Comparative-Historical Sociology as Professional Practice

Abstract

The once dominant comparative and historical approach in sociology has been replaced by methods which extract, collate and re-label data from the immediate present. What explains this contemporary dustbowl of historical sociology? This paper suggests: the gradual disinvestment of the discipline in professional utility and professional practice. History of the interrelationship between jurisprudence and social science in both Germany and the United States shows social scientists emerged as adjuncts of a more dominant profession of jurists who used comparative history to harmonise conflicts of laws. American scholars drew on their training in German faculties of Law to establish academic social science faculties. Subsequent academic effort to professionalise these disciplines as pure ‘science’ meant withdrawal from the original practical concerns.