Historical and Comparative Sociology in a Globalizing World

Historical and comparative sociology or the so-called New Historical Sociology – resuming the older classical tradition of pre-WWII historical sociology – represents a specific theoretical and analytical perspective within sociology in cooperation with history. As such, it is primarily a booming US-American and British undertaking, whereas it has barely taken roots in France and Germany or other Western European countries, but may experience a new beginning in East-Central or Eastern European sociology. In the German case the major reason has been the massive breach of the highly developed classical tradition due to the repression of the NS regime; the renewal of German post-WWII sociology under the impact of US-American modernization theory and social research; the reception of the New Historical Sociology primarily in the historical sciences in the form of social science history and later cultural science history; with the result that Historical Sociology has not yet found a systematic place in German sociology. But similar things can be said about other national traditions in European sociology.