GHIL Lecture

Wolfgang Knöbl

The Problem with (Historical) Processes

Reflections on an Undertheorized Topic

12 June 2025

(0:53 h)

GHIL Lecture

Wolfgang Knöbl

The Problem with (Historical) Processes
Reflections on an Undertheorized Topic

Talk of ‘social processes’ is widespread in historiography as well as in the social sciences; process terms such as industrialization, urbanization, individualization, secularization, etc. are ubiquitous. Nevertheless, it is usually rather unclear what processes actually are, how they should be theorized, and what types of processes can be distinguished. The lecture will 1) pose the question of why these process terms came to dominate the social sciences in the first place; 2) attempt to prove the thesis that process claims inevitably entail narrative elements; and 3) conclude that plausible process claims cannot be made without knowledge of narratological arguments.

Wolfgang Knöbl was a professor at the Institute for Sociology, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, before he became Director of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research in 2015. His main research interests are in the fields of political and historical sociology, social theory, and the history of sociology. His most recent book is Die Soziologie vor der Geschichte: Zur Kritik der Sozialtheorie (2022), and he is currently finishing a volume on the history and sociology of violence in Germany after 1945.

Don't miss the accompanying interview: How do we define a process? What types exist, and how does our understanding of them reflect our historical and cultural context? In this interview host Kim König and GHIL/UCL Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow Almuth Ebke (University of Mannheim) talk to Wolfgang Knöbl (Hamburg Institute for Social Research) about the research behind his GHIL lecture on (historical) processes. Their conversation explores these questions while examining the role of storytelling in claims about social processes and why plausible process claims cannot be made without knowledge of narratological arguments.