Perspective of Historical Sociology

Jiří Šubrt is Associate Professor of Historical Sociology at Charles University, Czech Republic, working in the Department of Historical Sociology, which he founded in 2008. His research focuses on modernisation theory and questions of time and memory. He has authored or edited more than twenty books, and has made many contributions to international publications and conferences.

The author surveys themes in the field of historical sociology, in terms of the leading figures in the field, the relationship between history and sociology, and how sociology views the human individual in society and history. He considers the interrelationship between sociology and historical science and the perspective historical sociology can offer on humans, society, and history; different theories of social change, including crises, collapses, and disasters; the significance, topicality, and inspirational influence of sociological thinkers like Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Maurice Halbwachs; concepts related to social systems, structures, and functions, including structural functionalism, stratification and conflict theory, structuralism and poststructuralism, systems theory, and world-systems theory; ideas about culture and civilization, including the work of Norbert Elias, Jaroslav Krejci, and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt; the problems of modernization, including the paths to modern society, nationalism, totalitarianism, wars and violence, the theory of modernization, the first and second modernities, and the transformations of contemporary societies; and the sociological perspective on the human individual in society and history, with an emphasis on major historical individuals.

• Part 1: The Perspective of Historical Sociology The Path to Historical Sociology History and Sociology Theoretical Dilemmas Part 2: Societies in the Processes of Changes The Dimension of Time Social Change – Different Approaches to its Observation and Analysis  Crisis as a Challenge Part 3: Ideas of the Sociological “Founding Fathers” Sociology as a Science of Social Statics and Dynamics The Evolution of the Social Organism Historical Materialism Explaining the Emergence of Capitalism Digression on the Early Rationalization of Time Sociology as a Science About Social Facts A Digression on Collective Memory Part 4: Systems, Structures, and Functions The Social System and Evolution Inequality, Stratification, Mobility Theories of Conflict Structuralism and Post-Structuralism Functional Differentiation and its Consequences World-System Part 5: Civilizational Analysis Civilizing Process Paradigms of Human Condition Civilizations of the Axial Age Part 6: The Modern World, its Formative Processes and Transformations  Pathways to Modern Society The Formation of Modern Nations The Dark Side of Modernization Wars, Conflicts and Violence From the First Modernity to the Second Modernity Part 7: The Human Individual and History Individualization in the Perspective of Historical-Sociological ThinkingIndividualism and Holism Homo Sociologicus Human Individual and His Place in History