Historical Methods in the Social Sciences

John A. Hall is the James McGill Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He is the author of many books linking social theory with historical studies, constantly moving back-and-forth between these fields. His books include (with J. L. Campbell) The Paradox of Vulnerability: States, Nationalism and the Financial Crisis (Princeton, 2017), The World of States (with J. L. Campbell, Bloomsbury 2015), The Importance of Being Civil: The Struggle for Political Decency (Princeton, 2013), Ernest Gellner: An Intellectual Biography (Verso, 2010), International Orders (Polity, 1996), Coercion and Consent: Studies on the Modern State (Polity, 1994), Liberalism: Politics, Ideology and the Market (Paladin, 1988), and Powers and Liberties: The Causes and Consequences of the Rise of the West (Basil Blackwell, 1985).

Volume One: Historical Social Science: Presuppositions and Prescriptions Introduction Towards Integration and Unity in the Human Sciences: The Project of Historical Sociology A Classical Exordium Critical Studies in the Logic of the Cultural Sciences - Max Weber Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy - Karl Marx PART ONE: HISTORY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Unity and Diversity in the Human Sciences - Fernand Braudel From Social History to the History of Society - Eric Hobsbawm The Historical Method in Social Science - M M Postan History, Sociology, Historical Sociology - Philip Abrams Future History - Charles Tilly History and Anthropology - Bernard Cohn The State of Play History and Anthropology - Clifford Geertz Why Is Economics Not an Evolutionary Science? - Thorstein Veblen Economic History and Economics - Robert Solow Not Just What, but When - Paul Pierson Timing and Sequence in Political Processes The Use and Abuse of Psychology in History - Frank Manuel Towards the Problem of the Historical Nature of Psychological Processes - Alexander Luria Social Psychology as History - Kenneth Gergen Volume Two: Foundations of Historical-Sociological Inquiry Introduction The Historicality of Human Social Existence: The Search for a Grounded, Synthesizing Analytics PART TWO: Ontology of the Social-Historical Section One: Nominalism, Social Realism and Dialectical Totality Holism versus Individualism in History and Sociology - Ernest Gellner Historical Explanation in the Social Sciences - J W N Watkins Reply to Mr Watkins - Ernest Gellner Sociology and Empirical Research - Theodore Adorno Contributions to a Phenomenology of Historical Materialism - Herbert Marcuse Reification and the Sociological Critique of Consciousness - Peter Berger and Stanley Pullberg Explanation and Understanding - Paul Ricoeur On Some Remarkable Connections among the Theory of the Text, Theory of Action and Theory of History Morphogenesis versus Structuration - Margaret Archer On Combining Structure and Action Theory of Action, Dialectic and History - William Sewell Jr Comment on Coleman Actors and Actions in Social History and Social Theory - James Coleman Reply to Sewell Transcending General Linear Reality - Andrew Abbott Section Two: Temporality and Causality Temporality - Jean-Paul Sartre Phenomenology of the Three Temporal Dimensions Time - George Herbert Mead History and the Social Sciences - Fernand Braudel The Longue Dur[ac]ee The TimeSpace of World-Systems Analysis - Immanuel Wallerstein Historical Sociology and Time - Ronald Aminzade Temporality and Process in Social Life - Andrew Abbott Causes, Connections and Conditions in History - Michael Scriven History, Differential Equations and the Problem of Narration - Donald McCloskey Comparing Historical Sequences - A Powerful Tool for Causal Analysis - Dietrich Rueschemeyer and John Stephens Volume Three: The Logic of Historical-Sociological Inquiry Introduction Evidence, Interpretation and Explanation in Historical Social Science PART THREE: EXPLANATORY DISPUTES AND CHALLENGES Section One: From Laws That 'Cover' to Narratives That 'Bind'? The Uses of History in Sociology - John Goldthorpe Reflections on Some Recent Tendencies Evidence and Explanation in History and Sociology - Joseph M Bryant Critical Reflections on Goldthorpe's Critique of Historical Sociology John Goldthorpe and the Relics of Sociology - Nicky Hart In Defence of 'Grand' Historical Sociology - Nicos Mouzelis In Praise of Macro-Sociology - A Reply to Goldthorpe - Michael Mann Have Historical Sociologists Forsaken Theory - Jill Quadagno and Stan Knapp Narrative and the Real World - David Carr An Argument for Continuity Section Two: Historical Evidence and the Logic of Hermeneutics Evidence and Inference in History - Raymond Aron Four Types of Inference from Documents to Events - Vernon K Dibble Evidence and Proof in Documentary Research, I and II - Jennifer Platt The Wrong Way through the Telescope - Peter Laslett A Note on Literary Evidence in Sociology and in Historical Sociology Archaeological Cables and Tacking - Alison Wylie Colonial Archives and the Arts of Governance - Ann Laura Stoler Section Three: Emplotment, Rhetoric and the Postmodernist Challenge The Discourse of History - Roland Barthes The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory - Hayden White On Sources and Narratives in Historical Social Science - Joseph M Bryant Progress in Historical Studies - Raymond Martin Volume Four: Social Worlds in Flux: Legacies and Transformations Introduction Theories and Methods Applied: Research Exemplars in Historical Social Science PART FOUR: EXPLICATING THE DIALECTIC OF STRUCTURE, CULTURE AND AGENCY Section One: Origins, Trajectories, Legacies Technological Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World - M I Finley Origins and Traditions in Islam and Christianity - Bryan S Turner A Modified View of Our Origins - Louis Dumont The Christian Beginnings of Modern Individualism The Islamic Commerical Crisis - Timur Kuran Institutional Roots of Economic Underdevelopment in the Middle East Blood and Debt - Miguel Angel Centeno War and Taxation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis - Lynn White Jr Clio and the Economics of QWERTY - Paul A David Section Two: Conjunctures, Ruptures, Transformations Conquistador y Pestilencia - Alfred Crosby The First New World Pandemic and the Fall of the Great Indian Empires Three Faces of Cruelty - Randall Collins Towards a Comparative Sociology of Violence Pump and Circumstance - Steven Shapin Robert Boyle's Literary Technology Time, Work Discipline and Industrial Capitalism - E P Thompson Goodbye to Tristes Tropes - Marshall Sahlins Ethnography in the Context of Modern World History Were the Perpetrators of Genocide 'Ordinary Men' or 'Real Nazis'? Results from Fifteen Hundred Biographies - Michael Mann The Production of Possession - Aihwa Ong Spirits and the Multinational Corporation in Malaysia Bureaucracy, Friends and Money - Frank Pieke The Growth of Capital Socialism in China