Timing Think, Thinking Time

Timing Think, Thinking Time: A Beginner's Critical Historical Sociology Redux, takes the reader through a condensed critical tour of the intellectual landscape of Historical Sociology, with its distinctive reciprocal deployment of sociological theory, historical method and comparative technology. Lifting off from a comparative analysis of field maps, major trends in the craft are traced generally as thematic shifts evolving in tandem with paradigm movements in ideology and politics over time and space, or strictly, as the function of three different research strategies and the extent to which overlaps apply in much of mainstream works. How much of deductivism or inductivism, or how much sociological theory or historical method feed into the common equation of historical sociology employed by any one practitioner makes for both difference and dynamics in the genre. Select strategic case comparisons, all confronting and refining the time-honored issue of modernity, are engaged in the remaining chapters of the book to illustrate the ciritical implications of such dynamics on the state of the art. From the vintage deductivism of Weber to the rigorous inductivism of Therborn on modern (or what now may be construed as 'in the process of becoming' post-modern) European value-systems and cultural variables, to the innovative combinations of these in Tilly's long-run analysis of the evolution of European modern states and revolutions, to Zelizer's seminal exploration of the social construction of money and currency at contrasting levels and circuits of exchange in modern Western socities--the forensic notes on cases collated here capture and project on screen both the potential explanatory powers and critical limits of the field. Readers who hanker for a quick field scan combining a panaromic bird's eye-view with the rodent's tunnel yet more focused vision, will find this book to be a handy and user-friendly tool in the methodology of Historical Sociology.