Review
[1] Together with a colleague, I recently finished an article on the developments of 1990s in Estonian sociology, to be published in a volume treating the very topic we are discussing now - that is, the present state of our discipline in Central and Eastern Europe (Lagerspetz & Pettai, forthcoming). Accordingly, I read Mikk Titma’s article both with great interest and with freshly updated own ideas of the subject. The simultaneous appearance of two book projects on the same issue also makes me wonder whether it is a reflection of a more general trend.
[2] It is probably correct to assume a growing Western interest towards Central and Eastern European social research. Obviously, the deepening economic and political integration of that region with its Western neighbours calls for integration in the fields of culture, education and research, too. But we may also see that interest in the context of the internal developments within the field of Sovietology, Communist Studies, Transitology, or whatever the name of this field of research might be. Along with the progress of the political and economic transformation of our region, it has become growingly obvious that the formal creation of new institutions of democracy and market economy is merely the first step of the transformation process. The actual success of the new institutions depends on corresponding changes in their functioning environment. If and when a “Western” social order is seen as a goal, it can be reached through profound transformation not only of the political and economic institutions, but of the “grassroots” as well - the culture and society. For obvious practical reasons, these issues could only be approached with difficulty by Western scholars during the Cold War. After that, Western research activities were for some years focussed on the political, economic and security issues arising from the dismantling of the Real Socialist system. It is rather recently, that questions of a more sociological kind have become topical (for one view of this change, see v. Beyme, 1999). The question is now, whether the social researchers from the region are able to meet this demand.
[3] Compared with this newly arosen Western interest it is no less characteristic, that Estonian sociologists have hitherto produced little retrospective analyses of the national development of their discipline. The few exceptions rather confirm the rule: They are short and leave much unsaid (e.g., Saar, Titma and Kenkmann, 1994), or very recent and deal with limited sub-sectors of sociology only (Lagerspetz, 2000; Pettai, 2000; Vihalemm, 2001). This reflects a more general lack of self-reflective practice among the sociological community. Some reasons for this are indicated by Mikk Titma’s article: The small number of professional sociologists; the lack of a national sociological journal; and the narrow educational background of those sociologists who entered the discipline during the Soviet era, with basic education from other disciplines and post-graduate training in some specific field of empirical social research.
[4] I would add two more reasons. First, the traumatic Soviet-time experiences of the oldest generation of sociologists make it difficult even today to discuss some important events in the history of the discipline. Second, the idea itself of comparing and assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical approaches in specific contexts seems new and alien. The Soviet view of knowledge in general, and of the social research in particular, was based on the positivist assumption that reality as such does not need to be interpreted, but revealed. The theoretical tool for this was, of course, Marxism-Leninism. Paraphrasing C. Wright Mills (1959), even that system of thought was a “grand theory” which had little contact with the research practice. Regardless of whether an individual researcher silently disapproved of that official doctrine (as most Estonian sociologists did), he or she would share its quest for objective empirical knowledge, and consider theoretical debates as largely irrelevant for his or her everyday work. The change has occurred in this regard, but it is still recent and limited in scope.
[5] All of these reasons for the scarcity of previous treatments offer a key also for a general understanding of the post-Soviet development of sociology in Estonia.
[6] Mikk Titma’s article on the recent developments in Estonian sociology begins with a short historical overview. It is, of course, basically correct, that Estonian sociology had its beginning during the Khrushchevian “thaw” period - although sociological issues can be traced in the works of, e.g., Estonian theologians, philosophers and geographers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Along with the country’s Sovietization, these modest beginnings of a sociological tradition were interrupted.
[7] The article rightly stresses the importance of the Laboratory of Sociology that was established at the University of Tartu. The overall picture of sociological activities was, however, richer than that. It should be underlined that their initial development was spontaneous and not coordinated by the overall research policies of the Estonian Soviet Republic or the local Communist Party. When a coordinating committee was created by the Central Committee of the Estonian Communist Party in 1965, there were already twelve research groups active in Tallinn and two in Tartu (Rannik 1998). Among the more important centers was the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the Estonian SSR, where sociological studies were initiated in early 1960s. In addition to the media research mentioned by Mikk Titma, the research profile of the laboratory of the University of Tartu eventually became enlarged by studies in working motivation and organisational problems in industrial enterprises, and by consumer studies (Vooglaid, 1995: 117).
[8] The article names efforts at a “reestablishment of national consciousness” as the principal reason for why the laboratory was closed down in 1975. That event could, however, also be seen in the general context of the “time of purges” in Soviet sociology described by Shlapentokh (1987). The controversy was also about the limits of social analysis in an ideologically controlled state.
[9] When discussing the conditions of social research in the 1990s, the article rightly stresses the development of polling and market research enterprises; I believe on the other hand, that the continuously important role of the Institute for International and Social Studies (since 1998, a part of the Pedagogical University of Tallinn) should be acknowledged more clearly. Along with Mikk Titma’s own longitudinal studies, that institute’s series of comparable survey studies on living conditions initiated in 1966 belong to the most long-lived research efforts of Estonian social research. As this series of surveys of the working-age population deals with a very broad range of issues, it is rather misleading to refer to it as “studies of culture”.
[10] I agree with the author, that the emergence of university curricula in sociology belongs to the key issues of the development of our discipline. Above all, they have created environments where the various sub-disciplines of sociology become much more readily integrated than the case has been within pure research institutions. The role as employers that he attributes to universities and especially to the private ones is, however, greatly exaggerated. The total number of Estonian public and private institutions legally defined as universities has at its height been 14, not 40, and this number includes specialized institutions of higher education as well. Sociology can be studied as a major in three universities, which have all undergone state accreditation. The total yearly intake of new students to these three sociology curricula is no higher than around 60. Of the three universities only one, the Estonian Institute of Humanities, is a private institution. 1 (Note1: This institution is not included in the list of institutions on the CD-Rom that accompanies the printed volume. This is rather surprising, as the education of sociologists was started there in 1992 already and its sociology department is one of the two teaching departments of sociology that have undergone the official process of research evaluation. The internet address is www.ehi.ee. ) In terms of the disciplines taught it is, however, no typical example of the privately organised education. As a whole, a description of the sector as a “main avenue for survival” for sociologists is misleading. Mostly dealing with education on such areas as law and business, it indeed has some need for introductory courses in sociology and for courses in organisational studies, but does not employ any large quantity of sociologists. When members of the Estonian Association of Sociologists were surveyed in 1999, 32 of the 43 respondents reported having worked within higher education. Among them, no more than five people mentioned teaching in the privately run institutions (Toomingas, 1999). New employment possibilities for sociologists have mainly emerged in the polling business and in public administration.
[11] The paper refers to the development of tradition. But one could also see the 1990s as a period of a gradual diffusion and adoption of previously neglected international traditions. Mikk Titma correctly notes the recent introduction and growing popularity of qualitative methods of analysis. 2 (Note2: Unhappily, none of the publications he refers to in this context are really examples of qualitative analysis of empirical material. One of them is a piece of quantitative content analysis, and the rest can be classed either as traditional historical analyses or as theoretical discussion pieces. However, a number of other possible examples exist and some of them have been referred to in other contexts. ) However, this development is very much a result from studies abroad and from work done by foreign supervisors. Results of this new type of research are often not presented as a continuation of the previous Estonian tradition of sociology, but in opposition to it.
[12] About the present theoretical approaches we learn, that “works by Becker, Coleman, Giddens, Goldthorpe, Offe, Habermas, Berger, Luckmann, and others are used in teaching /.../. Theories like human, social, and cultural capital; social interaction; social network; action theory; and others are common frames used in presentation of sociological analyses”. What strikes me as strange is the seemingly total isolation of these lists of social theorists and theoretical approaches from the account of research activities. I am inclined to see this, to apply a common Soviet phrase, as “not incidental”. During the Soviet time, the obligatory use of Marxist terminology and quotations never had much to do with the researchers’ real scientific aspirations. Estonian sociologists learned to work not on the basis of a general background theory of society, but in spite of it.
[13] In some aspects the situation has remained the same. Research questions arise from the needs of social engineering and the more immediate needs expressed by public authorities and market forces, instead of growing out of theoretically based, independently formulated research agendas. On this reading, “sociology” appears to be little more than a set of methods for collecting and processing empirical data; its main task is to complement the knowledge available through official statistics. I stongly agree with Mikk Titma, who notes the short-time pragmatic nature of knowledge demands by the public financiers of research. However, sociologists have not themselves, either, actively questioned this idea of the function of their discipline.
[14] The narrow view of sociology as a helping hand of decision-makers continues to haunt social research in Central and Eastern Europe, still a decade after other views have become possible. One could turn the tables and even raise the question, to what extent the Estonian tradition of social research at all is a sociological tradition. It rather seems to me, that sociological traditions, theories and concepts are largely irrelevant for much of the work mentioned by the article. It would perhaps be more correct to refer to the bulk of it by the concept of social statistics (Österberg, 1989, quoted by Brante, 1989; cf. Lagerspetz and Pettai, forthcoming). According to this view, the word “sociology” stands for research which has an object of knowledge that is non-reducible to the individual level, focussing on issues such as societies, communities, interaction, etc. The other term could be used for research on an aggregate of individuals rather than society, typically inspecting the distribution of values and commodities in a population. I realise, that consequently applying such a division is, perhaps, too difficult, but we should anyhow remain aware of the fact that not all empirical social research is sociology. By saying this, I do not intend to belittle the need for social research of other types.
[15] During the past decades, research questions of the more “sociological” type have played a negligible role, and have only started to gain momentum in the very last years of the 1990s. The change has mainly been a result of international contacts; one should consider this fact in the context I discussed in the beginning of this review - that of a new Western demand for sociological studies on the Central and East European region. At present, Estonian researchers are actively taking up that challenge. As examples of new kinds of topics within Estonian social research I would mention such as social networks, economic coping strategies, identity construction, and media discourse. A “sociologization” of some of the old research issues seems to have occurred also (see Lagerspetz and Pettai, forthcoming).
[16] In conclusion, I believe that after a ripening period of a few years to come, in retrospect the 1990s will not be interpreted as the development of an empirical tradition, but more likely as a period of preparation for a Kuhnian paradigm shift within Estonian sociology. The period we are discussing was, in fact, that of a slow and belated retreat of a more narrow idea of social research in the face of an emerging, theoretically informed sociology.
Tallinn, 2002
