Introduction to Historical Methods

This course offers a methodologically pluralist introduction to historical methods for social scientists. If you are doing, or interested doing, social science research that engages the past, this course will enable you to:

• Situate your interest in, and approach to, historical methods in relation to classic debates and alternative contemporary research programs
• Articulate and justify key methodological assumptions of your own approach to the past
• Undertake historical research with greater clarity and confidence as to what you are, and should, be doing (and, as importantly, what you are not and need not be doing).

Ever since the language of 'historical method' first came to be deployed by scholars during the mid-19^th century, it has been used to identify, valorise, discipline, and contest multiple, diverse, and at times directly competing, research practices and traditions.

During our first session we explore the classic roots of recurrent methodological cleavages over such issues as the uses / limits of cross-societal comparison, and the pros / cons of making inferences about the beliefs of historical agents. Divergent approaches to these and other classic issues continue to differentiate alternative research programs—all self-avowedly historical—within the social sciences today.

Each of the following four days focuses on a contemporary research program, ranging widely from the new institutional economic history, to comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism, process tracing, and interpretive historical sociology.

As we examine and move across these research programs we follow inter-disciplinary connections and contests to treat scholarship by economists, political scientists, and sociologists.

In our readings we engage with works of meta-reflection on the substantive and methodological orientation of each program, and examples of historical work, in order to examine and tease apart the preaching and the actual research practices of each program.

Day 1 – 'Historical Method'(s): The Classic Roots of Recurrent Cleavages

We begin by reviewing the central role 'historical method' played in crystallising positivism as both a philosophy of history and a social science methodology. Readings from Comte and JS Mill showcase:

1. their advocacy of a historical method that would study macro-societal change over time
2. their divergence over if/how macro-level social change should be related to individual psychology.

We transition between the two sessions of the day with selections illustrating how proponents of a self-avowedly 'scientific' history came, in turn, to discuss method. In closing, we take up Durkheim and debates he engaged in that highlight cleavages among views of historical method that continue to be contested across traditions of historical social science down to this day.

Day 2 – New Institutional Economic History

We shift focus to recent decades and begin our survey of contemporary research programs with the new institutional economic history as developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, and especially prominent recently in the academic and popular works of Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson. In examining the development of this research program, we will also be charting its connection to rational choice scholarship in political science.

Day 3 – Comparative Historical Analysis and Historical Institutionalism

We consider the primarily qualitative research program of 'comparative historical analysis.' This program stressing macro-societal comparison developed initially in sociology as one current within a broader upswing of historical sociology. We examine the methodological statements and practices of this research program as it came to frame itself as 'comparative historical analysis,' and as it found its disciplinary home increasingly in political science, where it has steadily become interwoven with political science’s internally developed agenda of 'historical institutionalism'.

Day 4 – Process Tracing and International History

The belief that critical use of sources provides the essential evidentiary foundation for 'scientific' study of the past is today perhaps most evident beyond the discipline of history (which has in recent decades left behind much of its earlier scientific self-identity). Far from disappearing, however, this methodological concern is prominent in contemporary social science in connection with the practice of process tracing. Process tracing is, moreover, applied especially to the political and diplomatic actors and events that were central to traditional history.

On this day we join the Advanced Process Tracing Methods course in an exercise critically analysing sources for an international history case.

Day 5 – Interpretive Historical Sociology

While the macro-causal analysis current of historical sociology that became 'comparative historical analysis' has increasingly gravitated into political science, in sociology recent decades have seen historical scholars creatively pursue an array of new trends. On this final day we review these changes in historical sociology, with a focus specifically on the development of what may be called interpretive historical sociology and the ways in which sources are approached in such research.

This course presumes no prior detailed familiarity with historical methods or debates around them.

All I assume is that you have done, or are interested in undertaking, social science research that engages the past, whether from positivist or interpretive methodological orientations.

Each course includes pre-course assignments, including readings and pre-recorded videos, as well as daily live lectures totalling at least two hours. The instructor will conduct live Q&A sessions and offer designated office hours for one-to-one consultations.

Please check your course format before registering.

Online courses

Live classes will be held daily for two hours on a video meeting platform, allowing you to interact with both the instructor and other participants in real-time. To avoid online fatigue, the course employs a pedagogy that includes small-group work, short and focused tasks, as well as troubleshooting exercises that utilise a variety of online applications to facilitate collaboration and engagement with the course content.

In-person courses

In-person courses will consist of daily three-hour classroom sessions, featuring a range of interactive in-class activities including short lectures, peer feedback, group exercises, and presentations.

Disclaimer

This course description may be subject to subsequent adaptations (e.g. taking into account new developments in the field, participant demands, group size, etc.). Registered participants will be informed at the time of change.

By registering for this course, you confirm that you possess the knowledge required to follow it. The instructor will not teach these prerequisite items. If in doubt, please contact us before registering.