The Relevance of History

Abstract

Sociology does from time to time succumb to the dangers mentioned by E.H. Carr. Indeed, an anti-historical approach to sociological analysis seems to be engraved on some theoretical banners, notably those of the structuralists. There are, nonetheless, signs of a continuing dialogue between sociology and history in recent British sociology. This I will illustrate, albeit briefly. My own view is that a sociology that does not cultivate an historical awareness cripples itself, since it cannot begin to encounter some of the central problems of explanation and interpretation.

‘Sociology at present faces two opposite dangers. The first is the danger of losing itself in abstract and meaningless generalisations about society in general. The other danger is that foreseen by Karl Mannheim almost a generation ago, and much present today, of a sociology split into a series of discrete technical problems of social adjustment’. Sociology is concerned with historical societies every one of which is unique and moulded by specific historical antecedents and conditions. But the attempt to avoid generalisation and interpretation by confining oneself to se-called ‘technical’ problems of enumeration and analysis is merely to become the unconscious apologist of a static society. Sociology, if it is to become a fruitful field of study, must, like history, concern itself with the relation between the unique and the general. For the rest, I would only say that the more sociological history becomes, and the more historical sociology becomes, the better for both.

(E.H. Carr, ‘What is History?’, The Listener, 4 July 1961, p. 771)