History of and in Sociology
introduction to the didactic seminar on methodologies of the history of sociology, American Sociological Association annual meeting, Montréal, May 2007

Historical Sociology

The article compares Pitirim Sorokin’s, George Homans’s, and Barrington Moore Jr.’s views of historical sociology. Sorokin favored what Tilly calls “Epochal Synthesis” in which a researcher crafts a grand historical scheme and then uses historical material to detect stages within that scheme. In Homans’ work, categorized as “Retrospective Ethnography”, a researcher attempts to explain historical events by reconstructing the participants’ state of consciousness. Lastly, Moore’s research falls under the category of “Critical Comparison” which favors a process-based account of historical events.