Masters and milieus: Transmitting the history of sociology

The history of sociology is usually transmitted as a biographical parade of the „masters”︁ and their knowledge claims through time. This approach tends to portray the sociological enterprise as cumulative with empirical‐analytic rather than historical‐hermeneutic or critical features and often fails to convey the „sociological imagination”︁ to the student. Another approach to the history of sociology, one emphasizing history as method rather than history as theory, directly exposes the student to historical materials placing the masters in their milieus and encourages the student to construct sociology from these materials. The second approach is described using three exercises in the „Sociology of, for, and in the South.”︁.