The "New History" in Sociology.

Although important historical scholarship existed in the social sciences in the 1950s, most notably that of Reinhard Bendix, the one clear point of departure for the new history that would arise in the 1960s and 1970s is C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination, itself a work containing no historical analysis. A virulent critic of post-World War II trends in social science, Mills argued that all valid social science perspectives of mankind needed to be based on history. He made his case by dividing social science in the postwar era into two groups, "Grand Theory" and "Abstracted Empiricism," and by showing that both ignored history. Although he certainly exaggerated the foibles of his colleagues, C. Wright Mills remains one of the most articulate critics of modem professional sociology. He clearly realized that social theorists as well as empirical researchers distrusted and could find no place for history in their brands of social science.