The sociological imagination requires a strong historical awareness. The sociologist of contemporary work studying, for example, lean production methods of high performance work systems is likely to consider these practices in the context of the continuing history of industrialisation.Sociology is itself a creature of the modern industrialised societies within which it developed as a form of critical reflection on the considerable social changes associated with industrialisation and the growth of capitalism.Sociology emerged in the nineteenth century as both a reaction to and a reflection of certain major social and cultural shifts which had been occurring for some hundreds of years in Europe. For some centuries prior to the emergence of sociology, the glue which held together the fabric of European society, giving it stability and a widespread taken-for grantedness, had been weakening