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From: isa@sis.ucm.es (International Sociological Association)
To: chriscd@jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu
Subject: ISA-Letter from the President, 2
Letter from the President, No. 2, June 1995
by Immanuel Wallerstein
Sociology and History
The Executive Com
mittee of the ISA has instructed
the Program Committee that
the 1998 Congress in Montreal
should construct its theme
around a look backward and a
look forward, as we move into
the third millennium: a look
backward at the sociological
heritage, and a look forward at
the future of sociology and the
social sciences in general in
the twenty-first century.
This may be the
moment therefore when we
should look again at the shaky
and uncertain relations of
sociology and history, both as
heritage and as prospect. In
1898, precisely one century
before our Congress in Mon
treal, Emile Durkheim pub
lished the first issue of the
Ann=82e Sociologique. In the
Pr=82face he wrote for this issue,
Durkheim explained the need
to have a publication in which
sociologists might be informed
of research throughout the
social sciences. And then he
added:
But our enterprise
may also be useful in another
way: it may serve to bring nearer
to sociology some sciences which
has kept themselves too separate,
to their great loss and ours.
It is especially of
history that we are thinking in
speaking in this way. Even today,
it is rare for historians to be
interested in the work of sociolo
gists and feel that it is of interest
to them. The overgeneral charac
ter of our theories, their insuffi
cient documentation has meant
that they are considered of negli
gible significance: they are not
considered to be philosophically
important. And nonetheless,
history can be a science only to
the degree that it can explain
things, and one cannot explain
without comparing. Even simple
description is scarcely possible
otherwise; we can't describe a
unique fact very adequately, nor
something about which we possess
only a few examples, because we
cannot envisage it very well.(...)
Thus we serve the
cause of history when we per
suade the historian to go beyond
his usual perspective, to look
beyond the particular country or
time period he proposes to study,
and concern himself with the
general questions that are raised
by the particular facts he ob
serves. But, as soon as history
compares, it becomes indistin
guishable from sociology. Con
versely, not only can sociology
not dispense with history, but it
needs in fact historians who are
also sociologists. As long as the
sociologist is a stranger who
intrudes in the domain of the
historian in order to help himself,
so to speak, to the data that
interest him, he will never do
much more than skim the surface
rather superficially. Ill at ease in
an unaccustomed environment, it
is virtually inevitable that the
sociologist will not pay attention
to, or will only consider as dis
turbing, the data most worth
noticing. Only the historian is
familiar enough with history to be
able to use historical data. Hence,
far from being antagonistic, these
two disciplines tend naturally to
converge, and everything seems to
indicate that they are destined to
blend together (se confondre) into
a common discipline in which
elements from each will be com
bined and unified. It seems just as
unthinkable that the one whose
role is to uncover the data is
unaware of the kinds of compari
sons for which such data may be
relevant as it is for the one who
compares data to be unaware of
how they have been uncovered.
Developing historians who know
to look at historical data as
sociologists, or what amounts to
the same thing developing sociol
ogists who possess all that tech
niques of the historians, is the
objective we must pursue on both
sides.(1)
When one reads this
text today, nearly a hundred
years later, two things cannot
fail to strike our attention. First,
one of the acknowledged fa
thers of modern sociology, in
the very opening pages of this
principal organizational contri
bution to the discipline, the
creation of a major journal,
looked forward to the inevitable
merger of sociology and history
into a single discipline. Sec
ondly, one hundred years later,
this has not yet happened. Was
Durkheim wrong in suggesting
that the "destiny" of sociology
and history was to unite? Or
did we make some mistakes en
route to fulfilling this destiny?
In 1992, the corre
spondence Marc Bloch ad
dressed over a period of twenty
years (1924-1943) concerning
the writing of Feudal Society to
Henri Berr, the editor of the
series in which it was to ap
pear, was published. I have
long considered Marc Bloch's
Feudal Society one of the great
sociological works of the twen
tieth century. It is also a book
that hardly ever appears on a
reading list of a course in
sociology. The reason is sim
ple: Marc Bloch was a medi
eval historian, and medieval
Europe seems a topic remote
=66rom the immediate concerns of
most sociologists. Yet, reading
Bloch, one realizes that his
self-image was very "sociologi
cal". For example, he says of
this book: "I have tried, for the
first time no doubt, to analyze a
type of social structure in all its
interconnections. I have proba
bly not succeeded. But the
effort was worth making, I be-
lieve; and this is what is inter
esting about the book" (2).
Indeed, Bloch was so "socio
logical" that, when Henri Berr
proposed a blurb for the book,
Bloch insisted on adding that
the book was "au service d'une
science tr=8As s=96re" (3). This is
not easy to translate. It seems
to me that what Bloch meant
was that he intended the book
to have high scientific validity.
I tell this story about
Bloch not to sing his praises
nor even to urge you to read
him (which of course I do, if
you have not) but to note the
comment he makes, in the
course of these letters, on the
relation between history and
sociology as disciplines. In
1928, he wrote Berr a letter in
which he deplored the narrow
conception of history held by
so many historians and shared
by so many sociologists. He
then says of the sociologists:
"their great error, in my view,
was to seek to construct their
'science' alongside and over
history rather than reforming
history from within."(4). This
indeed is food for reflection on
the heritage of sociology. Did
we make a great error by not
trying to reform history from
within? Should Durkheim have
been collaborating with, rather
than working separately from,
his younger French contempo
rary and historian, Henri Berr?
What would have been the
consequences today had the
two joined forces?
I am not a great fan
of counterfactual questions.
They are at best provocations.
What matters most is to explain
the things that actually oc
curred. And what happened, as
we know, is that, in the period
between 1850 and 1945,
history established itself as a
primarily idiographic discipline
devoted to the "past" while
sociology (alongside economic
and political science) estab
lished itself as a largely nomo
thetic discipline, utilizing almost
exclusively data from the "pres
ent". Since 1945, there have
been numerous voices within
both disciplines favoring a
rapprochement, usually under
the rubric of "multidisciplinarity".
The very term,
multidisciplinarity, however,
presumes two intellectually
separate disciplines, whose
combination may produce
useful knowledge. It does not
presume what Durkheim wrote
in 1898: "As soon as history
compares, it becomes indistin
guishable from sociology."
I personally agree
with Durkheim. Just as I cannot
imagine that any sociological
analysis is valid without placing
the data fully within their histori
cal context, so I cannot imag
ine that it is possible to do
historical analysis without using
the conceptual apparatus we
have come to call sociology.
But if this is so, is there any
place for two separate disci
plines? This seems to me one
of the primary questions before
us, as we are discussing the
future of sociology and the
social sciences as a whole in
the twenty-first century.
(1) L'Ann=82e Sociologique, I
(1896-1897), Paris: F=82lix Alcan,
1898,ii-iii.
(2) Marc Bloch, Ecrire La
Soci=82t=82 f=82odale: Lettres =85 Henri
Berr, 1924-1943,
Correspondance =82tablie et
pr=82sent=82e par Jacqueline Pluet-
Despatin (Paris: IMEC, 1992),
p.96.
(3) Ibid., p.125.=20
(4) Ibid., p.52.
Prof. Chris Chase-Dunn
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD. 21218 USA
tel 410 516 7633 fax 410 516 7590 email chriscd@jhu.edu