Review
[1] While doing research on the training of the staff in the former school system of the communist party (in former GDR and Romania, especially) and on their reemployment after 1989, I could make an analysis on sociology’s position within this system, as well as on its metamorphoses beginning with 1990. Hence, I was particularly interested in the political involvement of sociology to see how the sociologists take part in the power field as well as their vision of the history of sociology. My reflections are some hypotheses drawn from a research project in progress. Consequently, I will rather deal here with the sociology’s boundaries than tackle sociology itself: time boundaries between historically determining instances and disciplines boundaries that social history of social sciences might deal with.
[2] There have been three reference works on the history of the Romanian sociology before 1989. They have been published twenty years after one another (in 1940, 1963 and 1983) and illustrate a specific historical moment 1 (Note1: Traian Herseni, Sociologie româneascã. Încercare istoricã, 1941. Gall Ern(, Sociologia burgheză din România, 1963. Ştefan Costea, Maria Larionescu, Ion Ungureanu, Sociologie românească contemporană, 1983. See my notes on the former: Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, “La sociologie roumaine contemporaine” in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 56, 1984. As for the criticism on the historicism in the historiography of the Romanian culture (the history of sociology included), see Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, Scena literaturii, 1987. To cite some new works on the history of the Romanian sociology after 1989, see Zoltan Rostas, Monografia ca utopie. Interviuri cu Henri H. Stahl (1985-1987), Paidea, 2000 & O istorie orală a Şcolii Sociologice de la Bucureşti, Bucarest, Editura Printech, 2001, and the collection of studies, edited by Maria Larionescu, Şcoala sociologică de la Bucureşti. Tradiţie şi actualitate, Bucharest, 1996.). All three have been published under institutional and political crisis that would jeopardize sociology’s status and professional practices.
[3] The history of the Romanian sociology by Traian Herseni, published in 1940, revealed the national and international recognition of the sociological school of Dimitrie Gusti. 1940 was actually the beginning of the end of this school and of the Romanian sociology: a series of dictatory regimes beginning with 1938 in Romania suppressed sociology after having hindered its development. The history of Herseni was part of the documents of the International Sociology Congress that was due to be held in Bucharest and subsequently canceled because the World War II broke out.
[4] The 1963 monograph that Gall Ernö dedicated to the “Romanian bourgeois sociology” was intended to be a radical criticism to the vanished sociology. Although it stated a conceivable Marxist sociology, it is in 1966 that sociology featured an institutional position.
[5] In 1983, a group of authors (Costea, Larionescu, Ungureanu) reassessed the social sciences being generally produced after the war while making efforts to symbolically improve position of sociology. Their approach might be retrospectively considered to be a surviving strategy to an extremely precarious discipline. It is justified to doubt about the outcome of such an approach that has eliminated the boundaries of the sociology as related to ideology.
[6] Each historic synthesis may evaluate the sociology condition, even if none would suggest a real analysis of their relation to the political power. It is the relation to the state and/or the party that is taken as granted and this ambiguity was due both to censorship and self-censoring (“surviving strategy”).
[7] What to be added after twenty years?
[8] The Romanian sociologists are willing to recall the centenary tradition of their institution but they find it difficult to integrate some great discontinuous moments within its history. Or, I consider that preference should be given to analyzing these discontinuous moments that will result in a real breaking off with the past while the mutual scientific heritage of the sociology 2 (Note2: I stand her for Pierre Bourdieu’s point of view who supported a “Scientific real policy”, (1995, p.3-10).) would benefit of in terms of knowledge and criticism.
[9] The circumstance, under which a transfer of knowledge and competence was made from one generation to another, particularly after 1948, has been rather known until today. Reemployment (either compulsory or intentional) and career strategies that have been often developed in relation to some political institutions that are being compromised under present circumstances (the communist party) were but rarely studied.
[10] Little is known on the available database, the statistic achievement mode and on the information lacking due to destroyed or scattered archives.
[11] Assessment of researches that had been carried out before 1989, the reliability of their outcomes, the analysis of their circumstances and their conclusions were hardly studied (Honorina Cazacu, 1991).
[12] Suppression of censorship after 1990 was beneficial to the history of sociology. The published memories of the members of the Romanian sociology school revealed old secrets and rumors. To quote, I should note here Zoltan Rostas’ sociology oral history, that is an “alternating history” dealing reversibly with the findings acquired by the formal history (Zoltan Rostas, 2000).
[13] In contrast to other former socialist countries 3 (Note3: See, for instance, Vera Sparschuch, Ute Koch, 1997, Svetla Koleva, 2001.), in Romania there are few debates and researches on the period between 1966 and 1989. The new balances of power within the ideological output will bring no references to Marxism as compared to nationalism (or, as Maria Larionescu stated, it has been made implicitly) and explain this inability to assume and analyze one’s history.
[14] I would further make some comments on the comparison that might be made between the regressing periods of the Romanian sociology in the 1940’s and in the 1980’s. As far as the period between the two wars, the definition of “science of the nation” given to the sociology of Gusti was highly criticized for its “nationalism” 4 (Note4: Critics did not involve Marxists only: reply to the criticism made by Célestin Bouglé, an important figure of the French academic sociology, may be read in D. Gusti’s magazine, Sociologie românească, 1930 ). Such criticism would much ignore circumstances under which sociology had detached itself form the monograph movement (the rural sociology) and overlook its political significance as an alternative even opposite movement against the rising fascism. Some sociologists (Tr. Herseni) having been converted to fascism and a fascist fraction having been constituted within the Gusti school itself made social science to deviate from its initial goals 5 (Note5: See Henri H. Stahl’s presentation of the “Rânduiala” group, in Eseuri critice (1984) and his further comments in his dialogues with Zoltan Rostas (2000). ).
[15] Sociology has been traditionally recognized as an expression of the social solidarity and an alternative associative structure, being distinguished from the intellectual populist and spiritualist movements (the romantic folklore tradition and the rural monographs). In 1938, sociologists were engaged in working out a Social Service that would provide the state with the necessary structure to involve academic youth in stopping the fascist movement.
[16] It should be further noted that the rising of the fascism put an end to the role of sociology as federalizing and intermediate agent in relation to specific social sciences: sociology was replaced by the nationalist ethnography and racist anthropology.
[17] In 1980’s, the so called “Protochronism” movement accounted for a similar regression of social sciences under political crisis circumstances. Protochronism was initially a hybrid alliance of party intellectuals and successors to the traditional antiliberal, antioccidental and xenophobe nationalism. Some members of this group were sociologists and they implicitly resumed the fascist tradition until 1989 and subsequently turned into ideologists and militants for a reviving right wing. These authors provide former and present political scientists with the main examples for their studies on the literature of the “national communism”, the plot (conspiracy) theories or the anti-Semitism 6 (Note6: Michael Shafir, 1993, Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, 1999, George Vociu, 2000 & 2000.).
[18] Ilie Badescu counts among them and he may be taken as an example. Former student of Henri H. Stahl and translator into Romanian of Immanuel Wallerstein and Ferdinand Braudel, he achieved a symbolic overthrowing of the sociology when he reconciled the Marxism and the socialism with the conservative social criticism and the reactionary populism. This very “indigenisation” (naturalization or nationalization) procedure of Marxism, is debated upon in one chapter of Katherine Verdery’s book (Ceausescu’s Romania) 7 (Note7: Katherine Verderly, 1991: “Genealogical Applications: Eminescu as proto-Marxist” (p. 156-166) and “Romanian Protochronism” (p.167-214). “His valiant attempt to make Eminescu a radical sociologist, fully worthy of including among the precursors of Romanian Marxism thought - that is, his genealogical appropriation of Eminescu for Marxism and sociology” (p. 157). Etc. ) on the national and socialist ideology.
[19] After 1989, Ilie Badescu supported, at least for a while, the “Movement for Romania”, a small neo-nationalist and fascistic party. The hybrid position of Ilie Badescu between academic sociology and ideological output is revealed by some co-authors of his works. Some are well-known and acknowledged sociologists who manage education and research in social sciences (Septimiu Chelcea, Catalin Zamfir) and others are former protochronists who turned into activists of the Romanian leading extremist party, România Mare (Mihai Ungheanu) 8 (Note8: It is both hilarious and pathetical to see how, in 2000, one co-authors an encyclopedia (expected in 9 volumes!) of the national assets having been suppressed by the communism after having been practicing historic revisionism (when editing in 1987, for example, works of the historian N. Iorga of 1928, cf. Verdery, op. cit., p. 347, note 45). Cf. Ilie Badescu and Mihai Ungureanu, Eds. (2000), Enciclopedia valorilor reprimate. Razboiul impotriva culturii române. ).
[20] His latest theoretical achievement - a “spiritualist or “noological” conception focused on the theory of “soul latency” (as Maria Larionescu says in her paper) - ranks him among the of the Romanian fascist sociologists of 1930-1940.
[21] I have no intention to overestimate Ilie Badescu’s place within the present Romanian sociology. I find it though alarming his long being an elected representative of the Romanian sociologists as head of the Sociology Department of the University in Bucharest, president of the professional sociologists association and recently director of the Romanian Insitute of Sociology.
[22] Such an anti-scientific deflection from social sciences and its alarming political connections would not have been possible if it hadn’t lacked some sociological objectivation of metamorphoses the social sciences underwent before and after 1989. Badescu’s example questions on the new boundaries specific to sociology, as compared to the new ideological achievements after 1989 9 (Note9: Cf. G. Voicu, 2000. See also Mihai Dinu Gheorghiu, “Conspiration et désenchantement: les conditions d’une nouvelle production idé(ologique en Roumanie” in Les Temps Modernes, 2001. ), or to the new political and civic culture. It is a question opened to complement inquiry on the internal boundaries of the social sciences.
[23] Justice should be done to those who have been working to an alternative sociology bordering or being placed outside the social sciences system before 1989. Pavel Câmpeanu’s work on the “Sociology of the queuing up”, written from a Marxist reformist and critic perspective on the Stalinist economy is one of the best example. The typescript of this work was distributed as samizdat in Bucharest before 1989.
[24] The collection of articles Eseuri critice by Henri H. Stahl, published in 1984, stood for a challenge to the new intellectual nationalist orientation, the ideological support of the Ceauşescu regime.
[25] Katherine Verdery’s study National Ideology under Socialism (1992) has reconstituted the intellectual field and the standing points on the “national culture” and analyzed the intellectual involvement in the national ideology in Ceausescu’s Romania. Verdery’s example would question on the connections and boundaries between sociology and cultural anthropology, as well as on the foreigner researchers’ contribution to the development of the Romanian social sciences.
[26] The transgenerational connection between the representatives of the “Marxist sociology” and the sociologists belonging to the post-communist period has not been studied yet. Although there is no proper sociological analysis of some phenomena of ideological regression such is protochronism, some work hypotheses could nevertheless be formulated.
[27] One hypothesis would deal with the research on the intellectual legitimacy of the communist party within some specific political juncture (international isolation of Romania) and the decline of the former mobilization techniques (the agitprop).
[28] Another hypothesis is the differentiating process of the political and intellectual field, where sociology can hardly find its place. Beginning with 1977, only faithful staff after having graduated from the party’s academy was admitted to attend training courses in sociology. An additional criterion to draw distinction among the party’s intellectuals became effective the moment the party’s school system integrated sociology. Even if sociology was not obvious in the eighties, it underwent some metamorphoses that foretold later changes. The great decline that Romanian sociology experienced in education and research beginning with the late seventies 10 (Note10: Getting Marxist sociology institutionalized in Romania under communist circumstances has been long and difficult. Even if this institutionalization process has seemingly began later than in other socialist countries, such are Poland and GDR, and it later experienced a abrupt decline period in the late seventies, its stages and themes were practically almost similar to other countries. The share almost the same chronology. Their decline occurs at the same time in Romania and GDR and it begins with the suppression of the research institutes.) did not result in such a radical discontinuity as compared to the fifties. A nucleus of professional sociologists succeeded in keeping up with it until 1989 although the number of personnel was considerably diminished by emigrations, interdiction to fill new positions and constraints related to specific training. Field inquiries were resumed in the sixties and it would symbolically promote a relatively autonomous, empirically founded social science.
[29] Consequently, sociologists were able to take advantage of the intricate boundaries between the “Marxist sociology” and the “national sociology”. Rehabilitating the traditional sociologist as a “social engineer” can be perfectly illustrated by the professional activity of Henri H. Stahl: he could assume both the Marxism and the national sociology of Gusti without making any concession to Leninism or nationalism. Henri H. Stahl’s longevity and intellectual liveliness improved this continuity.
[30] Simultaneously, as I stated before, it is also possible to provide opposite examples on the mixture of the Marxism and nationalism the new recovery ideologies are currently relying on.
[31] In 1989, the small group of Romanian professional sociologists distinguished by its fewness and relatively high homogeneity, due to their common intellectual socialization and professional culture. Emigration and successive reemployment of persons having been initially trained in sociology resulted in ambiguous, imprecise boundaries. It should be also added that several intellectuals of the communist party have sought refuge in sociology when looking for a new professional position. Therefore, it is possible to consider a multiple field when referring to sociology today. I consider the three following directions (or types or positions) to be representative.
[32] Sociologists in universities and research centers in 1989 could claim an entitled professional activity. Some of them (especially the members of the former academy of the communist party) had to cope with their adherence to a politically controlled institution for intellectuals whenever this issue was raised for discussion. Others were involved in founding new educational structures after having been initially rejected by universities. They assumed the same reforming orientation that characterized Marxist sociology when it was reestablished and when they joined it at the beginning of their career, in the 1960’s. There have been also several sociologists occupying leading positions within public or private higher education and research institutions or being appointed ministers or counselors by the ruling governments since 1990. They have been ranged among the artisans and the co-managers of the education reform, administration and public utilities for the last twelve years.
[33] Some are perfectly entitled to occupy academic positions, but here are also some of the most disputed persons within this group. Ioan Mihailescu is presently the rector of the University of Bucharest and the president of the National Assessment and Accreditation Committee (CNEEA). Catalin Zamfir is the director of the Life Quality Research Institute and, after having been the labor minister for some time, presently the counselor of the president Iliescu. Septimiu Chelcea, a former professor of the party academy, was the rector of the new institute for training personnel within the Romanian Intelligence Services (SRI) for several years. Vasile Secares, a military sociologist form the same academy, is the rector of the new National School of Political Studies and Administration SNSPA). As for the private education system, it is possible to quote a former head of the personnel department of the National Ministry of Education, Aurelian Bondrea, a sociologist whose cultural and apparatchick background were highly disputed under the former regime, is the owner of the biggest private university in Romania today (the “România de Mâine” /Romania of Tomorrow foundation).
[34] Political scientists make up a different and competing group within the new space grants to social sciences. There are several among them who have been reconverted while preserving a rather symbolic link with sociology, as Vladimir Tismaneanu and George Voicu. The former, a professor of political sciences in the United States of America, has enjoyed the greatest authority in his field in Romania. George Voicu is author of several reference studies on the Romanian political culture in post-communism. This group is better represented and recognized by the intellectual field and it is mainly due to the intermediate position of the political analysts. The lack of a real political sociology accounts for the distance between sociologists and politologists. The intermediate function of the sociology doesn’t work.
[35] Representatives of the extra-academic sociology make up the third group. It was founded due to an extended international market of competence and research in early 90’s. It is the leading label of the sociology when dealing with wide attendance (especially by public opinion poll). Even if academic sociologists are well represented within this group, survey institutions provide sociology with highly ambiguous prominence. It is a commercial and technical discipline that risks being deprived of its role as former auxiliary to the Marxist and Leninist ideology in order to become an auxiliary to the marketing and management trends.
[36] I would like to make some concluding remarks. First, it is to be noted that there is progress that the present multi-pole structure of the social sciences has made as compared to the former state of the field. Furthermore, the stigma that some social scientists were bearing could not have been completely removed despite their filtering on the former writings - considered “unbecoming”, as they were written according to the ideological line of the party - and systematic occultation of Marxism. Romanian sociology does not actually enjoy recognition in the intellectual field. It is a similar condition to any other sociology in Eastern Europe or anywhere.
[37] Further explanation in the Romanian case is an old and, I should say unjustified, resentment related to intrusions of the “socialist realism” in the 1950’s. Even present literary and art criticism shows little and rare interest in the sociology of art or literature and social history. The presence of some disreputable sociologists whom the sociological community could not or did not know to assign the place they deserved, is another explanation. But it should be also mentioned that sociologists are present in intellectual magazines, such as “22” and “Dilema”, invited to attend debates on the social issues as experts.
[38] One of the instability factors related to the present sociological education is the new structure of the job market. Sociology enjoys neither opening to the international market (as compared to computer science, for example), nor intellectual prestige as “classic” human (literary, historical and ethnographical) sciences do. Whereas international grants increase chances to provide the professional staff with more and younger sociologists, the internal market structure of the sociology will be decisive. There are some questions waiting for answers: What professions will sociology open to? What are the requirements to be met for the researches on the professional market? What is sociology’s place within the present system of leaders training?
[39] The knowledge of the internal boundaries of the social sciences is still little explored as well as the knowledge of the historical and ideological boundaries.
Paris, 2002
