Sociology and Space, No. 1, 1963.
Review article
DEVELOPMENT AND SUBJECT OF RURAL SOCIOLOGY
Cvetko Kostić
Abstract
Theoretical and practical needs for rural sociology have been in a continuous
growth everywhere in the world and in Yugoslavia too.
The first part of this article follows the development of rural sociology in
USA, Europe and in the countries under development. There is a review of so
called religious sociology, a kind of »sociology« very popular in some catholic and
protestant countries. This kind of sociology can not be regarded as scientific one.
Particular attention has been paid to the scientific inheritance of rural research
work in Yugoslavia, especially in works of Vnk Karadžić. Ante Radić, Valtazar
Bogišić, Jovan Cvijić, and Sreten Vukosavljević.
The second part considers the problem of the subject of rural sociology. This
question was in the focus of interest of rural sociologists in USA. Their efforts concluded with an agreement about the definition of its subject in 1938. This definition
was accepted by American and some foreign sociologists as well. The European
rural sociologists are still very divergent about this question. Different names
for rural sociology in different European countries obviously prove this fact.
At the end author discusses the problem of definition and essential characteristics
of rural sociology and explicates his own definition.
Rural sociology is a branch of general sociology and as such an explicative
science. Rural phenomena have historical character. Rural sociology already has
fearly built up its own »scientific apparatus «(terminology, theories, etc.). The
peculiarity of this branch of sociology consists in the fact that people in rural
environment are connected in a specific way »with nature and among themselves«.
On these grounds established definition of rural sociology would read: The
rural sociology studies the society in rural environment as a part of the whole
society and social system, and is composed of individuals connected by the relations
in which they »enter under the necessity independently of their will« and by
their free will corresponding to their cultural and other peculiarities and in a
specific way, what separates this part of the society from the reminder of the
whole society and social system and causes in it certain specific changes normally
expected in accordance with its development.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
120967
URI
Publication date:
17.7.1963.
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