History is Not Bunk: Why Comparative Historical Sociology is Indispensable When Looking to the Future

Abstract

Henry Ford famously remarked that ‘History is bunk’. Too often, sociologists seem to have believed him. Although in its origins our discipline largely was comparative–historical sociology, the decades since the Second World War have witnessed what Norbert Elias called a ‘retreat of sociologists into the present’, resulting in a social science that is mainly ‘hodiecentric’ (to use a word coined by Johan Goudsblom). ‘Historical sociology’ has come to be regarded as just one empirical specialisation among many – as reflected in the ISA’s organisation into the watertight compartments represented by its 56 Research Committees, 3 Working Groups and 4 Thematic Groups. I argue, however, that the neglect of the past has jeopardised sociologists’ ability to look forward intelligently to the future. Indeed, the hostility to Marxism that marked a generation of Cold War thinkers such as Karl Popper led some social scientists to link distrust of predictions of the future with distrust in the study of the past.