Sociology and history – combinig perspectives to the benefit of the sociology of retrospection

Abstract

Trying to indicate the field of science to which collective memory researcher refers most frequently in his sociological reflection, it would be no doubt the history. It seems that the sociology of retrospection is an area of sociological studies, which without the proper knowledge of historical context can not fully exploit the opportunities offered by the sociological workshop. The starting point for consideration of this problem is the analysis of interconnections of the two fields of science and its methodological proposals to examine the complicated matter of collective memory. To identify opportunities and at least potential threats of combining scientific perspectives of sociology and history, this article attempts to answer some basic questions: to what extent the historical reflection (or more – historiosophical) may be useful for memory researcher?; how the history contributes to the enrichment and improvement of conclusions drawn from a variety of empirical attempts?; whether this area has an instrumentation that can indicate other than sociological perspective of looking at the collective remembering?