The Imagination of Historical Sociology

This paper presents the dominant perspective of the historical sociology and seeks to reveal the capabilities of this insight in analyzing the nature of social changes. For this purpose, the library method uses for extracting the content of historical sociology insights in the context of current literature in this field. Findings show that the ​​social and intellectual area of historical sociology insight takes shape in the fields of history and sociology since the nineteenth century. Despite traditional distinction prevailing in social sciences, Frnan Braudel and Peter Burke from the fields of history, and C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens and Philip Abrams from sociology with different analyzes emphasized the convergence of sociology and history. Convergence result of these two groups wasthe interdisciplinary project of historical sociology in 1970s that on the one hand, is detached from history using social theory as analysis frame of empirical evidences and on the other hand, placing social action and social structure in their historical context and testing the manner of historic reopening of them demanded on the temporal nature of social life. This vision of historical sociology was used in various forms in different subjects., Theda Skocpol's generalized, interpretive and analytical historical sociology with micro (experimental) and macro (comparative) historical sociology were two prototypes of classification of different sorts of historical sociological insights. However, the types of analyses in historical sociology, all have the function of understanding the current world, the way of its changes and the coming paths. This paper concludes that historical sociology with a critique of modernization theory of development shows the different paths of historical evolution of societies and takes the development for the special event of historical societies.