The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry
The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry
复制标题
比较历史在宏观社会探究中的应用
DOI：
10.1017/s0010417500009282
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发表时间：
1980
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
Margaret R. Somers
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
T. Skocpol;Margaret R. Somers
比较历史并不新鲜。只要人们对社会生活进行了调查，就会对两个或两个以上的时间或地点的历史模式并置产生兴趣。部分吸引力来自于观察历史轨迹以研究社会变革的普遍有用性。事实上，从托克维尔、韦伯到布洛赫、本哈特和小巴林顿摩尔，通常关注于理解社会动态和文化与社会结构的划时代变革。对历史顺序的关注对于这样的理解是必不可少的。然而，显然，并非所有的社会变迁研究都使用明确的不同历史并置。因此，我们可能会问：是什么促使我们使用比较，而不是专注于单一的历史轨迹？通过比较历史学的特定形式，我们追求什么目的？
Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Barrington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such understanding. Obviously, though, not all investigations of social change use explicit juxtapositions of distinct histories. We may wonder, therefore: What motivates the use of comparisons as opposed to focussing on single historical trajectories? What purposes are pursued—and how—through the specific modalities of comparative history?