Emerging Agendas and Recurrent Strategies in Historical Sociology

Master agendas for historical sociology were first set back when Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber asked important questions and offered such fruitful, if varying, answers about the social origins and effects of the European industrial and democratic revolutions. During the twentieth century, the major scholars discussed in the essays collected here have been at the forefront of those carrying forward the traditions of historical sociology launched by the founders. At moments, to be sure, these men may have seemed rather isolated bearers of modes of scholarship that most sociologists considered part of the honored past rather than the vital present and future of the discipline. By now, however, it is clear enough that the stream of historical sociology has deepened into a river and spread out into eddies running through all parts of the sociological enterprise.