Review article
https://doi.org/10.5673/sip.51.2.5
The First Eight Years of the Rural Sociology New Series (1998 - 2005) - Broadening the Concept
Antun Petak
Abstract
The third publication phase of the new Rural Sociology series (1998-2005) is
presented in five parts. In the first part the author examines the socio-economic
context: changes and problems in the agrarian and social structure caused by
privatization based on the doctrine of neoliberal capitalism, refeudalization of
village and agriculture, war consequences, intense social stratification and 40% fall
in agricultural production, compared to 1988 and 1989. In the second part the
author presents the crisis and implosion of the oldest Croatian infrastructure unit for
rural sociological research and two research projects about the Croatian village in
transition, settlement network and network society done in the Institute for Social
Research in Zagreb. The third part is about the journal’s logistics. Systematic rural
sociological research lost all financial support in the last decade of 20th century
which caused the final exodus of researchers. Along with the desintegration of the
rural sociology school in Zagreb, it meant the loss of institutional support for the
scientific rural sociology periodical. The highest price of the wrong policy was paid:
human capital was squandered and the research field lost. The Institute’s other
research teams could not back up the very specialized journal of rural sociology.
The fourth part of the presentation deals with the new concept of overcoming the
crisis, editorial policy, changes in the Board and Council and the new profile of the
journal which eventually changed its name in 2006. The original concept from 1963
was broadened and it comprised the cooperation of the Institute’s research potential
with contributions from sociology and other similar disciplines whose primary
interest was social, economic and cultural development, based on rural, urban and
spatial research, agroecology, protection of ruralism and bioethics. The journal’s
profile was defined as problem-solving and Rural Sociology remained the primary
scholarly journal with the same structure and publication frequency.
The fifth part is dedicated to the journal’s achievements, primarily its most
valuable works which defined the profile of the new series. The journal basically
overcame the crisis and made up for the lost time, money and human potential by
opening up to contributions from other scientific disciplines (first about the ruralurban
continuum, settlement network and social processes in space, then about
religious and other research in the Institute), and to foreign authors. Because of
their excellence the author singles out 12 contributions by home authors and 9
thematic issues among which stands out the jubilee issue for the 40th anniversary
of the continued publication of the first Croatian sociology journal. It was entitled
“People who created Rural Sociology“. Other special issues with their recent and
well-founded theories and methodology include village in transition, network of
settlements and network society, islanders and island communities and agricultural
cooperatives. Due to a large number of scientific works (six out of ten), based on experimental research of the Croatian society and village, Rural Sociology is a
valuable and visible publication in the world scholarly community; there is reference
to works published in it in eight world data banks.
Keywords
Rural Sociology; new series; profile; infrastructure and logistics; role in Croatia and abroad
Hrčak ID:
109630
URI
Publication date:
14.10.2013.
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