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historical sociology

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historical sociology

  1. any sociology focused particularly on the study of past societies or using historical sources.
  2. more particularly, those forms of comparative sociology which focus on historical societies, and on order and change within these societies (see also COMPARATIVE METHOD). Historical sociology in this second sense, after falling out of fashion (see HISTORICISM, EVOLUTIONARY THEORY, SOCIAL CHANGE), has come into vogue again in recent decades as the result of major works by such authors as MOORE and WALLERSTEIN in the US, and, in the UK, ANDERSON, MANN and ELIAS. There is also a sense in which all general theories of social change are historical sociologies. It is in this context that partisans of historical sociology such as P. Abrams (1982), argue that it forms the central core of traditional sociology, and that its importance should be reasserted in modern sociology. An informative survey of the range of recent historical sociology is D. Smith The Rise of Historical Sociology (1991). See also HISTORY.
Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000
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References in periodicals archive
RC 56: historical sociology, RC 57: visual sociology), we now also have poetic sociology, cultural sociology, analytic sociology, and public sociology with more general ambitions.
Saeed displays a mastery of historical sociology and political theory.
The second major theme involves using historical sociology to help rethink and recentre the contemporary moment: "I mine our current understandings of nineteenth and early twentieth-century working-class history--the fruit of hundreds if not thousands of studies since 1960--to highlight the conditions and forms of struggle through which class capacities were created and the socialist project organized itself' (21).
Chapter 8 concludes the book by contending that it is paramount to rebuild a historical sociology of asylum to understand how "dehumanisation is possible by the state even in the post-racial policy language of the contemporary moment" (179).
This quibble aside, England's Great Transformation is a fascinating and thought-provoking work of historical sociology.
Main chapters of the book are true to what is stated in the introduction: "The body of this book follows a broadly historical-thematic structure, utilising historical sociology to illuminate the struggle between the two leading social movements in the Arab world.
Mishal Khan, a PhD candidate whose research work focuses on historical sociology, colonial law and slavery in South Asia, spoke about the need to open up and explore the history of Sindh against the backdrop of Pakistan, which was also part of the subcontinent.
The Power Triangle offers a historical sociology account of power relations during times of regime stability and change.
In 2014, Krisztian Gergely Horvath (of the Department of Historical Sociology at ELTE University) edited a volume on water and society in Hungary over the last millennium.
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