Social Science Forum: Special Edition (XL)
Towards our first special edition
Tanja Oblak Črnič in Natalija Majsova (co-editors)
Introduction: Reflecting sociology
Maša Filipovič Hrast in Aleksandra Kanjuo Mrčela (guest editors)
Introductory conversation with professor Zdravko Mlinar:sociology as "enfant terrible"?
Aleksandra Kanjuo Mrčela in Maša Filipovič Hrast
About: In autumn 2023, the co-editors of this occasional issue of Social Science Debates talked to Zdravko Mlinar, sociologist and academic, full professor of spatial sociology (retired) and professor emeritus at the University of Ljubljana, about the development of sociology in Slovenia and in the Yugoslav space. Prof. Dr. Mlinar, as one of the key players, spoke about his experience of the development of sociology in general and specifically in the context of the (then emerging) Faculty of Social Sciences and reflected on the challenges of the time. Prof. Dr. Mlinar assesses the fundamental contradictions of sociology and questions its visibility and usefulness, the necessity of generalisation and concretization in sociological work, professionalisation and subalternisation, the inclusive or exclusive nature of sociology, and the relationship between the individual, society and nature.
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Social Sciences, Sociology – the Day Before Yesterday, Today, the Day After Tomorrow, and Their (Yugoslav, Slovenian) Social Context
Niko Toš
ABSTRACT: In the essay, the author describes how sociology as a teaching and research-based social science discipline emerged and developed in Slovenia (and Yugoslavia). He shows its initial dogmatic narrowness and gradual development as it became an empirically grounded scientific-cognitive activity. He does this by outlining the transition from the original subject of teaching (at law faculties) in the early 1960s to the conception of study programmes of sociology (department chairs at philosophy faculties, mainly in Belgrade, Ljubljana and Zagreb) and research programmes (the establishing of institutes for social sciences and sociology). The author reveals all the contradictions in the relationship between the ruling politics and sociology, as expressed in the transition from a relationship of opening up, supporting, tolerating and preventing, to a dogmatic blocking of its cognitive activity, autonomous research and bringing critical insights into the public domain.
KEY WORDS: social sciences, sociology, institutionalisation trajectories, dogmatic influences
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From Man to Engendered People in Sociological Education
Maca Jogan
ABSTRACT: The article presents the development of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana (1961–2011) according to dynamics of the inclusion of women in education and feminist content in study and research programmes. A gender-sensitive content analysis of study programmes and course plans and methods of their implementation reveals that: a) very few male university teachers expanded the science of man and society with explanations considering both genders; b) the basic subjects were mostly traditionally oriented in terms of content; and c) gender-sensitive treatment was introduced into education mainly by women with new elective subjects.
KEY WORDS: androcentrism, discrimination against women, gender-sensitive research, male-biased science, sociology
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Formation of the Sociological Profession in Slovenia from a Curriculum Perspective
Ivan Svetlik
ABSTRACT: Two ways of occupational formation are exposed in the introduction: experiential and conceptual. Experiential formation focuses on the tasks performed in various working environments. Conceptual formation focuses on the operationalisation of concepts and research findings that are also conveyed to future sociologists by means of education. The sociologist has first of all been formed conceptually through education. Analysis of the two dominant educational programmes in sociology in Slovenia reveals two streams: a humanistic-pedagogical one at the Faculty of Arts and a utilitarian, research-oriented one at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. The sharpness of this distinction has gradually been blurred. Although sociologists have performed a great variety of tasks, they are seldom rounded up and focused like in other professions.
KEY WORDS: education of sociologists, sociological profession
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“Can’t You See I’m Burning?” – A Sociological Sketch
Tanja Rener
ABSTRACT: In the article, the author asks whether sociology has at all progressed in the last half century; whether it has answered the fundamental sociological questions better and whether the latter were perhaps not adequately posed. Although it seems the basic paradigms of sociological science have advanced, not many connections between them have been established thus far. Using the metaphor of the “burning house of sociology”, with which the author characterises contemporary social events, the need to overcome paradigmatic and also disciplinary limitations becomes ever more evident. What we need, she says, is an active, critical, professional social science that will ask the right questions and locate the answers in the area of utopistics within democratic egalitarianism.
KEY WORDS: development of sociology, unit of analysis, moral sociology, professional sociology, utopistics, democratic egalitarianism
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Sociology and the Development of Capitalism: A Marginal Response or the Basis for Emancipatory Politics?
Aleksandra Kanjuo Mrčela
ABSTRACT: This paper considers the question of the relevance of sociological analysis of capitalism. It is argued that sociology has largely (self)withdrawn and that, even though sociology has more and better tools to analyse and explain the complexities of capitalism, many important topics that originally were the subject of sociological analysis are now being addressed by other social science disciplines, especially economics. This ‘loss’ of fields is not chiefly a problem of status of the discipline and its members being lowered. Instead, the core of the problem is that this lowering of the sociological profession’s status and narrowing of its jurisdiction in areas like social inequality and economic power have led to a lack of specific sociological insight, in turn making it impossible to analyse
capitalism qualitatively and find appropriate responses to the development challenges of today’s society. In this contribution, we reflect on the appropriate
directions for the thematic and methodological development of the sociological analysis of capitalism.
KEY WORDS: sociology, capitalism, feminism, social and class inequalities, platform economy, methodology of sociological research, postsocialisms
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Social Informatics in Slovenia: Between Traditional Understanding and Unrealised Opportunities
Gregor Petrič
ABSTRACT: Social Informatics was established in 1984 as the first academic programme inthe world with this title. Parallel to this, Social Informatics as a specific scientific activity at the intersection of sociology, computer science, and social science methodology began to develop both locally and globally. The purpose of this
article is to reflect on the development of Social Informatics in Slovenia, identifying three limitations that point to opportunities for further development: a) the eduction of Social Informatics to methodology and informatics; b) conflatingthe use of quantitative methods with the process of quantification in society; and
c) sociology between technophobia and disinterest in the development of new ICTs. These limits are substantiated through relevant theoretical reflections and
empirical studies, including the author’s own research. The conclusion proposes ways for Social Informatics and Sociology to work more synergistically.
KEY WORDS: social informatics, information and communication technologies, social science methodology, sociology of technology
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“Sociologue maudit”: On Sociology and Its Social Positioning
Nina Perger
ABSTRACT: In the article, we discuss sociology and its social positioning, which is often subjected to polemics, especially considering those studies which concentrate on naturalised social phenomena (e.g., gender). Drawing on the insights of Durkheim and his orientation to the socio-political significance of sociology, particularly as evident in his intervention during the Dreyfus Affair, we show that dilemmas to do with the broader socio-political positioning of sociology are ingrained in the very core of sociology and its object of analysis. Following Bourdieu, we highlight (and insist) on the core tasks of sociology – the tasks of denaturalising the social and revealing symbolic domination and its effects which, non-coincidentally,are often the tasks most often referred to in reproaches of sociology and its supposed non-scientific and ideological status.
KEY WORDS: sociology, Durkheim, Bourdieu, denaturalisation