Review
[1] Sociology in Slovenia is still a relatively young academic discipline. Youth (I wouldn't like to use here Kuhn's term “ immaturity”) is not always an advantage in the endeavor to arrive at a critical and objective self-reflection of its state and art. Namely, a very important epistemological assumption, i.e. historical distance, is, in this case, absent. Taking into regard the small scientific community is also not an extenuating circumstance. In spite of all epistemological and other restrictions, it seems that Frane Adam and Matej Makarovic, the authors of the report on sociology in Slovenia, succeeded in giving quite a comprehensive and objective evaluation of the past and present state of this academic discipline and its developmental perspectives in the near future.
[2] In my view, the main reasons, why the authors succeeded in creating quite an unbiased overview of sociological occurrences in Slovenia, are the following.
[3] Firstly, they based their analysis very correctly upon different sources, which were relevant in understanding the main phases and important socio-cognitive shifts in the past and present development of sociology. To be clear, for anyone being in the position to write about the state and art of Slovene sociology, it is quite a big problem to obtain the adequate statistical data on the detailed publication production of sociologists, the different forms of their international co-operation, etc. The lack of well structured and systematical statistical data becomes apparent especially in the case where one might do a longitudinal overview of sociology. Official statistical data are not always a major help.
[4] Secondly, the advantage of the authors’ approach is in their endeavors to explain the internal development of sociology in Slovenia, taking into regard also the broader socio-economic and political context. In this sort of reflexivity, sociology cannot be treated either as an isolated cognitive entity or as a loose social activity, but as a scientific discipline, where the internal cognitive and external social factors are interconnected all the time. A sound description of sociology should encompass both the specification of lawful regularities and the description of particular sequences of events. To be sure, in the summarized overview, such as the named authors’ report, all occurrences, events, theoretical sub-directions, etc., cannot be characterized in all their details. Notwithstanding, it seems that the authors succeeded, at least partly (I’ll try to point to some of their deficiencies in further discussion), to find coherence in the presentation of different theoretical, methodological and thematic orientations.
[5] Thirdly, the authors argue for a clear-cut demarcation of political and scientific judgments. I agree with their thesis that some sociologists in Slovenia, who take the role of commentators in public media, are sometimes not aware how important it is for the academic and professional status of sociology to keep a certain distance from daily politics. »Partisan sociology« cannot be of help in increasing the role of sociology as expertise knowledge, especially because, for Slovenia, it would be difficult to say that sufficient use of sociological knowledge in the policy-making processes has been achieved.
[6] Of course, there are also assessments in the authors’ presentation, which demand, in my view, some additional explanations or even some corrections. In continuation, I shall direct my interest just to these points, without any intention of putting myself in the position of a more objective evaluator of the situation in the field of sociology in Slovenia. For the systematization of my approach, it is perhaps useful to make basic distinctions between the comments regarding the development of sociology in the past, the present theoretical and thematic orientations, institutional and infra-structural conditions for the present and future development.
[7] Let us begin with some comments on the authors’ synthetic overview of the development of sociology in Slovenia in the period before the democratic turn in the 90s. I entirely agree with their assessment, that sociology in Slovenia, as it appeared and as it was known in the pre-War period, was mainly sociology in its pre-empirical stage of development. Taking into regard, first of all, two main intellectual and social sources on the establishment and development of sociological disciplines in the pre-War period (catholic theology and Marxism), the authors could perhaps emphasize more the third one, i.e. the pre-War philosophical phenomenological thought. After all, one of the most well known pre-War Slovenian philosophers, France Veber, lectured at the end of the 30s and the beginning of the 40s, at the University of Ljubljana, on the subject of the philosophical foundation of sociology and an introduction to sociological psychology.
[8] There is no need to add anything more to the authors’ description of the sociological development after Second World War. They stated all the turning points, which had characterized the different developmental phases of sociology in the post-War period. Notwithstanding, one may expect, that in their presentation, more attention would have been paid to the changing political circumstances even in the old political regime. The former one-party political regime in Slovenia, which was part of former Yugoslavia, went also through the different phases of “liberalization” and “dogmatization”.
[9] Generally speaking, the Communist Party tried to hold ideological supremacy over sociological thinking in the whole post-War period. Notwithstanding, the second half of the 60s was especially the time, when, particularly after the fall of the arch-Serb centralist, Aleksander Rankovic, a wave of decentralizing and liberal processes in the republics of former Yugoslavia rapidly evolved. At that time the autonomy of science was much greater than before the 60s or the 70s. In Slovenia, there appeared a relative economic liberalization and opening of borders towards the West. At that time, sociological paradigms, developed in the West, influenced very strongly the development of sociology in Slovenia.
[10] I entirely agree with Adam's and Makarovic's assessment that the weakening of the regime’s ideological control during the 80s, however, enabled new flight of sociological thinking. In a sense, it could be said that social scientists in general, not only the sociologists, ultimately refrained from the supremacy of the official ideology a few years prior to the political changes of the 90s. What I’d like to add to this general assessment of the situation in the 80s, is the following: some groups of leading sociologists were particularly active in the 80s in the public discussions on the crisis of the former Yugoslav federation. The sociologists, such as Dimitrij Rupel, Spomenka Hribar, Joze Pucnik, Katja Boh and other intellectuals (writers and philosophers) engaged, at that time, in strong controversy with their counterparts of other Yugoslav republics (sociologists in Serbia, etc.). One of the consequences of this political engagement of the 80s was, that after the political changes, the mentioned sociologists stepped from academic into active political life. They became the leaders of new political parties, members of parliament, ministers in government, etc. As persons directly involved in political decision-making processes they became “sociocratus”.
[11] Regarding the development of sociology in the transitional period, it is not possible to avoid commenting on the authors’ basic typology of social issues presented in the sociological thinking of the 90s. The authors divide these issues in four major groups: political democratization, development, identity, and social structure. It is clear that this general typology cannot cover all the single research topics, which have occupied Slovene sociologists during the last ten years. Notwithstanding, one might expect, besides the numbering of sociological topics such as civil society, public opinion, social role of elites, effects of management, industrial relations, education, privatization, human resources, welfare and social policy, the quality of life etc., also the orientations which concern the topics, such as science, information and communication technology would be covered as well. There are also some »blind spots« of sociological research in Slovenia. The authors of the report exposed first of all the lack of sociological interest for entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and the »losers« of transition (groups of people on the social margin), on the other hand. From my point of view, it would be interesting to do a deeper social analysis: what are the reasons for the lack of sociological interest for these acute issues of the transitional period? The reasons are probably manifold, but certainly not, which was also noticed by Adam and Makarovic, because of the lack of a critical mass of sociologists in Slovenia. It does not mean that science in Slovenia, in general (and sociology in particular), does not suffer from the small size factor. Let us only take the example of the evaluation research system. The general impression of some external observers, who were dealing with the structure of the scientific system in Slovenia, was that the evaluation procedures in science are very un-transparent and complicated (see for example: Phare Report, 1995; Walter, 1997). One type of bias should appear on the ground of the smallness of scientific communities, concomitant with negative events, such as scientific inbreeding, the old-boys network, etc. This negative circumstances cannot be resolved only with the help of foreign peer reviewers, but by the radical shift in the thinking and behavior, not only of political decision-makers, but of scientists as well.
[12] The authors of the report number correctly the key theoretical orientations, which attracted most interest of Slovene sociologists in the last fifteen years. If I repeat Adam’s and Makarovic’s conclusion, the scientists in Slovenia have been dealing with classic theories, such as sociological phenomenology, Weber's theory of rationality and legitimacy, Parsons theory of socialization, Durkheim's contributions to the study of deviance and law, as well as with modern sociological theories. Among the last, the recent interests of some sociologists for Luhmann's social system theory is especially emphasized. In my view, this interest could be partly explained by the good professional cooperation of some sociologists at The Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana with their professional colleagues at the University Bielefeld in Germany. Surprisingly, in spite of the significant interest of the sociological audience for social system theory, none of Luhmann's books has as yet been translated into Slovene language. This has to do with the fact that the publishing houses don’t always follow the sociological research mainstreams, in spite of the fact that in the 90s, small private or specialized university publishers took the place of former rigid state publishers, which cared prevalently for Marxist literature. For example, the translations of books appeared in the series of Studia Humanitatis, which is entirely oriented to the translation of world-famous names in the field of social sciences and humanities, including among others authors, such names as Weber, Durkheim, Giddens, Habermas, Simmel, but not Luhmann.
[13] Taking into regard the institutional and infra-structural conditions of sociological development, it is necessary to say that, in the period before the 90s, the university system in Slovenia was constantly the most important place of sociological research. The model of dividing education from research, which had been known not only for sociology, but also for all other academic disciplines in most other communist countries, had never been introduced on a full scale in Slovenia (see more: Mali, 1998a). In 1991, the affiliation of the Institute for Sociology to the Faculty of Social Sciences occurred. Today, after ten years, critical voices against this act of unification also appear. For example, in the editorial of the anniversary anthology, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the Institute for Sociology, the following assessment was given: »Sometime in the near future it would be suitable to think about the establishment of a new governmental institute for sociology, which should work outside university and increase the professional identity of sociology.« (Boh, 1999: 13).
[14] Adam and Makarovic state, in their report, that quite a lot of new public as well as private institutions in the field of academic research and higher education have been established in Slovenia in the 90s. I wouldn’t entirely agree with this thesis. In fact, during the last few years, a certain proliferation of sociological studies at public university institutions took place. Notwithstanding, it would be difficult to say that the recent emergence of private higher education institutions, especially in the field of social sciences, has followed the trends from some other post-communist countries in this region.
[15] There is no place here to discuss extensively, whether the slow growth of institutional diversification in the higher education system could always be understood as its deficiency. As we know from different studies, the mushrooming of private social science higher education institutions in some post-communist (transitional) countries, which has not been suitably accompanied by the development of an adequate system of quality control, is sometimes more a disadvantage than an advantage (see for example: Frankel and Cave, 1997). Namely, even in cases where agencies perform accreditation and evaluation procedures (this type of agency doesn’t exist in Slovenia at all), there are still a lot of problems in assuring the minimal quality standards of teaching programs, first of all in the non-university higher education institutions.
[16] In Slovenia, the rigidity of the teaching structure at the existing universities is much more critical than the slow growth of higher education institutions outside the university system. The reform of the whole university study regime, in the direction of a credit–units–system, is still in its beginnings, although the necessity to put into force European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) in accordance with numerous countries of the European Union, is very pressing.
[17] Until now, a more detailed evaluation has not been made on how much the multiplication of new curricula in sociology has increased the practical applicability and occupation chances of sociologists. Fortunately, the number of students enrolling in sociological programs of higher education institutions has moderately increased in the period of the 90s but it has never caught up with the extreme “jump” of enrollments in some other fields of social sciences (economy, political sciences) (see more: Mali, 1998b).
[18] The authors’ thesis, that, in the late 80s and at the beginning of the 90s, there developed greater cooperation with the sociologists of Slovene origins living abroad, needs some additional explanation. As it is well known, at that time, the beginning of research and pedagogical cooperation with some sociologists of Slovene origins, living abroad, was part of more organized endeavors to arrive at the model of the so-called reverse brain drain. This strategy didn't rest so much on the full re-emigration of scientists, but more on establishing various forms of cooperation with our compatriots, the eminent Slovene scientists working at Western research centers. Among those emigrants were also highly reputed sociologists. For example, in Adam's and Makarovic's text, cooperation with Thomas Luckmann is mentioned. Although this project (at that time it was called »The Third Slovene University«) didn't always bring the expected results in the years that followed, it was important just for the reason that in Slovenia, the awareness among national authorities and R&D decision makers about the possible measures to reverse the negative effects of brain drain, started to grow. Being a small sociological community at the European periphery, Slovenia could never afford to be indifferent to problems related to external brain drain, even in times, when these problems were not so acute. Namely, Slovene sociology, such as the whole scientific system, is not confronted with any serious brain-drain problems in the last decade. It is just the opposite to some other East European countries. For example, among all the researchers with a doctoral degree in Slovenia, only 0,2% of them have annually emigrated, mostly young doctors of science from the fields of medicine, chemistry and biology (see more: Bevc, 1998). But, the positive trends concerning emigration flow of scientists can be changed overnight, especially in the social environments, such as Slovenia, where the traditional »push« factors for brain drain are still not suppressed.
[19] Turning to Adam's and Makarovic's concluding words (Chapter: Views on further development), the openness of the sociological community to the international scientific environment is exposed as one of the most important conditions for further research and teaching development. I entirely agree with this statement. Although there are no official statistical data on all the numbers and forms of international co-operation of sociologists, some empirical investigations, performed in the second half of the 90s, showed that research groups in the field of sociology have established a much higher number of contacts with partners abroad than in most other social scientific fields in Slovenia (see for example: Mali, 1998b). These studies also showed that the publication orientation of sociologists is more fragmented (publication in scientific journals, books, proceedings, chapters of books etc.), because sociologists, as other social scientists, adhere to more competing paradigms than natural scientists do.
[20] It seems that the participation of sociological research groups in some major multilateral research programs, funded by the European Union and other supranational institutions, is still rather quite insignificant. The sociologists, such as other social scientists, would often need greater infra-structural and material assistance from the government to participate in big international projects. The national model of public financing of R&D, which existed mostly in the 90s, wasn’t inclined to such sort of support. It dominantly depended upon the grant system, which did not increase the co–operation inside and competition outside. The introduction of long-range funding programs, at the end of 90s, did not change the situation much. (In 1999, instead of 1.200 research projects, 300 research programs appeared, which represents 80 % of all public scientific funding. About 10 of them belong to the field of sociology.) Even more, according to some experts, this shift to more institutional forms of financing of R&D should only worsen the situation.
[21] To conclude, Adam's and Makarovic's report on sociology in Slovenia is written professionally and scientifically correctly. The eventual readers of the report from abroad, who are not acquainted with all the aspects of scientific and intellectual occurrences in Slovenia, will be given, in this way, the chance to obtain quite objective, relevant and integral information about the state of the art of sociology in Slovenia over the transitional period of the last ten years.
Ljubljana, 2002
