Methodological Complementarity of Sociology and History in the Study of Demographic Processes
Methodological Complementarity of Sociology and History in the Study of Demographic Processes

Summary/Abstract: Properly and accurately interpreted historical data over time are the recognition of a serious scientific research seeking their sociological explanation and interpretation. The necessity of complementarity of sociology and history in scientific thought is recognized in different time periods based on the scientific trends and tendencies in these two disciplines. The subjects of the sociology and history are mostly identical, but the roads that they use to come to findings are different. Their connection is evident in the unity of different cognitive goals. Historical studies are based on specific and individual and sociological on the identification of the general patterns in historical events. One of the scientific phenomena that can be studied with a considerable degree of disciplinary consent of sociology and history is the problem of demographic shifts, or processes. Consideration of demographic trends of one or a different social period falls within the historical sociology, which is a scientific discipline constituted during the last decades of the twentieth century. The demographic data presented in statistical or empirical materials are historical records, and their explanation is the subject of sociological theory. Demographic phenomena and demographic trends have their historical duration and historical foundation. The sociological studies of demographic trends, and through the history, and in modern time contribute to defining and determining the demographic structure as a substructure of society. For this reason, within the study of demographic trends is necessary the methodological complementarity of the sociology and history as well as to mutually complement each other.

• Details
• Contents