Logics of History as a Framework for an Integrated Social Science
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7104634 |
|---|---|
| Authors | G Steinmetz (0000-0002-5081-1114, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 535-553 |
| Publication date | 2008-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-5532 • E-ISSN: 1527-8034 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0145553200010828 |
| OpenAlex | W4237491185 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 25 |
This essay surveys the contributions of William H. Sewell Jr.'s Logics of History and concludes that the book sketches a compelling agenda for an integrated historical social science. The author first summarizes Sewell's ontological and epistemological claims concerning social structure and event, history and temporality, and sociohistorical causality. The author then discusses five main areas in which ambiguities in Sewell's approach might be clarified or his arguments pushed farther. These concern (1) the relationship between historical event and traumatic event; (2) the idea of the unprecedented event or “antistructure”; (3) the theory of semiosis underlying Sewell's notion of a multiplicity of structures; and (4) the compatibilities and differences between the concepts of structure and mechanism (here the author argues that social structures are the distinctive “mechanisms” of the human or social sciences). Finally, (5) Sewell's call for “a more robust sense of the social” in historical writing locates the “social” mainly at the level of the metafield of power, or what regulation theory calls the mode of regulation; the author suggests a possible integration of this society-level concept with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of semiautonomous fields
Causality (physics · Epistemology · Event (particle physics · Power (physics · Social science · Social theory · Sociology · Temporality · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Qualitative Comparative Analysis Research · Social and Cultural Dynamics
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Narratives of contingency as historical evidence for philosophical arguments of contingency
Is Historical Temporality “Heterogeneous” and “Contingent”? William H. Sewell’s Cultural Turn
La science comme moteur de légitimité au xxe siècle
Vergleichende Soziologie, kritischer Realismus und Reflexivität
Recasting the Treadmills of Production and Destruction
Transitional Temporality
Events and Crises
Time's Up? How Temporal Maps of Climate Change Shape Climate Action
Eventful Subjectivity
On the Centrality of Action
Toward a really temporalized theory of event
Cooking in theory
Völkerrechtliche Großraumordnung mit Interventionsverbot für raumfremde Mächte. Ein Beitrag zum Reichsbegriff im Völkerrecht.
Talk of Love
Unconscious Emotion
Work and Revolution in France
Civilization and Its Discontents
Philosophy and Critical Realism
Outline of a Theory of Practice
The Craft of Sociology
The Possibility of Naturalism
Critical Realism and Historical Sociology. A Review Article
Engagement and transcendence
Public Sociologies
Scientific Realism and Human Emancipation
Pandora's hope
Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Causality
Cultural Idioms and Political Ideologies in the Revolutionary Reconstruction of State Power
Ideologies and Social Revolutions
Logics of History
The Ritual Process
Moments of Madness
A Theory of Structure
Regulation Theory, Post-Marxism, and the New Social Movements
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,15 |
| Citation span | 2013 - 2026 (14) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 15 |