Abstract
This article raises a few questions about the relation between sociology and history. This relationship could be observed by many perspectives, but here we will focus on the advantages of testing the sociological categories through historical examination with primary sources. By taking the development of the concept of world society as an example, the problems that arise when the sociological concepts undergo historical scrutiny becomes clear enough (such as mismanages of secondary literature, and generalizations or distortion of historical sources as well). To solve part of these problems, we claim it could be helpful for the sociologist to borrow methods from the historian, that is, go directly to the historical sources and work with them in a serious manner. This relation may also work as a two way street: not only does the sociological theory can help shed light in matters that are mainly unexplored by the historian community, but the empirical results from the research with historical sources can open new theoretical discussions and work as a testing platform for the applicability of theories.
The draft of this paper was read and commented by Carina Calabria, Fernando Nagib Coelho, Patrícia Ramos Barros, Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Claudio Frites and, Gilberto Guerra Pedrosa. We thank them for their valuable contributions, although all of the text’s shortcomings and flaws are due to our own account.
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Notes
- 1.
Burke (1980).
- 2.
- 3.
For this argument, we may use Tilly’s appointment on how the analyses of individual historical cases may be more helpful than “dozens of broad statements” when it comes to understanding social processes: “We should build concrete and historical analyses of the big structures and large processes that shape our era. The analyses should be concrete in having real times, places, and people as their referents and in testing the coherence of the postulated structures and processes against the experiences of real times, places and people. They should be historical in limiting their scope to an era bounded by the playing out of certain well-defined processes, and in recognizing from the outset that time matter—that when things happen within a sequence affects how they happen, that every structure or process constitutes a series of choice points. Outcomes at a given point in time constrain possible outcomes at later points in time” (Tilly 1984, p. 14).
- 4.
That is not to say that there are not ways that historians would benefit from a serious incorporation of sociological theory. For instance, the categories or theoretical concepts are not merely heuristic instruments (while this use, for itself, would already be compelling to make an argument for the advantages of historiographic reception of theory, including sociological ones). They also may be used as ground stones for the constructions of historical hypothesis. For example, the historical emergence of the world society and its characteristics, as described in the sociological theory, could be treated as a material for construction of historical questions and tested with primary sources. This would be beneficial mainly because it would help the historian with ways of relating his or her’s particular object of study with other phenomena and supply him with a category that would help to compare different treatments of problems very much alike in sparse places of the world.
- 5.
Herder [1774] (2002), p. 70.
- 6.
For this work: Kant [1784] 1917. Also, other of Kant’s work, considerably more famous, Perpetual peace (1795), would be the pinnacle of this cosmopolitanism.
- 7.
Hopkins (2002), p. 14.
- 8.
Koselleck (1988), p. 9.
- 9.
Gibbon [1776-88] (1990).
- 10.
Robertson [1792], (2008).
- 11.
Gibbon [1776-88] (1990).
- 12.
For a narrative on the ancient and medieval roots of this Eurocentric gaze, its predominance in the nineteenth century alongside an ideology of progress, and its present and lingering repercussion in the literature of International Law, see Koskenniemi (2012).
- 13.
The translation of this quote has been subject to many critics and analysis. We use the translation suggested by Boldt, who actually explained that the reason for some variants of this quote contain the auxiliary verb ist in the end is because of grammatical actualization of Ranke's linguistic mannerism (Boldt 2019).
- 14.
This emphasis in discovering how (or what) it really happened was linked to Ranke’s quest for objectivity in the Geschichtsschreibung and the specialization of the historical profession and activity. Not only did he intended to eradicate value-judgement statements in the writing of history but he also intended to place history in a middle ground between art and science in a way that it would not be confounded with poetry or fictional literature (see Vierhaus 1987; Rüsen 1990). In this frame, national issues gained relevance in historical researches. One of the main arguments of Ranke was that state-building constituted the characteristic activity of the epoch that he called modern. This view considered official or state documents were more reliable than others: the actions of the State were those actions that lingered in history, and were not transitional or accidental. All of this does not mean that Ranke was not attracted to the idea of world history. Indeed, most of his endeavor as a historian is directed towards this goal, but for him the large forces of world history depends on the impulses that come from individual nations (see Kriger 1977, p. 247).
- 15.
Hopkins (2002).
- 16.
Bayly (2004).
- 17.
Hopkins (2002).
- 18.
Dirlik (2002).
- 19.
For the postcolonial critic about this point, see Malreddy et al. (2015).
- 20.
Krätke (2018).
- 21.
Without a doubt, both the World War II, as a global event, and the radical transformation of the way armed conflicts had hitherto played an important role in this transformation.
- 22.
Mcdougal (1953).
- 23.
Neves (1992).
- 24.
Wallerstein (2004).
- 25.
Wallerstein (1984), p. 12.
- 26.
Wallerstein (2011b), p. 7.
- 27.
Wallerstein (2011b), p. 7.
- 28.
Wallerstein (2011a).
- 29.
Wallerstein (2011b), pp. 20–23.
- 30.
Wallerstein (1991). It is important to underline that, in Wallerstein, center/periphery/semi-periphery are geographical areas of the world-system that do not remain motionless throughout history.
- 31.
Goldthorpe (1991).
- 32.
- 33.
O’Brien (1982).
- 34.
Yun-Casalilla (2010).
- 35.
Fragoso (2017), p. 50.
- 36.
A good synthesis of this tradition can be found in Osorio (2015).
- 37.
Luhmann (2007), p. 119.
- 38.
- 39.
- 40.
- 41.
Neves (1992, 2015); Luhmann (2007). In this point, the work of Marcelo Neves are of vital importance. Through an analysis of the Brazilian case, Neves showed how within the same paradigm of systems theory the observation and description of a peripheral modernity is possible, since the center/periphery difference would be a functional distinction of modern world society, oriented primarily by the economy (Neves 1992, p. 105). In this sense, the hierarchical structuring of world society would be determined by the lack of autonomy of the political and legal systems of the periphery, compared to other social systems such as the economy (Neves 1992, p. 106).
- 42.
Luhmann (2007), p. 117.
- 43.
- 44.
Luhmann (1980).
- 45.
Cortés (2012) [1852], p. 85.
- 46.
Bethell (1995), pp. 33–35.
- 47.
For the “discovery of the world society” and its theoretical implications, see Greve and Heintz (2016).
- 48.
In this sense, Stichweh (2011) recognizes that the theoretical program of systems theory at this point is still unfinished: “since the seventies, Luhmann proposed and taught, constantly that today’s society is a world society. But this hypothesis is not born from reading The society of society, because it is a more general book about society, without its limits being very well defined, although it often says that the borders of society are identical with the limits of communications. But then you can find a separate subchapter on ‘World society’, and later another on ‘Globalization and regionalization’ that emerges that these are specific issues of a more general book on society. From this observation we can deduce the need for a correction, for a more consistent execution of the program that Luhmann announced in the 1970s. It is probably necessary to do it” (Stichweh 2011, p. 90).
- 49.
Stichweh (2012a).
- 50.
Stichweh (2012a).
- 51.
What striked Luhmann as shocking, in one of his late speeches, was that there was no dialog between history and sociology: namely, the mutual isolation of hypothesis and the lack of cross-connections between these two fields (Luhmann 1994, p. 260).
- 52.
Windelband (1894), p. 16.
- 53.
Collingwood (1952), pp. 194–206.
- 54.
Although Fritz Ringer affirms that Weber underwent a sociological turn in the 1910s, it is not the same to say that Weber abandoned altogether his prior argumentation about the epistemological basis shared by history and sociology, but rather that his concerns changed. Ringer himself describes this as a shift from history to sociology in Ringer (2004, p. 175ss). Weber then started a strenuous work of manufacturing ideal types, tools for the use of sociologists. But his formation as a (legal) historian was not simply neglected in his late publications.
- 55.
Giddens (1979).
- 56.
Klein (2017).
- 57.
Goldthorpe (1991), p. 220 and further.
- 58.
Spode (2007).
- 59.
Neves (2020), p. 35; Hespanha (2017), p. 10. Historians can also benefit from the use of theory, for example, by not emphasizing so much causalities but rather coincidences (according to the theory of evolution not Luhmann). For an analysis of the Luhmannian observation over the historian’s craft Cf. León (2012).
- 60.
The idea of script is used to stress the gains in observing the fragments of semantics presented in the primary sources as part of a bigger chain, a bigger structure.
- 61.
Luhmann (2007).
- 62.
Spode (2007).
- 63.
- 64.
- 65.
Ziemann (2005).
- 66.
Becker (2004), p. 7.
- 67.
- 68.
Bastías (2017).
- 69.
Probably one of the most controversial and poorly understood points of the systems theory is the epistemological decision to distance itself from the subjectivist approach in social analysis, i.e., of those theories centered on subjects (men, actors, players, etc.) and their actions, thoughts, intentions, and intersubjective relationships. Many of the criticisms of Luhmannian theory have focused on this point (calling it epistemological anti-humanism), not only because it touches on sensitive points of sociology but also of the European philosophical tradition itself and the relevance of semantics of individuality in modern society. For Luhmann, the premise that society is made up of men represents an epistemological obstacle (in Bachelard’s sense). For him: “The “human being” (as opposed to animals) was traditionally described on the basis of distinctions (such as reason, intelligence, will, imagination, emotion, morality), received ideas that, although revised, were specified neither empirically nor in their mode of operation. These distinctions seemed to suffice for mutual clarification, but their neuro-physiological basis remained unclear. In particular, these “anthropological” concepts offer no possibility for connecting with the psychic/social distinction (…) it is clear that not everything that individuates the human being (if anything at all about him) belongs to society. Society does not weigh exactly as much as all human beings taken together, nor does its weight change with every birth and death (…) Nor would anyone seriously regard neurophysiological processes in the brain inaccessible to consciousness as societal processes” (Luhmann 2007, p. 13). This observation of the intransparecy of consciousness, which corresponds to an empirical interpretation of the conclusions of Husserl’s transcendental logic (mainly the ideas present in “Logische Untersuchungen”), paved the way to a conceptual decision of researching what would be a properly social operation by taking subjectivity and intersubjectivity out of the picture. Luhmann answers this question with the concept of communication. Communication as a three-part operation that involves alter and ego, is the basic unit of the social, and its production and reproduction allows the distinction between system and environment. Communication is the boundary of the social. Leaving the subject in the environment does not mean, as is commonly understood, eliminating him. Subjects are still required for the communication to take place. The difference is that when communication emerges, it becomes independent from its author, because of the double contingency. This characteristic makes communication the only primarily social element, since once started, it does not belong to anyone else than to society. On the other hand, locating the subject in the environment is also for Luhmann a theoretical decision to take his own subjectivity seriously (Luhmann 1998).
- 70.
Becker (2004). In this subject, it is noticeable that Tilly also points out that the belief that social behavior results from individual mental events is a pernicious and erroneous postulate in social sciences (1984, p. 11).
- 71.
Becker (2004). In this sense, the semantic/structure distinction is undoubtedly useful, because it allows access to the self-descriptions of the various social operations. A careful reconstruction of the semantic chains, their overlaps, mismatches, etc., can reveal valuable clues about the way in which some historical events occurred.
- 72.
Luhmann (1987).
- 73.
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Órdenes, N.M., Zatelli, G. (2021). A Few Notes on the Uses of Historiography in Sociology: The Case of World Society and the Necessity of Historical Reconstruction. In: Nogueira de Brito, M., Calabria, C., Portela L. Almeida, F. (eds) Law as Passion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63501-5_10
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