什么是历史社会学?

What is Historical Sociology?

本文指出目前国内学界对历史社会学这一学科存在一些常见的理解上的误区。文章旨在说明,历史社会学不只研究久远的过去,不一定要建立在第一手材料基础之上,其目的不是弘扬民族文化,也不是一个一般意义上的社会学的分支。历史社会学的核心问题意识围绕着工业资本主义和民族国家的兴起及其后果展开;而将历史学的时间序列叙事和社会学的结构/机制叙事进行结合从而获得更为优化的经验叙事方法则是历史社会学区别于其他社会科学学科的关键所在。

This article discusses several misconceptions commonly observed in China’s academia of historical sociology,one social science discipline that has been gaining tremendous popularity in China in recent years.The author stresses that historical sociology is not a discipline that aims only at analyzing distant past,or a discipline that must base its claims on firsthand data,or a discipline that helps to celebrate past glories.It is neither a sub-discipline of sociology as conventionally understood.The article contends that historical sociology is a discipline that tackles the most important,and possibly also the ultimate question in the philosophies of social sciences—the rise and consequences of industrial capitalism and nation-state,and that,in doing so,it also tries to develop methodologies that best combine the time-based narrative of history and structure/mechanism-based narrative of sociology.