The Historical Sociology of Sociology as Disciplinary Reflexivity

In this paper I will follow the organizer’s invitation to reflect upon work I am currently doing and work I have already done within the field of the history of the human sciences. I will trace the emergence of this interest from my own position(s) in the field(s) of the human sciences, starting with my work on the epistemology of the social sciences.  I will summarize my work on (1) philosophical critical realism and (2) Pierre Bourdieu’s field theoretical sociology, and on (3) positivism and non-positivism in the human sciences, (4) colonial ethnography, (5) German exile sociologists in the US, and (6) boundary struggles among the disciplines, and conclude with (6) my current research on the place of overseas colonialism in the rebirth of postwar British and French sociology (1940s-1960s).  I will conclude with a discussion of the role of historical and sociological work on disciplines as a form of scientific reflexivity.