Long-term Developmental Processes as an Unintended Consequence of Human Action: Some Theoretical and Methodological Questions of Historical Sociology
Abstract
In many aspects of contemporary sociology, there prevails a view of the origin and reproduction of social phenomena which arises from so-called social constructivism. In this, the starting point for the origin and reproduction of such phenomena is considered to be the interrelated actions of numerous human individuals, who strive to achieve a certain goal.
Accordingly, a wider interweave of interpersonal relationships arises and is maintained, which can be called social reality. While this explanation may be applicable and sustainable at the microsocial level, for example in the observation of the phenomena of everyday life, when our attention shifts to the macrosocial level -as is often the case with historical sociology, with its concepts of cultures, civilizations, states, nations, religions, economic and power structures -this approach proves inadequate.
Phenomena in this case cannot be explained through microsociology, because we are dealing with macrosocial phenomena that arise, are shaped, and change, as a result of certain cumulative effects, which - although originating in human behavior - have their own supra-individual nature and a specific logic that cannot be derived from the individual actions of individual human beings. When Norbert Elias talksabout the civilizing process, about the process of psychogenesis and sociogenesis, he adds that these are processes of very long duration, characterized by a certain direction or trend, but above all manifested in a form that no one intended, planned, andprojected.
In this sense, it can be stated that the processes dealt with by historical sociology are mainly (though not exclusively) the unintended consequences of human action. What is missing today in sociology -and especially in historical sociology - is a deeper effort to discover the hidden logic of the complex phenomena that set long-term historical processes in motion.