ABSTRACT

The modest fashion in which he employs this orientational mechanism must be emphasized. Reference to the societal domains and domain-specific ideal types of E&S assists the identification of causally-significant patterns of action. In this manner, it provides a helpful frame of reference for research. It must, however, always be acknowledged as, in respect to the case or development under investigation, incomplete: it never encompasses complex empirical reality. Rather, it serves to “uproot” comparative-historical sociologists from an exclusively inductive focus upon empirical reality by engaging them in a continuous back and forth movement between the particular case or development and the heuristic construct.