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The Past and the Future of Historical Sociology: An Introduction

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The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences

Abstract

The chapter provides an overview of the development of historical sociology as a sociological subdiscipline. The authors argue that over the decades of institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline, historical imagination was gradually forsaken in many if not all sociological traditions, and the revival of historical sociology in the recent decades is but a return to the origins of sociology as a historically informed science of society. The chapter is organized as a chronological narrative of the history of historical sociology following the three-waves model, starting with the early classics, through the breakthrough of the 1960s, up to the contemporary state of the discipline. An overview of the main themes and research problems of historical sociology is followed by a brief review of the contents of the chapters included in the Historical sociology section, which are devoted to historical sociological insights in the fields of research of state and power, war and violence, emotions, sport and leisure, gender relations, collective identities, law and legal cultures, and memory studies.

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Acknowledgments

Marta Bucholc acknowledges the support of Polish National Science Centre (2019/34/E/HS6/00295).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Marta Bucholc

  2. School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Stephen Mennell

Authors
  1. Marta Bucholc
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  2. Stephen Mennell
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marta Bucholc .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    David McCallum

Section Editor information

  1. University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland

    Marta Bucholc

  2. School of Sociology, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Stephen Mennell

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Bucholc, M., Mennell, S. (2022). The Past and the Future of Historical Sociology: An Introduction. In: McCallum, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7255-2_50

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