چگونه جامعه شناسی با تاریخ شناخته می شود؟ How Is Sociology Informed by History?

Often mischaracterized as merely the application of social theory to past events and happenings, historical sociology is actually a distinct way of approaching, explaining, and interpreting general sociological problems. By situating social action and social structures in their historical contexts and by examining their historical unfoldings, historical sociologists exploit the temporality of social life to ask and answer questions of perennial importance to social theory. I draw on recent research and literature both in sociology and in history to argue that we should and can continue to deepen the discipline’s “historical turn” by more thoroughly historicizing how we conduct research, understand and use basic analytic concepts, and develop and test general social theories. Since the beginning of our discipline, sociologists have been deeply divided over the question of whether history is to be understood as a “storehouse of samples” (Moore 1958:131) to be used as a testing ground for the development of sociological theory, or, alternatively, as something of importance to be comprehended in its own right (Erikson 1970; Skocpol 1984; Sztompka 1986; Tilly 1981). The implications of this debate for sociological practice are, as we will see later, quite profound. While the dispute still rages, it is clear that an important segment of the discipline now places real importance on the power of history to elucidate the sociological enterprise. Evidence for this is seen (1) in the increasing number of genuinely historical sociology articles appearing in our more important general journals, (2) in the growth in the number and visibility of journals explicitly designed to integrate history and social science (e.g., Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of Historical Sociology, and Social Science History), (3) in the recent methodological appropriation of analytic tools such as narrative, event, and biography which were once thought reserved almost exclusively for historians and other humanists (Abrams 1982; Isaac, Street & Knapp 1994; Sewell N.d.), and (4) in the large number of fine, even awardwinning, books effectively integrating history and sociology in intellectually informative and exciting ways (Goldstone 1991; Skocpol 1979; Quadagno 1994). How contemporary sociologists actually use history in their research is the most telling evidence of the interpenetration of history and sociology. Below I discuss three books whose objectives, methods, and theories are sufficiently diverse that, when viewed as a set, they suggest much of the range of historical sociology today: Barry Schwartz’s (1987) George Washington: The Mlaking of An American Symbol, Theda Skocpol’s (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, and Stewart Tolnay and E.M. Beck’s (1995) Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930. Each of these authors pose and answer questions that are intrinsically historical in nature; that is, they characterize the historical experiences of concrete people and of social creations that were themselves historically motivated, encapsulated, and meaningful. In Skocpol’s case, she wanted to understand, among other things, both how Civil War pensions were transmuted into a uniquely “American” form of social insurance and what prevented this system from becoming a more inclusive social security program for workers and the elderly. Tolnay and Beck wanted to understand why Southern whites lynched Southern African Americans and to grasp at least some of the consequences – migration patterns, for example – of this pervasive Southern horror. Schwartz, finally, wanted to understand how a mortal, George Washington, was transformed into a much venerated living monument and then to discern the significance of the Washington cult for the meaning of America. By emphasizing the “historical” nature of these three studies, I am not implying that they are in any sense atheoretical. All three books bear directly on enduring questions of social organization, social control, and social change, and the authors of all three plainly raise issues that are as distinctly theoretical as they are historical. Each devotes considerable attention to the theoretical genesis and implications of her or his research, and each uses history to advance theory. Skocpol, for example, developed a nuanced and historically rich “polity centered” theory of state and politics. Tolnay and Beck embraced some theoretical explanations for Southern lynching – those pointing to economic motives and requirements, for example – and discounted others, such as a weak criminal justice system. And Schwartz deepened our general appreciation of what holds a diverse people together, the social functions of tradition, ritual and ceremony, and the interpenetration of political and religious life. But none of these authors understood or reproduced history as mere “background” for what was “really important”: that is, sociological theoxy and inference (see Skocpol 1992:x). Schwartz exploited history to do what his interpretive project demanded: the recreation of the collective mentalities of early Americans, elite and rabble alike, who were anxiously trying to live their understanding of republicanism. Tolnay and Beck historically contextualized the meaning and operation of the theories they examined, historicized their statistical analysis, and then used history to make sense of their complex statistical findings. Skocpol, finally, acknowledged both how the history of women and of gender relations in America shaped her theoretical understanding of policy formation and that aspects of that history – conceptualized as identity politics and the “gendering” of social policy – became for her an important explanatory device. Each of them, then, centrally incorporated history into his or her analysis and fashioned historically informed and historically grounded sociological explanations and interpretations. Skocpol, Schwartz, and Tolnay and Beck do not give us history reduced to the status of a storehouse of samples, a lifeless, mechanistic history evoked only to be cranked through some prefigured theory. Nor do we get a sense that social theory is somehow above, outside or otherwise independent of history. Rather, history and theory were merged in these studies in a voyage of discovery in which answers to pressing sociological questions were not known before the historical research and analysis were completed. These studies, as does much contemporary historical sociology, kindle appreciation of why history’s complexities, contingencies, exceptions, and ironies must be preserved and recaptured not only to “get the history right” but also, and more important for us, to “get the sociology right.” And I think this is true whether the analytic intent is to explain what happened in history and why it happened as it did, or to view history as an interpretive lens through which we may perceive cultural meaning, the creation of cultural icons and myths, and the institutionalization and expression of collective memory. These three books are but the tip of an iceberg of looming weight. So intimate now is the relationship between history and sociology in some arenas, and so important are those arenas to the institutional and intellectual make-up of our discipline (Abbott 1991), that I believe it accurate to speak of an accomplished “modem” historical revolution in sociology: sociological theory, methodology, and research arguably are more self-consciously informed by historical questions and perspectives than at any time in the life of the discipline in this country.