Report on National Sociological Associations in Europe

ABSTRACT

As the official journal of the ESA, European Societies was asked to publish this report because of its special interest for the readers. This is a slightly shortened version of the first report on National Sociological Associations which was submitted to the European Sociological Association in November 2014. A series of relevant tables can be found on the ESA site: http://www.europeansociology.org/national-associations.html.ABSTRACT: This report presents the results of a survey on the National Associations of Sociology in Europe conducted in the years 2012–2013 by the European Sociological Association (ESA) under the auspices of its Committee for National Associations. The National Associations of Sociology were progressively established and institutionalized throughout the twentieth century, each one reflecting the political circumstances of the European Continent at the time. Of the 40 associations surveyed, 10% were in existence in 1950, which shows that the consolidation of the associative movement of sociologists in Europe is generally quite recent and gradually built up over the course of a century or more. The size of each association in terms of numbers of members is a key dimension in understanding how sociology is organized throughout Europe. The same may be said of the difficulties encountered when establishing the ESA as recently as 1992. The results of the survey show that the European sociological community is the aggregate of several parallel currents going back well over a hundred years. Each current has generated as many tributaries as there are individual academic and professional corporations operating in the dozens of countries where sociology has been able to take root and develop, whilst favoured – or sometimes opposed – by university and social policies, governments and public or private bodies. Moreover, each country has its own story to tell about the particular claims and losses, its ups and downs, advances and set-backs that sociology as a discipline has experienced.

Key words:

• associations
• nations
• sociology
• Europe

Notes

1. This peculiar heritage still remains in the social context of sociology. For instance, a decade ago the president of the Italian Sociological Association (AIS) sent an official letter of protest against the anchor-man of an Italian public TV channel, who defined sociologists as professionals without any role or relevance in society.