Sociology's founders, from Comte and Saint-Simone to their successors DuBois and Durkheim, saw the new discipline as necessarily historical. Yet, many sociologists spent much of the twentieth century avoiding history and turned instead toward the development of what they imagined would be an ahistorical scientific field, focused theoretically and empirically on the United States. Since the 1970s, a corrective movement has emerged, comparative historical sociology (CHS), to restore the importance of comparing social concepts across time and space. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology is a complete compendium of this movement. The volume offers an overview of the current state of CHS, its development, its place in the discipline of sociology, and its position in relation to other social sciences and to history. True to the comparative aspect of CHS, the Handbook's introductory section establishes the foundations of the field through a set of chapters with different epistemological, theoretical, and methodological positions. Topical chapters follow, organized by sections composed of social processes of identification, representation, circulation, and wielding power. Covering the vast scope of CHS topics, from culture and news media, to sexual orientation and gender, to war and colonialism, the Handbook serves as a resource for the next generation of comparative historical sociologists.
