor History”, American Sociological Review, 54 (1989), pp. 873–890CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Elias, Norbert, “The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present”, Theory, Culture and Society, 4 (1987), pp. 223–247CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For a relatively balanced and nuanced defense of the efficacy of a formal social science history, see Fogel, Robert, “‘Scientific History’ and Traditional History”, in Fogel, R. and Elton, G. R., Which Road to the Past? (New Haven, 1983), pp. 5–70Google Scholar.

10 See, for example, the discussions of these and similar issues in Floud, Roderick, “Quantitative History and Peopl' History: Two Methods in Conflict”, Social Science History, 8 (1984), pp. 151–168;Google ScholarKocka, Jürgen, “Theories and Quantification in History”, Social Science History, 8 (1984), pp. 169–178; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarJudt, Tony, “A Clown in Regal Purple: Social History and the Historians”, History Workshop, 7 (1979), pp. 66–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1971);Google ScholarWalters, Ronald G., “Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians”, Social Research, XLVII (1980), pp. 537–556;Google ScholarCohen, Bernard S., “Anthropology and History in the 1980s”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 12 (1981), pp. 227–252Google Scholar.

12 See, among many others, Fitch, Nancy, “Statistical Fantasies and Historical Facts: History in Crisis and Its Methodological Implication”, Historical Methods, 17 (1984), pp. 239–254;CrossRefGoogle ScholarScott, Joan W., “History in Crisis? The Others' Side of the Story”, American Historical Review, 94 (1989), pp. 680–692;CrossRefGoogle ScholarAnkersmit, F.R., “History and Postmoderism”, History and Theory, 28 (1989), pp. 137–153;CrossRefGoogle ScholarJoyce, Patrick, “The End of Social History?”, Social History, 20 (1995), pp. 73–91; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarBerkhofer, Robert, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, 1995). Lawrence Stone initiated a sharp debate about histor' postmodern turn in the journal Past and Present. See Stone, “History and PostModernism” (No. 131, 1991, pp. 217-218; No. 135, 1992, pp. 189-194) and the comments by Patrick Joyce (No. 133, 1991, pp. 204-209), Catriona Kelly (No. 133, 1991, pp. 209-213) and Gabrielle M. Spiegel (No. 135, 1992, pp. 194-208)Google Scholar.

13 Braudel, Fernand, On History (Chicago, 1980), p. 47.Google Scholar The problem is not merely that sociologists generally ignore time; it is also, and as profoundly, that the statistical analysis of time-ordered data (e.g. via time-series regression) may irself remain ahistorical. Time, that is, is not historicized; it is not transmuted in most sociological analyses of time-order data into what Braudel (ibid., p. 49) calls “historical time”. See the arguments and documentation put forward by Isaac and Griffin, “Ahistoricism in Time-Series Analyses of Historical Process”, and Griffin, Larry J. and Isaac, Larry W., “Recursive Regression and the Historical Use of ‘Time’ in Time-Series Analysis of Historical Process”, Historical Methods, 25 (1992), pp. 166–179. What matters to the historical grounding of an analysis is not simply the use of over-time data, but, rather, the historical meaning those series convey and the historical purpose they can be put in the course of analysis and interpretationCrossRefGoogle Scholar.