In her interview with Dalton Conley Julia Adams talks about the differences between sociology and history. As a self-identified historical comparative sociologist, Adams makes the point that sociologists are less concerned with uniqueness than they are with commonalities. Consider Henry the VIII of England during the mid-1500s. Henry's succession of marriages - six wives in all - is often seen as a unique case. Six wives is a lot, and by many European standards, it is a unique case. A sociologist, however, might well look at it by considering the ways in which Henry's marriages.

A sociologist is pragmatic when he is analyzing a situation. If a historian attempts to look at the entire situation, looking for uniqueness and then extract the information from that case, a sociologist doesn't care about these particular aspects and he will look at the case structure instead. In this case, the sociologist will not care if Henry VIII was married six, seven or eight times, that's no the point. Instead, the sociologist will look at the consequences, not only for Henry VIII in particular, but for England at that specific moment, and in the future.