Definizioni, epistemologie, interdisciplinarità. Problemi e prospettive della sociologia storica

This contribution discusses some of the issues of the inherently complex approach of Historical Sociology. In doing so, we will start from approaching some of the central thematic nodes such as definitions, epistemologies, interdisciplinarity, periodization. The objective is twofold. On the one hand, we want to underline the intrinsic flexibility and adaptability of the approach, which is the outcome of its deeply interdisciplinary nature, by thematizing it as both a defining and a problematic aspect. On the other hand, we want to affirm the idea that Historical Sociology should be thought of and practiced substantially as a sociological style, which constitutes its central and winning dimension in a historical phase such as the one we are living through, which urgently needs to recover the historical, diachronic dimension of social and human processes, freeing itself from what many authors defined as presentism and stagism.