Social Change and History

In this week's readings I found the last chapter of William H. Sewell Jr.'s Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation to be of a high degree of interest. Within Logics of History William H. Sewell seeks to re-characterize interactions between social scientists and historians by fostering an exchange of views and approaches to human interaction. Fundamental to the reworking of the historical-social sciences relationship, Sewell argues, is a conscious attempt to reconcile the divide between synchronic and diachronic interpretations of the past. Sewell writes "Anthropology's classical notions of culture, no less that sociology's classical notions of social structure, needs to be infused with historical temporalities" (18). I agree with the assertion that social scientists, especially those analyzing the most fundamental levels of human interaction, would benefit from treating the past as a foreign country. Historians have largely long since abandoned overarching and deterministic views of human interaction, choosing instead to emphasize contingency and agency. However, Sewell is also correct that Historians must utlilize diachronic as well as the standard synchronic contextualization to more accurately cover a historical subject. The results of Sewell's efforts culminate in chapter 9 titled "Refiguring the "Social" in Social Science." In this chapter William Sewell gives a history of the changing meanings of "social" in order to parallel its rise with other concepts like "history" and "culture" during 18th century and Enlightenment. Sewell argues that these terms have come to represent "the totality of complex interrelatedness that we understand as constituting the basic reality of human existence" and carry a mystical vagueness which belies their importance as world-view defining concepts (326). As abstract aggregates these ideas carry a wealth of meanings and uses which must be explored in a diachronic fashion and require "the search for a much wider variety of semiotic methods" (339). Sewell's argument waxes on the idea of the social as a language game with a distinct emphasis on the game aspect. Overall, I found this work to be a creative point of view for reconciling many of the far-flung differences in emphases between social scientists and historians. Sewell also effectively argues for the value and necessity of both diachronic and synchronic approaches to history.