Future History
in Theory and Society (1988) 17: 703-712 and in Stephen Kendrick, Pat Straw & David McCrone, eds., Interpreting the Past, Understanding the Present. (1990) London: Macmillan

Historical Sociology

The article expresses an argument for sociology, as a field, to return to its historical roots in which social interaction and processes are properly rooted in time and space. This important because, as Tilly points out, social processes are inherently path-dependent whereby "every existing structure stands in the place of many theoretically possible alternative structures, and its very existance affects the probabilities that the alternatives will ever come to being."