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Victims of Geography or Politics?’: Public and Policy Sociology in Croatian Sociology

The paper deals with current state of sociology as discipline in a small European country in (semi) periphery of Europe within process of internalization of social sciences and Europeanisation of science policy. Centre periphery relations don’t exist only between global North and South. Within Europe there is a going on the process of Europeanization in many policy areas along with counter movements. The paper draws on the model of the centre and periphery relations within context of the process of Europeanization in science policy and its possible consequences on sociology in (semi) periphery of Europe. Peripheral countries rarely managed to have distinctive impact on the elaboration of scientific important issues like research priorities, while they are suggested to adapt national science management issues with those in core scientific countries. For instance, the most recent European policy initiative like the concept of smart specialisation or funding through the Structural funds strengthens the integration processes among the member states through performing the similar procedures, rules and norms. However, they also brought a specific “research culture” embedded in a system of norms and values about the role of science in the society. Along with that process there is growing institutionalization of discipline through the rise of sociology departments at universities accompanied at the same time by financial “starvation” of research funding caused by crisis and austerity measures. The permanent challenge for Croatian sociology remains how to raise its international visibility (quality) and local relevance in order to secure more research funding. According to some authors dominant public sociology represents the end of crisis in sociology while professional and policy sociology does not progress without limitation. Commitment to now institutionalised and widely embraced perspective for some critics resulted in heavily politicised sociology on the expense of scientific rigor without clear scientific standards. How these different assumptions reflect scientific and public reputation of sociology on the periphery? Former president of Croatian sociological association criticized Croatian sociology for keeping the role of system legitimation even in transition period and being „provincial discipline“, internationally unrecognized and irrelevant. What is the state of the art of Croatian sociology now? How will it achieve higher level of international collaboration and professionalization in (local) policy orientation? The recent example given in the paper refers to the vigorous debate that stirred up sociology community in Croatia by criticizing the most relevant (local) middle range theory on egalitarianism as dominant societal value which is recognized as main obstacle to entrepreneurship. Empirical evidence of still prevalent egalitarian values opened the controversy about counter-entrepreneurial social environment. Egalitarian syndrome (the original name of the concept) got to the headlines in the newspapers and TV discussions which is the unique case of public media attention to sociological concepts. The debate initiated discussion between critical, reflexive, and instrumental, i.e. public – policy relationship in Croatian sociology.

public sociology ; policy sociology ; core-periphery ; local knowledge ; Croatia

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