The Perspective of Historical Sociology: The Individual as Homo-Sociologicus through Society and History
Abstract
This book gives an unconventional but comprehensive overview of the range of themes which make up the field of Historical Sociology. The author of the book systematically discusses the main problems of societal development, long term processes and changes in the key areas of social life.
These include not only temporalized sociology, evolutionary theory, civilizational analysis, societal systems, structures, and functions, but also modernisation and revolution, risk, crisis, catastrophe and collapse, wars, conflicts and violence, nations, nationalism and collective memory; it does not overlook, meanwhile, the fundamental dichotomy underlying the discipline, which is between individualism and holism. In the proces of this unfolding perspective we encounter all the principal thinkers, ideas and schools of thought which have dominated academic discourse from the 19th century to the present day.
These thinkers, their followers and the ideas they helped to spread are discussed as they interrelate with and influence each other, and the society around them. At the centre of the book lies the human individual as related to social and historical development.
The key question it raises is who or what is responsible for the proces of human history: society ort he individual? At the end of the book the author offers an approach which may assist in dealing with this dilemma.