Key Takeaways
1. Historical sociology has evolved through three distinct waves of theorizing modernity
The discipline is itself a product of modernity, not simply in its institutions but also, as we will argue, in its theoretical core.
The evolution of waves. Historical sociology has progressed through three distinct phases of development. The first wave comprised classical theorists like Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, who sought to understand the transition to industrial modernity. The second wave, emerging in the 1970s, reacted against structural functionalism by focusing on state-building, revolutions, and class structures through a political-economic lens.
The third-wave challenge. The emerging third wave represents a loose coalition of scholars challenging the structural determinism and implicit utilitarianism of the second wave. This new wave is characterized by:
- A turn toward cultural analysis and signification
- The gendering and racializing of historical categories
- A focus on contingency, multiplicity, and agency over structural inevitability
Remaking the modern. Rather than abandoning the concept of modernity, third-wave scholars seek to "remake" it. This involves historicizing modernity as an idea, capturing how its categories are constructed, and exploring alternative modernities that emerged from global and colonial encounters.
2. The "groupist" illusion must be replaced by analyzing ethnicity, race, and nationhood as cognitive categories
We need to break, for example, with the seemingly obvious and uncontroversial point that ethnic conflict involves conflict between ethnic groups.
The trap of groupism. "Groupism" is the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations, and races as discrete, internally homogeneous, and bounded entities with unified agency. In social analysis, this reification mirrors the performative rhetoric of ethno-political entrepreneurs who summon groups into existence. Analysts must treat these categories not as things-in-the-world, but as perspectives on the world.
Categories versus groups. To move beyond groupism, sociologists must distinguish between categories and groups. While categories are cognitive classifications used to make sense of the social world, groups require active interaction, solidarity, and capacity for concerted action. The process of turning a category into a group is a contingent political project.
Ethnicity as cognition. Ethnicity works in everyday life as a cognitive schema—a way of seeing, interpreting, and framing experiences. For example, in Cluj, Romania, ethno-national categories structure daily interactions and parallel school systems without crystallizing into bounded, hostile groups.
3. The classical "goals model" of human action must yield to a practice-oriented, situation-specific model
The concept of 'situation,' is a suitable replacement for the means-ends schema as the primary basic category of a theory of action.
Critique of utilitarianism. Classical social theory and second-wave historical sociology relied heavily on a "goals model" of action, where actors rationally adjust means to pre-given, stable ends. This model assumes that goals are general and transposable across settings, while the environment is objectively fixed. However, this approach fails to capture how situations themselves define what is possible and desirable.
The problem-solving model. An alternative "practice" or "problem-solving" model treats action as an extemporaneous adjustment to shifting, ambiguous situations. Here, actors rely on culturally inherited schemas and repertoires of practice rather than calculating optimal means to abstract ends.
- Repertoires precede the choice of ends
- Agency is found in the creative transposition of schemas
- Action is most reflective when coping with hybrid, ambiguous settings
Methodological advantages. Viewing action as a local contrivance allows researchers to study observable, bounded variables rather than imputing unobservable, distant motives like "salvation" or "utility." It encourages a richer dialogue with historical evidence by focusing on the specific "how-to" of social practices.
4. Modern states and markets are politically and culturally constituted, not naturally occurring or purely efficient
The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization.
The social construction of markets. Markets and states are not natural, self-regulating entities that emerge spontaneously when constraints are removed. Instead, they are politically and culturally constituted institutions. The infrastructure of modern capitalism—such as property rights, double-entry bookkeeping, and monetary systems—requires active state enforcement and cultural legitimation to function.
Embeddedness of economic action. Economic action is deeply embedded in social networks, kinship systems, and political struggles. Rather than operating in an acultural vacuum of pure efficiency, economic institutions are shaped by:
- The conversion of economic capital into social status
- The institutionalization of trust and credit systems
- The political regulation of "the social" sphere
The state as market-maker. The state does not merely intervene in the economy; it actively constitutes it. Through social provision, legal frameworks, and administrative capacities, the state establishes the very categories of risk, labor, and value that make market transactions possible.
5. The rise of modern warfare was driven by the entry of ordinary people into state-organized violence
war again became the business of the people
The democratization of violence. A fundamental transformation in warfare occurred at the end of the eighteenth century during the age of democratic revolutions. Previously, states waged war using professional standing armies or mercenaries, largely insulating ordinary people from direct mobilization. The revolution in war brought the masses to the center of state-organized violence through the institution of citizen conscription.
Conscription and citizenship. Citizen conscription linked the organization of politics to the organization of war. By requiring ordinary men to fight for the state, conscription transformed military service into the constitutive act of national citizenship. This process:
- Leveled social differences within the military
- Integrated the army with the wider society
- Excluded women and non-nationals from full political membership
The barbarization of the enemy. As warfare became nationalized and mass-mobilizing, the definition of "the enemy" expanded. War was no longer waged merely against an opponent's armed forces, but against the opponent's entire population and capacity for war. This shift laid the groundwork for the "industrial killing" and militarized genocides of the twentieth century.
6. Social provision and the welfare state are fundamentally gendered, racialized, and regulatory systems
The gender segregation of scholarship, ubiquitous in academia and intellectual life, disables historical sociologists from making convincing historicized accounts of modernity, capitalism, states, and politics.
Gendering the welfare state. Mainstream institutionalist theories of the welfare state have historically focused on class struggles and labor decommodification, treating the citizen-worker as a gender-unmarked (implicitly male) actor. Feminist historical sociology has shattered this model by showing that social provision is fundamentally structured by gender relations, family forms, and the division of reproductive labor.
Maternalism and its legacy. Early social policies in the West were often shaped by "maternalist" political mobilizations, where women made claims on the state based on their capacity to mother. This created a gendered, two-tier welfare system:
- A primary tier of social insurance for male breadwinners
- A secondary, stigmatized tier of social assistance for dependent mothers
The regulation of the social. Social provision is never merely about material redistribution; it is a powerful system of social regulation and categorization. Welfare states actively construct categories of dependency, enforce racial and sexual exclusions, and regulate the intimate lives of citizens through administrative surveillance.
7. The transition to capitalism is a highly contingent, localized, and plural process of "capitalisms"
The 'transition to capitalism' is rarely discussed as a singular, inevitable event to be explained by a single theory.
Pluralizing the transition. The classical search for a single, universal transition from feudalism to capitalism has been replaced by the recognition of multiple, highly localized "transitions to capitalisms." Historical evidence shows that capitalism did not unfold naturally or inevitably from a single English blueprint, but emerged through diverse, contingent paths across Europe and East Asia.
Contingency over inevitability. The rise of capitalist relations was often a highly contingent byproduct of political struggles among elites rather than a teleological march toward economic efficiency. For example, the English gentry enclosed common lands to gain tactical advantages against the crown, while in Tuscany, sharecropping reproduced urban wealth rather than rural capitalism.
The market transition. This historical pluralism has profound implications for understanding the contemporary "market transition" in post-socialist Europe. Neo-liberal attempts to impose rapid "shock therapy" based on idealized models of English capitalism have often resulted in "political" or "merchant" capitalism rather than productive market economies, demonstrating that markets cannot be divorced from their specific historical and institutional pathways.
8. The nation is not a substantial entity but a contested discursive field
The nation-state is not only, or primarily, an ethno-demographic phenomenon, or a set of institutional arrangements: it is also, crucially, a way of thinking about and appraising political and social membership.
De-essentializing the nation. Rather than treating nations as real, substantial entities or natural groups, historical sociologists must conceptualize "the nation" as a contested discursive field. This field is generated through ongoing claims-making about legitimate political authority and the shared features of a putatively bounded population.
Cultural idioms of membership. National identities are not fixed sets of values but fluid repertoires of symbols and cultural idioms mobilized in political struggles. These idioms:
- Define the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion
- Shape state interests and policy choices
- Are continuously contested by competing social groups
The role of cultural production. The institutionalization of national categories depends on processes of cultural production that are often independent of the state. Intellectuals, schools, and media play a crucial role in producing and reproducing the discursive field of the nation, making nationality a taken-for-granted cognitive frame in everyday life.
9. The historical rise of bureaucratic states relied on non-instrumental motivations like values and emotions
The institutional rationalization of modern armies is not linked to more instrumental action, but just the contrary: it decreases the level of instrumental rationality and increases the importance of values and emotions.
The agency problem in state-building. The historical transition from patrimonial to bureaucratic states is fundamentally a story of rulers attempting to solve the "agency problem." Rulers must delegate authority to administrative and military staffs, but these agents often have conflicting interests and access to superior local information.
Monitoring and motivation. Rulers' organizational choices are constrained by their monitoring capacity, which is determined by technologies of communication and transportation. When monitoring is poor, rulers must rely on strong instrumental incentives like tax farming. Bureaucracy, with its weak positive incentives (fixed salaries), becomes viable only when monitoring capacity is highly developed.
The role of values and emotions. In domains where monitoring is exceptionally difficult and the costs of compliance are high—such as in modern standing armies—instrumental incentives fail. To secure obedience, rulers must cultivate non-instrumental motivations. In early modern Europe, this was achieved through the emotional solidarity and discipline generated by close-order military drill.
10. Modern social theory must decenter Europe by analyzing the mutual constitution of metropoles and colonies
colonization was never simply external to the societies of the imperial metropolis. . . . It was always inscribed deeply within them
The Eurocentric bias. Classical social theory and second-wave historical sociology were deeply Eurocentric, assuming that the transition to modernity was an internal European process that subsequently diffused to the rest of the world. This internalist narrative systematically ignored the role of colonialism, slavery, and imperial expansion in the development of Western capitalism and state structures.
Mutual constitution. A post-colonial historical sociology must "provincialize Europe" by demonstrating that the metropole and the colony were mutually constituted. The wealth, institutions, and cultural symbols of Western modernity were forged in the crucible of colonial encounters. For example:
- The French Revolution was deeply shaped by the slave rebellion in St. Domingue (Haiti)
- British working-class identity was constructed in relation to imperial projects
- Modern systems of social classification were developed to manage colonial populations
Alternative modernities. By decentering the European experience, researchers can identify alternative pathways and practices conducted under the sign of modernity. This approach rejects the binary opposition between the "rational" West and the "traditional" Rest, focusing instead on processes of transculturation and hybridity.
