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Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation
While social scientists and historians have been exchanging ideas for a long time, they have never developed a proper dialogue about social theory. William H. Sewell Jr. observes that on questions of theory the communication has been mostly one from social science to history. Logics of History argues that both history and the social sciences have something crucial to offer each other. While historians do not think of themselves as theorists, they know something social scientists do how to think about the temporalities of social life. On the other hand, while social scientists’ treatments of temporality are usually clumsy, their theoretical sophistication and penchant for structural accounts of social life could offer much to historians.
Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History , he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.
Renowned for his work at the crossroads of history, sociology, political science, and anthropology, Sewell argues that only by combining a more sophisticated understanding of historical time with a concern for larger theoretical questions can a satisfying social theory emerge. In Logics of History , he reveals the shape such an engagement could take, some of the topics it could illuminate, and how it might affect both sides of the disciplinary divide.
376 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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363 people want to read
About the author
William H. Sewell Jr.
8 books2 followersWilliam H. Sewell, Jr. is Professor of Political Science and History at the University of Chicago.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 6, 2009
This book puts into "theoretical" form what Sewell takes good mainsteam history / social science "practice" to be. With this book, you get it all, the history of the discipline/confession (social -> cultural history :: Fordism -> post-Fordism), working definitions of "culture," "structure," "event," and "the social," a healthy dose of materialism to succor those of us who have survived the linguistic turn, a re-arming of "Heroes" Giddens, Bourdieu, Geertz, and Sahlins, and a cogent defense of the necessity of thinking through synchronicity and diachronicity simultaneously.
I buy it so completely, I haven't had time to sit down to think about where I might disagree.
More valuable than this, I find Sewell an exceptionally clear writer. I think this book has a lot to teach about how to think and write "theory" and "history."
And even more valuable than this, I like Sewell's attitude toward other disciplines and historians: we shall critique and share with each other. Sewell is a builder, a kindly force for the good of mankind and the workers, I am convinced!
I buy it so completely, I haven't had time to sit down to think about where I might disagree.
More valuable than this, I find Sewell an exceptionally clear writer. I think this book has a lot to teach about how to think and write "theory" and "history."
And even more valuable than this, I like Sewell's attitude toward other disciplines and historians: we shall critique and share with each other. Sewell is a builder, a kindly force for the good of mankind and the workers, I am convinced!
March 4, 2020
This is fundamentally a book that attempts to critique the nomothetic and mechanistic assumptions of the social sciences from a hermeneutic perspective, while at the same time asking historians to be more theoretically explicit about how they think about causality. He calls for more dialog between historians and social scientists, identifying social scientists who do “social theory” or “qualitative” methodologists as the most promising potential interlocutors. “Social scientists most theoretically valuable habit of mind, in my opinion, is their strong penchant for structural thinking: social scientists tend to look for explanations in terms of a relatively limited set of enduring, entrenched, and causally powerful features of the social world.... Structural thinking is a social-scientific virtue that historians could profitably emulate.” (14)
Specifically, Sewell develops a complex, recursive, reflexive theory of social structure and how contingent and path dependent events are constantly both reinforcing and at at times remaking those structures. It is an attempt, in short, to recuperate what the Annales School of historiography dismissed as “histoire evenementielle” — e.g. the mere recounting of what happened. In the end, he attempts to recuperate the much-maligned concept of “the social” by reconstituting it as “overlapping and interconnected streams of semiotic practices.” (21)
“Most historians actually share a set of assumptions about how time is implicated in the organization and transformation of social relations... These assumptions can be stated abstractly: ... We believe that time is fateful; ...that every act is part of a sequence of actions and that its effects are profoundly dependent upon its place in the sequence; ...that the outcome of action, event, or trend is likely to be contingent, that its effects will depend upon the particular complex temporal sequence of which it is a part.” (6-7)
“While social scientists recognize temporal fatefulness as a truth of everyday existence, most of them bracket this truth out of their scientific consciousness.” (8)
“Social temporality is extremely complex. One significant characteristic of historical events is that they combine social processes with very different temporalities... [An] “eventful conception of temporality certainly posits that different historical times have, effectively, different rates of change—that history may be ‘accelerated’ by events.... Historians, to put it differently, assume that time is heterogeneous.” (9)
“Temporal heterogeneity implies causal heterogeneity.... This assumption is quite contrary to to the practices of mainstream social scientists whose entire mode of operation is to discover and apply general. Causal laws implicitly or explicitly assumed to be independent of time and place.” (10)
“Historians know a lot about social temporality, but they know it as a kind of professional common sense... Historians, in my experience, suffer from a kind of narrative overconfidence.” (11)
“Mainstream social scientists are hampered by an uncritical, or at least in sufficiently critical, embrace of a certain natural science model.” (15) “The prestige of the natural sciences... continues to haunt even the most historically inclined social science fields. One of the most difficult obstacles facing a dialogue between history and the social sciences is this entrenched belief that some form of natural science model is the royal road to truth in the study of social life.” (17)
Then he gets into the “three temporalities” of social science:
“Comparative method is the standard alternative to mainstream statistical methods when the number of cases is in sufficiently large.... Historical sociologists have virtually always had to make careers in departments where they were surrounded by skeptical positivity’s vigilantly on guard against humanistic tendencies.” (82) “Historical sociology needs to adopt the much more subversive eventful notion of temporality.” (83)
“Sociology was born under the sign of teleology: events in some historical present are actually explained by events in the future.... The entire modernization school of social science was based on such a teleological conception of temporality. But the teleological fallacy is also widespread in the work of many historical sociologists who regard their work as arising out of an uncompromising critique of modernization theory.” (84) His examples: (A) He dismisses Immanuel Wallerstein as essentially taking an astronomical analogy for understanding “the world system” which evacuates not just agency but any sense of contingency, where all events just flow out of the potentialities “inherent” in the social system. (B) Charles Tilly “committed the fallacy of transmuting fixed socio-geographical difference in social organization into putative stages in the linear development of the abstract master process of urbanization... pursuing the notion that acts of political contest action arise from gradual evolutionary changes in large and anonymous social processes rather than [the idea that] changes in political regimes reconfigure and give new meaning to existing social networks and cleavages, thereby creating new collective identities.” (91) (C) Theda Skocpol assumes “that her three great social revolutions are in fact a uniform class of objects governed by identical causal laws” (96) — whereas in fact they are not independent of one another, with the later revolutions in fact reflecting what their participants had learned from observing the earlier cases. But Sewell says that Skocpol’s methodology is in fact a clever compromise “of critically extending narratives from each of the cases to each of the others,” such that “comparison generates propositions whose potential generality is tested by their ability to illuminate the conjunctural unfolding of analogous causal processes in the three cases.” (99)
Sewell then makes the case for an “eventful temporality.” He defines an “event” as “that relatively rare subclass of happenings that significantly transforms structures.” Unlike experimental or teleological conceptions of temporality, an eventful temporality “assumes that events are normally ‘path dependent,’ that is, that what has happened at an earlier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in time.” (100) “Events bring about historical changes in part by transforming the very cultural categories that shape and constrain human interaction.... An eventful concept of temporality, then, assumes a causal dependence of later occurrences on prior occurrences and assumes that social causality is temporally heterogeneous, not temporally uniform.... Teleological and eventful temporality share an assumption of path dependence. However, teleological and eventful concepts of temporality differ most sharply on the question of contingency. Teleological temporality is incompatible with the assumption of radical congruency that I regard as fundamental to eventful temporality.” (101) “The implicit model not only specifies multiple causes but sorts out what might be characterized as different registers of causation: preexisting structural conditions (cultural, social, demographic, economic); conjunctural conditions; and contingent strategic or volition always actions.” (109)
Specifically, Sewell develops a complex, recursive, reflexive theory of social structure and how contingent and path dependent events are constantly both reinforcing and at at times remaking those structures. It is an attempt, in short, to recuperate what the Annales School of historiography dismissed as “histoire evenementielle” — e.g. the mere recounting of what happened. In the end, he attempts to recuperate the much-maligned concept of “the social” by reconstituting it as “overlapping and interconnected streams of semiotic practices.” (21)
“Most historians actually share a set of assumptions about how time is implicated in the organization and transformation of social relations... These assumptions can be stated abstractly: ... We believe that time is fateful; ...that every act is part of a sequence of actions and that its effects are profoundly dependent upon its place in the sequence; ...that the outcome of action, event, or trend is likely to be contingent, that its effects will depend upon the particular complex temporal sequence of which it is a part.” (6-7)
“While social scientists recognize temporal fatefulness as a truth of everyday existence, most of them bracket this truth out of their scientific consciousness.” (8)
“Social temporality is extremely complex. One significant characteristic of historical events is that they combine social processes with very different temporalities... [An] “eventful conception of temporality certainly posits that different historical times have, effectively, different rates of change—that history may be ‘accelerated’ by events.... Historians, to put it differently, assume that time is heterogeneous.” (9)
“Temporal heterogeneity implies causal heterogeneity.... This assumption is quite contrary to to the practices of mainstream social scientists whose entire mode of operation is to discover and apply general. Causal laws implicitly or explicitly assumed to be independent of time and place.” (10)
“Historians know a lot about social temporality, but they know it as a kind of professional common sense... Historians, in my experience, suffer from a kind of narrative overconfidence.” (11)
“Mainstream social scientists are hampered by an uncritical, or at least in sufficiently critical, embrace of a certain natural science model.” (15) “The prestige of the natural sciences... continues to haunt even the most historically inclined social science fields. One of the most difficult obstacles facing a dialogue between history and the social sciences is this entrenched belief that some form of natural science model is the royal road to truth in the study of social life.” (17)
Then he gets into the “three temporalities” of social science:
“Comparative method is the standard alternative to mainstream statistical methods when the number of cases is in sufficiently large.... Historical sociologists have virtually always had to make careers in departments where they were surrounded by skeptical positivity’s vigilantly on guard against humanistic tendencies.” (82) “Historical sociology needs to adopt the much more subversive eventful notion of temporality.” (83)
“Sociology was born under the sign of teleology: events in some historical present are actually explained by events in the future.... The entire modernization school of social science was based on such a teleological conception of temporality. But the teleological fallacy is also widespread in the work of many historical sociologists who regard their work as arising out of an uncompromising critique of modernization theory.” (84) His examples: (A) He dismisses Immanuel Wallerstein as essentially taking an astronomical analogy for understanding “the world system” which evacuates not just agency but any sense of contingency, where all events just flow out of the potentialities “inherent” in the social system. (B) Charles Tilly “committed the fallacy of transmuting fixed socio-geographical difference in social organization into putative stages in the linear development of the abstract master process of urbanization... pursuing the notion that acts of political contest action arise from gradual evolutionary changes in large and anonymous social processes rather than [the idea that] changes in political regimes reconfigure and give new meaning to existing social networks and cleavages, thereby creating new collective identities.” (91) (C) Theda Skocpol assumes “that her three great social revolutions are in fact a uniform class of objects governed by identical causal laws” (96) — whereas in fact they are not independent of one another, with the later revolutions in fact reflecting what their participants had learned from observing the earlier cases. But Sewell says that Skocpol’s methodology is in fact a clever compromise “of critically extending narratives from each of the cases to each of the others,” such that “comparison generates propositions whose potential generality is tested by their ability to illuminate the conjunctural unfolding of analogous causal processes in the three cases.” (99)
Sewell then makes the case for an “eventful temporality.” He defines an “event” as “that relatively rare subclass of happenings that significantly transforms structures.” Unlike experimental or teleological conceptions of temporality, an eventful temporality “assumes that events are normally ‘path dependent,’ that is, that what has happened at an earlier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in time.” (100) “Events bring about historical changes in part by transforming the very cultural categories that shape and constrain human interaction.... An eventful concept of temporality, then, assumes a causal dependence of later occurrences on prior occurrences and assumes that social causality is temporally heterogeneous, not temporally uniform.... Teleological and eventful temporality share an assumption of path dependence. However, teleological and eventful concepts of temporality differ most sharply on the question of contingency. Teleological temporality is incompatible with the assumption of radical congruency that I regard as fundamental to eventful temporality.” (101) “The implicit model not only specifies multiple causes but sorts out what might be characterized as different registers of causation: preexisting structural conditions (cultural, social, demographic, economic); conjunctural conditions; and contingent strategic or volition always actions.” (109)
June 1, 2020
An unexpectedly good book on social theory by a Marxist social historian who justly won the ASA Theory Prize for Outstanding Book in 2008 with his work. If your research involves a historical dimension but you are not sure how to integrate the historical narrative into social scientific analysis, you should check it out.
The book is a collection of articles repurposed to form a consistent whole. There is one chapter about the British and American history and social theory and it was a very good summary. Another chapter analyses the concept of "structure" in social sciences. Surprisingly, I realized how little I thought about this central concept. The chapter about Sahlins' theory of structural change was brilliant. To me, however, the book's most important contribution to my thinking has been the concept of "eventfullness" which triggered an enormous number of neurons in my mind. Those who often read theory know that it is a rare feeling.
The book is a collection of articles repurposed to form a consistent whole. There is one chapter about the British and American history and social theory and it was a very good summary. Another chapter analyses the concept of "structure" in social sciences. Surprisingly, I realized how little I thought about this central concept. The chapter about Sahlins' theory of structural change was brilliant. To me, however, the book's most important contribution to my thinking has been the concept of "eventfullness" which triggered an enormous number of neurons in my mind. Those who often read theory know that it is a rare feeling.
September 7, 2019
This book is a compilation of a series of essays which Sewell wrote over the course of many years. In it, he argues that historians and social scientists can gain insight from each other. Historians bring an understanding of change over time to the table, while social scientists bring a more robust focus on societal structures.
The first few chapters read more like an autobiography. Sewell uses his own experience during the 1960s and 70s as he experiences the social and cultural turns in historiography. He relates these turns with the economical and political environments at those times. This use of himself as a primary source has me caught between thinking of him as very arrogant for considering his experience worthy of extrapolation and very humble for displaying his struggles.
In the remaining chapters, he provides examples for how the cross-talk between historians and social scientists might look.
While the concepts and terminology in theory are valuable, this book is difficult to read. He takes a lot of discussion to get to the point. Don't expect a cohesive book, rather read each chapter as a separate essay which contributes to the overall argument.
The first few chapters read more like an autobiography. Sewell uses his own experience during the 1960s and 70s as he experiences the social and cultural turns in historiography. He relates these turns with the economical and political environments at those times. This use of himself as a primary source has me caught between thinking of him as very arrogant for considering his experience worthy of extrapolation and very humble for displaying his struggles.
In the remaining chapters, he provides examples for how the cross-talk between historians and social scientists might look.
While the concepts and terminology in theory are valuable, this book is difficult to read. He takes a lot of discussion to get to the point. Don't expect a cohesive book, rather read each chapter as a separate essay which contributes to the overall argument.
November 27, 2022
Wtf was deze postmoderne visie op een postmodern probleem van het postmodernisme
February 27, 2013
This is a book of theory. Sewell writes about his experience as a historian and evaluates the various approaches to history that he has been involved with. Starting as a social historian, using numerical methods to write about those without a voice, he moved into cultural history, which meant looking at texts for the meaning they shed on events. He thinks that the social sciences have much to teach historians, but he also argues here for what historians have to teach social scientists interested in history. This is not an easy book to read, but if you want to think about history and not just consume narratives, this is a good place to start.
September 30, 2013
This is an excellent book, and very readable as long as you are familiar with the concepts involved. Sewell manages to make an impressively viable argument for incorporating useful aspects of the heavily structuralist social history into the contemporary cultural turn. This kind of argument for synthesis and moderation in theory is too rare, and refreshing to see.
June 14, 2014
Must-read for those interested in the theory and methods of social history.
September 16, 2022
The actual historical essays that comprise the book's middle chapters are fine but the broader theoretical framing is logically shaky, badly written, and relies on many untrue assertions about other social science disciplines
Read
January 6, 2025VEEL hoofdpijn van gekregen
En stiekem ook beetje leuk gevonden
En stiekem ook beetje leuk gevonden
June 7, 2025
Bill Sewell the GOAT
February 9, 2009
Stimulating and largely persuasive. Recommended to all my fellow history students, particularly those doing social or cultural work -- which is to say, recommended to everybody who knows what's good for you.
Sewell's goal is to bring historians and social scientists together. He argues that each of these groups has a useful theoretical contribution to make to the other. Too often, however, historians either neglect theory or copy it unmodified from the other disciplines into their own writing. The result, in a work of history, is to impoverish either the (generally static) account of social context or the (dynamic) narrative of events, respectively. At the same time, historians generally fail to articulate for social scientists their acute intuition regarding "social time"; in other words, historians have failed to help sociologists, anthropologists, and economists understand how events can transform social structures. If they remedy this failing, Sewell hopes, historians will help social scientists create more dynamic accounts of social life.
In addition to this dialogue between historians and social scientists, Sewell conducts a dialogue between social and cultural history, which often amounts to a dialogue between structuralism and poststructuralism. Sewell is annoyed that historians have had to choose between them, especially when they are in an excellent position to demonstrate the consonance of these approaches. He suggests that we might define culture as "the semiotic dimension of human social practice" -- i.e., as neither practice alone nor meaning alone, but the meaning that attaches to material and practice (164). We might also define society as a "built environment" in which meaning both reshapes the material context of human life and is in turn shaped by that context (362). The ultimate goal here, I infer, is to create a place for human agency within structural theories of social life, and at the same time a place for structure within theories of human agency.
In the short term, Sewell's book is probably most valuable for its careful discussion of the historical implications of various social scientists' work, and of the social implications of various historians' work. No chapter lacks for examples. In particular, an historian reading the book may come away with a better understanding of the anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins, who each get a full chapter.
Sewell's goal is to bring historians and social scientists together. He argues that each of these groups has a useful theoretical contribution to make to the other. Too often, however, historians either neglect theory or copy it unmodified from the other disciplines into their own writing. The result, in a work of history, is to impoverish either the (generally static) account of social context or the (dynamic) narrative of events, respectively. At the same time, historians generally fail to articulate for social scientists their acute intuition regarding "social time"; in other words, historians have failed to help sociologists, anthropologists, and economists understand how events can transform social structures. If they remedy this failing, Sewell hopes, historians will help social scientists create more dynamic accounts of social life.
In addition to this dialogue between historians and social scientists, Sewell conducts a dialogue between social and cultural history, which often amounts to a dialogue between structuralism and poststructuralism. Sewell is annoyed that historians have had to choose between them, especially when they are in an excellent position to demonstrate the consonance of these approaches. He suggests that we might define culture as "the semiotic dimension of human social practice" -- i.e., as neither practice alone nor meaning alone, but the meaning that attaches to material and practice (164). We might also define society as a "built environment" in which meaning both reshapes the material context of human life and is in turn shaped by that context (362). The ultimate goal here, I infer, is to create a place for human agency within structural theories of social life, and at the same time a place for structure within theories of human agency.
In the short term, Sewell's book is probably most valuable for its careful discussion of the historical implications of various social scientists' work, and of the social implications of various historians' work. No chapter lacks for examples. In particular, an historian reading the book may come away with a better understanding of the anthropologists Clifford Geertz and Marshall Sahlins, who each get a full chapter.
September 9, 2012
I am all about chapters 7, 8, and 9 in this book. The others are reasonably compelling, but they lack the historical context that make 7, 8, and 9 so fascinating. In chapter 7, he analyzes Marshall Sahlin's "Possible Theory of History" in the context of Sahlin's work on Captain Cook's ill-fated trip to Hawaii. There is probably no better example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which means that Sahlin has a great appreciation for historical contingency and human agency. Chapter 8 deals with one of Sewell's specialties, the storming of the Bastille. Sewell makes a compelling argument about how Bastille Day's prominence in the story of the French Revolution was not accidental, nor was it inevitable. Chapter 9 explores historical duration and temporal complexity through the changing fortunes of dockworkers in Marseilles. I feel like these chapters are easy to get "sucked into" and are more convincing than those which present naked theory alone.
It was also interesting to find out after reading the book that the essays are not in their original order. In a way, the whole book made more sense when I realized that the reason certain things felt helter-skelter was that they were decades apart in time.
It was also interesting to find out after reading the book that the essays are not in their original order. In a way, the whole book made more sense when I realized that the reason certain things felt helter-skelter was that they were decades apart in time.
August 16, 2013
Despite a healthy degree of repetition and reinforcement, this collection of essays presents so many discrete concepts and arguments about historiography that it is often quite challenging (but always invigorating) simply to begin to assimilate its ideas as guides for the writing of history. Yet more so than most theoretical works, Sewell clearly intends his work as an aid for historians who struggle with the conceptual thinness of many core practices in the field, who would like to reground their own research and writing on solider ground than convention and piecemeal poaching from other disciplines.
Sewell's great advantage in this task is, in fact, his ability to articulate a common conceptual grammar buried deep beneath the jargon of the interpretive social sciences, to demonstrate how anthropology, sociology, and history can--and have--be of mutual aid because they connect at crucial, but frequently obscured, theoretical (maybe even metaphysical) points. Of great, and I would expect lasting, value.
Sewell's great advantage in this task is, in fact, his ability to articulate a common conceptual grammar buried deep beneath the jargon of the interpretive social sciences, to demonstrate how anthropology, sociology, and history can--and have--be of mutual aid because they connect at crucial, but frequently obscured, theoretical (maybe even metaphysical) points. Of great, and I would expect lasting, value.
January 26, 2014
A very useful book for social science students to get the sense of historians and history students to know the utility of developing conceptual tools. The first chapter is espcially interesting as the author traced his own intellectual career and related it not only to shifts of academic paradigmns but also to structural changes in our contempoary world in which the academias are situated. Later chapters go deep in to methodological issues grounded in his detailed presentation of the writings of the French Revolution. Geertz and Sahlins surely inspired his ideas in a great deal as Sewell was able to practice Geertz's insight of meanings-as-public and Sahlins's of the dialectical relationship between structure and event in very concrete historical studies. His style is clear; his conceptual awareness and his knowledge of the implicit and explict assumptions in a handful of disciplines simply guides the reader through an enterprise which would have looked formidable.
October 14, 2008
I'm not that big on reading pure theory, but really like this book about events, social structures, and social temporality. Drawing together insights from social science and history, I believe that this collection of essays should transform how both are done.
September 19, 2007
Lucid, example-rich writing on the thorniest topics - "a theory of structure" alone is worth grabbing a copy for giving Bourdieu's theories a much-needed shot of adrenaline/agency.
December 14, 2022
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