the view of an american historian on romanian sociology

8/12/2019 The View of an American Historian on Romanian Sociology

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University of Massachuses - Amherst

ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst

Research Report 24: Economy, Society and Culturein Contemporary Romania

Anthropology Department Research Reports series

1984

Te View of an American Historian on RomanianSociology

Michael M. Cernea

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THE VIEW OF N AMERICAN HISTORIAN ON ROMANIAN SOCIOLOGYMichael M Cernea

Over the past half century, Professor Mihai pop hascontributed to the development of Romanian social anthropology, sociology, and ethnography, both as a f ield researcher himself and as an able organizer of research teamsand insti tutions. In addition, he has continuously endeavored, sometimes under adverse circumstances, to expandthe communication between Romanian and American socialscientists. I feel i t therefore appropriate, as anhommage to his dedicated efforts , to recall in this briefpaper one little-known episode in the relationship betweensocial sciences in the u.S. and Romania.

This episode refers to a report on the s tatus of thesocial sciences in the Balkans written some f i f ty yearsago by an American historian, Professor Robert J . Kerner,The Social Sciences in the Balkans and Turkey, andpublished by the University of California Press in 1930.I discovered this report myself in 1980, while I spent asabbatical year as a Fellow a t the Netherlands Inst i tutefor Advanced Study in the Social Sciences in Wassenaar.Indeed, while reading Kerner's book today, one issurprised to realize how some of the t radit ional constraints and l imitations on social science in Romania ares t i l l present, and even aggravated and multiplied by morerecent developments. Certainly, the current suffocation

of Romanian sociology and i ts unhappy subservience topoli t ical impositions i s not rooted in the situation ofthe 20s and 30s, but rather in profound present-daypolit ical ideological and economic causes. But thehistor ical record does help illuminate the plight ofRomanian sociologists across time and social systems.This makes a reexamination of Kerner's book quiteinteresting.

The historians of Romanian sociology (cf. Constantinescu, Badina andGall, 1974) have meticulously collected and commented upon various analysesand descriptions of The Romanian Sociological School which were made by anumber of American scholars in the la te 1930's. These early art icles (cf.Mosley, n.d.) described how the empirical investigations in Romanian vi l la-ges carried out by this school took off on a large scale. They are currently regarded as evidence of an early international recognition of thedevelopment of Romanian sociology. Kerner's book, however, has not beenlire-discovered, and apparently s t i l l remains vir tually unknown in Romania.

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Yet this book offers a significant and detailed testimony of how anAmerican scholar perceived the state of the ar t the constraints and theneeds of Romanian sociology half a century ago.I t is quite possible that Kerner was, in fact , the f i rs t to cal l theattention of the American sociological community to the sociological

act ivi t ies carried out in Romania by Dimitrie Gusti 's sociologicalschool. Moreover, a t the end of his comparative survey of social sciencesin five countries (Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and Yugoslavia),Kerner's assessment was that sociology was better developed in Romania thananywhere else among the countries he studied.In 1929, Robert J . Kerner (see end note) undertook a study t r ip in theBalkans and in Turkey to carry out a survey of the resources for study andresearch in the social sciences in these countries. His personal beliefwas that , in the future, social scientis ts would play the decisive role inconsolidating these national sta tes and in enabling them to take theirproper place among the nations of Europe (p. 9). With that guiding idea,he proceeded to vis i t the universities, to confer with the leading profes

sors in the social sciences, and to meet with administrative officials a l lin order to make an attempt to understand what is being done to encourageresearch in the social sciences (p. 10). In his study, the social sc i -ences were understood to include Anthropology, Ethnology, Geography,History, sociology, Poli t ica l Science, Economics and psychology. Kernerbelieved that the very existence of the Balkan nations of Europe woulddepend upon the future development of knowledge in these fields in everwider circles of each nation and upon the assistance that social scient is tsm y be able to give in the solution of the diff icul t problems which facethese Balkan nations (p. 13).The section on Romania in Kerner's book describes in detail thesociological curricula and act ivi t ies in the country's main academic cen

te rs their progress and the difficul t ies they were struggling with. Atthat time there were under 30,000 students in attendance at al l Romanianuniversities. Kerner did not fai l to notice the overcrowded classes or thefact that the professors are paid very low salar ies , preventing them frombuying books and making t r ips of investigation during vacations, andforcing them to seek additional employment as lecturers in other ins t i -tutions or as advisers of the government, or to enter politics (pp. 66-67).At the University of Bucharest, Kerner came to know the international ly reputed Romanian sociologist , Dimitrie Gusti, and considered himthe guiding sp i r i t in the Social Sciences at the University, reporting indetail on his multi-faceted act ivi t ies. About Petre Andrei, the other

leading Romanian sociologist at that time, who taught a t the University ofJassy, Kerner observed that he was well read in the Anglo-Saxon l i teraturein his f ield. The account continues with detailed and accurate o s e ~ v -t ions about the Universities of Cluj, Oradea Mare and e r n ~ u ~ i (the capitalci ty of the Bucovina region, then belonging to Romania). Taking i t al l in

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al l , Kerner summed up, the impression one has of these inst i tutions isthat they do excellent undergraduate work for the l icent iate , but thatprobably only the las t year of that and the work for the doctorate shouldbe regarded as advanced and research work (p. 58).Carefully assessing the resources for social science teaching andresearch, Kerner inevitably recognized a perennial problem of Romaniansociologists: the lack of funds for foreign books. There is lacking,especially, a good l ibrary covering the field of sociology very l i t t l ecan be bought in high-priced currencies with one hundred or two hundreddollars, wrote Kerner f i f ty years ago (1930:60-61). Today, this messageis echoed word for word in the repeated complaints of Romanian sociologistslacking adequate access to needed Western scient if ic books and prevented bycurrency difficult ies or by the official censorship from getting the booksor journals that they need. Nevertheless, Kerner found that, by and large,the l ibrary faci l i t ies of Romania are better organized and more evenlydistributed than those of any other Balkan country (p. 59), a professionaljudgment which also ref lects significantly on the quali ty of the l ibraries

in the la t ter countries.Turning to research act ivi t ies per se, Kerner's assessment was thatin sociology the leading work is done by the Romanian Inst i tute of SocialScience, whose director is professor Dimitrie Gusti and, further, thatthe quarterly journal published by the Inst i tute (Arhiva de t i i n t ~Reforma Sociala) was a f i rs t -c lass sociological review (p. 65). At thattime, large-scale, empirical sociological studies were already underway inseveral village communities (at Nerej in 1927, a t Fundu1 Mo1dovei in 1928and a t r a g u ~ in 1929). And, indeed, the Romanian sociological journalshad started publishing extremely interesting research reports. But Kernerwas not oblivious to the severe constraints on expanding these studies:The Inst i tute is in dire need of funds and for that reason i t s l ibrary is

limited I t is likewise unable to encourage research in any particularproblems because of the same lack of funds. Here is a worthy enterprisewhich should be assisted (pp. 65-66).Analyzing the drawbacks and their causes that he perceived, Kernernoted two other' important factors besides the lack of government financialsupport. Firs t , he pointed out the inadequate communication betweenRomanian sociologists and social scient ists in. other countries (diff icult ies of research travel beyond the frontiers, insufficient access toforeign publications and l ibraries, e tc . ) . Second, he described what heperceived as an exceptional individualism mong social scient ists whichmakes cooperative work even inside anyone of the sciences impossible (p.67). Kerner fe l t that there was no clear awareness mong professors of the

potential rewards of combined efforts for the purpose of common professional goals and research.Small as the funds were, and l imited as the hum n resources were, i twas l ikely, Kerner thought, that more could have been done were i t notfor the stark individualism of the professors in each field, even as

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against colleagues in the same subject There is no conception, apparently, of the fact that many problems in the social sciences cannot besolved by one investigator alone, but require cooperation, and no real i -zation, seemingly, of the stimulus and assistance afforded by the comradeship of other fellow-social scientis ts (p. 135). This was t rue, Kernerbelieved, for the entire area he surveyed and he suggested that the futureawaits men who will take the leadership which is necessary to bring aboutsuch changes in the social science community.

Kerner summed up his review on the five countries that he consideredby stat ing that in Romania sociology is better developed than anywhereelse in the Balkans, but even here i t is considered a branch of philosophyand is taught usually by professors who teach also some branch of philosophy (p.67). This was a very insightful appraisal . Kerner could not haveforeseen how long i t would take Romanian sociologists to ins is t upon thedistinctiveness of sociology as a science and to obtain independence fromthe suffocating embrace of philosophy.Although this trend began long before World War I I sociology's

independence in Romania was slow to come by. In the mid and late 1930s,empirical research had expanded considerably and those years can probablybe regarded as the golden period of pre-war Romanian sociology. Since theend of World War I I however, sociology has had only a very short-l ivedperiod as an acceptable academic discipline.In 1948, the new poli t ical system, using heavy-handed administrativemethods, simply expelled sociology from al l university curricula. Sociology was official ly labeled a bourgeois non-science. Not only was i tbanished from teaching as an academic subject in universi t ies, but researchfunds for sociological research were cut off and i t s legitimacy as ascholarly activity was denied. This was much more, and much worse, thanKerner could ever have imagined when he wrote about sociology in Romania asa branch of philosophy, or about apathy and medieval barriers. Thecountry's new poli t ical system was determined to replace sociology with aself-serving ideology which described social reali ty as i t should be,rather than as i t factually was. The regime did not shy away from anymeans of reaching i t s goal. I t imprisoned and even lynched members of theold sociological school and imposed t ight censorship on attempts by a newgeneration of researchers to revive genuine sociological endeavors. Some-

how this si tuat ion changed around the mid 1960s (the causes of this revivaldeserve a special research analysis), but this period of relat ive toleranceby officials was a rather short-lived intermezzo.Around mid-1970, the si tuat ion deteriorated sharply. Romanian sociology was again deprived of resources, stripped of the inst i tutional gainsi t had briefly made, and increasingly forbidden to cal l a spade a spade.Tight controls prevented the study of poli t ical ly sensitive issues andsociologists were prevented from reporting t ruthfully on their findings.I t s best researchers were threatened, dislocated academically, isolated

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from their professional peers in other countries, and continually trampledunder enormous ideological, poli t ical and administrative pressure.This situation is of course, far worse than Kerner could have antici-pated and i t lends i t se l f to a different kind of analysis, beyond the scopeof th is art ic le . Let us therefore return to Kerner's significant overall

conclusions identifying what were then the greatest needs to insure theprogress of social sciences in the entire area he studied:1. Better salar ies for the professors 2. The professors should be given opportunities to travel beyondthe frontiers for purposes of research and the most necessaryrecent works and periodicals should be procured for them.3. The academies and learned societies might take stock of thesituation in a concerted manner. But before this c n ~ p p e nmedieval barrIers must be broken down and new ideas and newmen must appear on the scene. I t may well be that al l thismay best be accomplished by the creation of national researchcouncils for the social sciences in each of the countriesmentioned after the pattern worked out in the United States.In this way alone will the apathy, which generally exists ,disappear, and courage will spring up to proceed along l ineswhere progress is possible (p. 136).Thus, Robert J . Kerner poi&ted out a number of the social structuralcauses of the l imitations faced by Romanian sociology half a century ago.His is the most comprehensive description and analysis of Romanian soci-ology by a foreign scholar in the period from the '20s to the 30's.I t would be a fascinating challenge for any student of the sociology

of science to examine comparatively, after f i f ty years, the position andprognosis of Romanian sociology within a changed societal context, inpart icular , in l ight of Kerner's insights, criticism and pointedrecommendations.

Note

Robert J . Kerner had a distinguished career as a historian, ini t ial ly a t theUniversity of Missouri and then a t the University of California, where hebecame Sather Professor of History. mong his several books are: SlavicEurope: A Selected Bibliography (Harvard University press, Cambridge,1918); and The urge to the Sea: The Course of Russian History (Universityof California Press, Berkeley, 1942 and 1946).

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References Cited

Constantinescu, M., Ov. Badina and E. Gall1974 G1ndirea Sociologica din Romania Sociological Thinkingin Romania . Bucharest: Meridiane Publishing House

Kerner, Robert Joseph1930 The Social Sciences in the Balkans and Turkey. Berkeley:University of California Press.Mosely, Phill ipn.d. Un American in satul Sant An American in sant village) .

A r h i v ~ de t i i n ~ a i Reforma S o c i a l ~

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