Historical thinking and its social sites. A contribution to the historiography of professions from the perspective of sociology of knowledge

• Applicant: Dr. Karlson Preuß
• Subject Area: Sociological Theory
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566082821

Based on the observation that historical thinking has many social sites, I propose a sociological research project that considers historiography as a social practice and comparatively examines the extent to which this practice is determined by the social context in which it is produced. Empirically, the project focuses on the historiography of professions as researched and taught in professional schools. Unlike the discipline of history, the historiography of professions is practiced in the context of practical problems such as medical healing, the administration of justice, and pastoral care. The project examines how this practical and professional background affects historical research and teaching. Its research hypothesis is that the historiography of the professions is influenced by practical interests that place the study of the past in the service of improving professional practice in the present. While my dissertation examined how the historiography of law is influenced by the social context in which it is written, I would like to broaden the perspective to other professional fields within the framework of a Walter Benjamin Fellowship funded by the German Research Foundation. To this end, I plan to spend two years working with the sociologist Prof. Dr. Philip Gorski at the Department of Sociology at Yale University, conducting research on the historical self-descriptions of medicine and religion. Drawing on Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields and Everett C. Hughes’ sociology of professions, my project examines the extent to which the historiographies of medicine and theology are shaped by educational claims that serve primarily to improve professional practice. It also explores how the role of history in professional education has changed over time. To this end, I intend to analyze historical documents (history textbooks, essays, lectures, biographies, curricula, etc.) in which theology and medicine reflect on their respective histories. At the same time, I plan to conduct participant observations at Yale Divinity School and Yale Medical School to study the historical training of future theologians and physicians. My research project aims to examine the historical self-descriptions of the medical and theological professions from a comparative and historical perspective and to determine how these self-descriptions differ from external descriptions, especially from the perspective of trained historians. In this way, my research project seeks to contribute to the historiography of the professions as well as to historical sociology and its conceptual foundations.

• DFG Programme: WBP Fellowship
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Dr. Philip Gorski