Historical paths in quest of sociological understanding: the legacy of Margaret Archer’s multi-level model of macro-social change

This article addresses the contribution of Margaret Archer’s morphogenetic/morphostatic (M/M) approach to the study of macro-social change. Its goal is to highlight the added value it can bring to macro-sociology, as well as to indicate a few possible lines for future theoretical and empirical developments. The main argument is that the morphogenetic approach must be characterized as a multi-level explanatory framework, this being one of its most significant contributions to macro-sociological studies. The paper first offers a selective account of the main tenets of the M/M explanatory programme that provide useful analytical tools for macro-sociological analysis, arguing that they hit some blind spots in contemporary mainstream macro-sociology. Then a schematic overview is presented of some historical-empirical applications, which can serve as an example of the effectiveness of the M/M frame. The final section indicates some possible future lines of research, as further developments of Archer’s seminal contribution.