Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

Sociology I 2 I
In developed countries the direction of sociological work is often influenced
by the needs manifest at the national policy making level. One such example is
Ttaly where disequilibria between the North and the South were the cause of
many social, political and economic problems :
Research work, because of its accuracy, has provided helpful results even when it was
dealing with macrosocial themes such as those of economic development. The case of
Italy had - and still has - some special characteristics with respect to the typology of
cases which filled the huge quantity of economic and sociological literature of the
1950s. Underdevelopment in Italy was a problem of disequilibria, both territorial and
sectorial, within a social system which was characterized by differentiated cultural
aspects. The most visible syndrome of these disequilibria was represented not only by
differences in the cultural patterns and in the per capita income between North and
South, but mainly by the enormous migration movements from the south to the north
(as well as abroad) ... The industrialization of the South and the correction of regional
disequilibria became the declared aims of Government p0licy,~~5
whence a plethora of studies on internal and external migration, on the areas
in which the exodus took place and those which attracted the immigrant, the
problem of the social integration of the immigrant within the socio-cultural
system of the receiving area, industrialization of some small Southern areas and
the resulting depopulation of the countryside, the problem of socio-cuItural
barriers and its relation to economic development, etc.
The new economic experiment of self-management in Yuogslavia, itself a
question of policy-making, has encouraged a concentration of research in this
area:
It should be pointed out that self-management constitutes almost the only object of
interest of many institutes [of sociology], regardless of the fact that there are numerous
other problems in Yugoslav social life. This is a reflection of the important contradic-
tion, which is today part of Yugoslav society, between a bureaucracy with a tendency
to centralize and an opposing current of those who favour decentralization and auton-
omy and who are attempting to achieve the spread of self-management in every sector
of institutionalized social activity.I16
tn Scandinavia sociological research has often been an instrument of social
policy or at least stimulated by it. In Sweden, ‘the desire to have family and
population problems investigated more fully was one of the factors behind the
introduction of sociology as an academic di~cipline’.~17 And it has been pointed
out that ‘much of Danish sociology is characterized by its practical and nontheoretical
approach to social welfare and social problems’.118
The following comment on Finnish sociology also reveals a particular orientation
induced by the State’s social policy:
Partly because of the deliberate rational policy of the Finnish State Liquor Monopoly,
sociological studies on alcohol consumption and drinking behaviour have become an
important speciality in Finnish sociology. Several large sociological studies have been
published by the Research Institute [for Alcohol Studies].119
Belgian sociology too has apparently been quite sensitive to the research
possibilities posed by the existence of various social problems:
Exactly as in the 19th century under the stimulus of Quktelet and Ducpktiaux, the stud-
ies developed since the last World War have chosen their study themes in areas where