Conference paper
Round Table »Forty Years of Sociologija sela Quarterly: The Way Made and the Prospects«; Editorial Board, Journalists House (Novinarski dom), Zagreb, 24th September 2003
Abstract
Organizing the Round table Forty years of the "Sociologija sela« (Rural Sociology) quarterly: the way made and the prospects and publishing the double-issue 157-158 of the quarterly, the Editorial Board and the publisher - the Institute for Social Research in Zagreb
(IDIZ) celebrated the 40 years of the Rural Sociology journal's continuous publication. The meeting was held on the 24th of September 2003 under the high patronage of the vice-president of
the Government of the Republic of Croatia Prof. Ph. D. Ante Simonić,
and the co-patronage of the Ministry of Craft, Small and Middle Entrepreneurship, Ministry of Education and Sport, Ministry of Labour
and Social Care, Ministry of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning and Ministry of Science and Technology. The meeting had
54 participants - editors-in-chief, members of the Editorial Board and the Council of the journal, distinguished collaborators of the journal,
other prominent scientists, researchers of the IDIZ, representatives
of the authorities and organizations dealing with village and agriculture - who attended it upon an invitation. This edition brings the
authorized integral exposes by all the participants.
The meeting was opened by the director of the IDIZ Prof. Ph. D. Nikola Skledar. The patron of the meeting Prof. Ante Simonić greeted the participants, and after him the assistant Minister of Environmental Protection and Physical Planning Zlatko Uzelac. After that the romotion of the anniversary double-issue of the magazine and the discussion on
the theme of the round table took place. The editors-in-chief of the
journal gave the introductory words on its mission the same order they were at that post: Stipe Šuvar, Svetozar Livada, Vlado Puljiz, Maja Štambuk and Antun Petak. Vlado Cvjetićanin and Ruža First-Dilic
were not able to attend the meeting. Dušica Seferagić, Zvonimir Baletić, Josip Defilippis, Mirjana Randić and Bosiljka Milinković took part in the discussion, and Hristo Kartalov, Vladimir Stipetić and Željko Mataga sent in their contributions. A. Petak, the present editor-in-chief of the quarterly, moderated the debate.
Ante Simonić underlined the great value and the role of the Rural Sociology quarterly, the oldest Croatian sociological journal and one of the few periodicals in the field of rural sociology in the world. Besides its scientific worth (scientific profite and openness; fostering
researches, participation in the development of its matrix discipline
- rural sociology; the fact of being cited), the magazine has also performed an important social mission: it promotes the interests of the village and peasantry and provides the bearers of developmental
- in particular agrarian - policy with relevant grounds.
Zlatko Uzelac considers the sociological researches the imperative
component of physical planning but the position of sociology in physical planning in Croatia today is the lowest in the last twenty or
thirty years. In his opinion the reason for such situation lies in the
fact that the financing of science has been organized through institutions, and that it can be eliminated by the linkage of sociological
research institutions and the decision makers in the physical planning
domain.
In his expose entitled "The round table on the way made and the prospects of the Sociologija sela quarterly", Antun Petak joined together the word of the anniversary issue promoter and the introduction to the round table.
According to Petak's idea the Theme of the round table - the interaction between the science and the society was to be treated through an open discussion of meritorious scientists and experts upon
the example of rural sociologist and the Sociologija sela quarterly, and this by questioning the two essential components of the journal's
mission: a) how did the magazine reflect the problems of the village
and agriculture (in Croatia, Yugoslavia after the WW II. and the world)
and in which way did it offer rational grounds of the development policy (and affected the development) of the village and agriculture?
b) in which way, and to what extent, did it participate in the development of its matrix discipline in Croatia and in other federal units of former Yugoslavia, as well as in the development of rural sociology in general? The valorization of the journal's role in the creation and the transfer of knowledge of the village and the agriculture were meant to give suggestions for its future profile.
The anniversary double-issue No. 157-158 (3-4)/2002 of the journal
entitled »Forty years of The Sociologija sela« testifies its mission with
in the development of science and the social development. It contains
the editorial (A. Petak, V. Puljiz i M. Štambuk: The Sociologija sela
journal, the village and agriculture development, development of
rural sociology), 17 selected research works by the creators of the magazine published in the last 40 years and which have had the greatest reflection within the scientific community, the elaboration of the journal's role in the inducements of bibliographical researches, a
bilingual, Croatian-English bibliography of all 1,551 contributions by
481 authors published in 158 regular and in one international issue and in one supplement to the magazine (82 volumes comprising 13,076 pages). The selected articles make certain landmarks in the
development of rural sociology and represent the themes that were treated in the journal as well as the time dynamics of their publication.
Seven editors-in-chief and ten collaborators that have significantly contributed to the journal's level - through their regular collaboration
or with their works of exceptional worth - are considered the creators
of the quarterly. These are, by chronological order of publication of their works: Rudolf Bićanić, Stipe Šuvar, Vlado Cvjetićanin, Svetozar
Livada, Vlado Puljiz, Ruža First-Dilic, Maja Štambuk, Antun Petak, Milan Župančić, Ivan Cifrić, Edhem Dilič, Alija Hodžić, Ana Barbič, Josip Defilippis, Vojislav Đurić, Ivan Magdalenic and Dušica Seferagic.
The anniversary issue of the quarterly offers the insight in the way the
Zagreb School of Rural Sociology practises the science as vocation and evidences that the essential part of o the rural sociology heritage
from the territory of farmer Yugoslavia can be found in the pages of
Sociologija sela. The reprint of the selected works, and this without
any approach, contents and interpretations »re-designing« or »re-touching«, shows that the magazine - thanks to its openness and
assemblance of meritoriaus collaborators - continuously: (a) promotes
the scientist's professional ethics, (b) puts the purpose of the project
in its gravity centre and approaches the reality with non-sentimental critical realism pledging for the peasantry rights, interests and benefit;
(c) promulgates the subject and theoretical-methodological acquaintance with the elaboration of the peasant's life and peasant's
economy reproduction; (d) manifests the freshness of ideas and the far-reaching consequence of practical implications of scientific cognition in the offering of rational foundations for agrarian and rural
policy.
In his contribution »Through the openness of the Sociologija sela journal Zagreb became an important centre of rural sociology« Stipe Šuvar establishes the link between the appearance of the journal and
the renunciation of the orthodox command-type socialism in the 960s
in former Yugoslavia and this enabled institutional and research-wise
broadening and autonomy of sociology in Croatia as well. Namely, the
beginning of the Sociologija sela coincides with two important events
in the rural sociology development in Croatia: in the school year 1963/64 at the Philosophic Faculty in Zagreb the university study of
sociology as profession was inaugurated, and the decision was made
by the University of Zagreb Council to establish the Institute for Sociological and Social Research the nowadays Institute for Social Research in Zagreb. Šuvar particularly treated the first year of the journal's issuing showing that it was for its utmost openness from the
beginning of issuing and the keeping up with the achievements of the
matrix and bordering disciplines in Europe and the world, as well
as for its openness to federal units of former Yugoslavia and its connection with the research work, that the magazine achieved quick
affirmation in whole that time Yugoslavia, and even in the world, and
that Zagreb became an important rural sociology centre.
In Svetozar Livada's opinion the Zagreb group was accepted as the
centre for the Sociologija sela journal's essential role in the research
development and the design of rural sociology. The Zagreb School
of Rural Sociology is righteously been spoken of because that group
has since the beginning practiced rural sociology as applied and main
discipline in interdisciplinary research in the village and the agrarian
sector, because of the journal's methodology contribution and for its
decisive role in the introduction of rural sociology in the curricula of
the faculties, Livada is content with the fact that, despite the difficulties, the quarterly sustained, kept its profile and became the reference for the scientists' promotion. At the end he pointed out the
problems of transition that haven't been researched by rural sociologists: centralization and voluntaristic administrative-territorial
partition, destruction of closed production cycles (PIKs - agricultural - industrial combines), civil side of the war and the devastation of rural
areas, transformation with the workers - peasants pauperization, the
peasantry impoverishment and the village decay, destruction of the
system of co-operatives and others.
In his text »The Sociologija sela journal, the research and contacts broadening« Vlado Puljiz elaborated three issues. First, the atmosphere in the Agrarian Institute Department of Rural Sociology
and among the journal's editorial staff at the end of 1963 was creative, intellectual-entrepreneurial: a group of enthusiasts lead by
S. Šuvar considered the magazine a first rate legitimation and the journal made it possible the contacts with the world. Second, Puljiz showed that the collateral development of rural-sociological research
at the Agrarian Institute, and afterwards in the Centre for Rural, Urban and Spatial Sociology of the University of Zagreb Institute for
Social Research was essential for development of the quarterly. Along
with these researches the contents diapason of the journal broadened
and changed. Third, the condition for the joumal's continuance is the
new generation of the Okrugli stol »Četrdeset godina časopisa Sociologija sela« Zagreb school of rural sociology. He selected three
planned projects that were not carried out: the research in the so-called vital smallholdings, the research in the structure of land proprietors, and the research in the social consequences of the building of the Zagreb Split highway.
Maja Štambuk (On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Sociologija sela: profession, reality and policy) thinks that out of the
»Sociologija sela« journal's goals the scientific one was achieved: persisting on the scientific approach towards the rural problems and
phenomena and encouraging empirical researches, the quarterly became the inevitable source for writing the unwritten history of Croatian village. Yet, its influence on rural and agrarian policy can hardly be spoken of. First, rural policy in Croatia hasn't - been shaped. The main administrative bodies in charge of rural space simplify the village to agriculture, and consider rural development to
be the development of agriculture. Second, rural development is indirectly influenced by various urban intellectual professions
- urban sociologists, architects, urbanists, lawyers, economists, to
which the village development is above all complementary to urban one and who want to pick what is the highest quality in the village and
to move it to the town. As the counterpoint, for the benefit of the village she pledged for obligatory respect of the particularities both of
the village and the rural development.
A. Petak (Sociologija sela: the journal that obliges and which is under
an obligation) reminded of the results of the journal at the end 20th
and the beginning of the 21st century when the crisis of its infrastructure reached its utmost boundaries (the losing of its own research backing because the support to systematic research work
was suspended, the war and the break in contacts with other countries
that originated from the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the difficulties in contacts with the world; uncertainty of the journal's logistics). Despite the symbolic support to the quarterly from the Croatia's science policy and the inappropriate model of financing the
rural-sociological researches, the journal's reputation was succeeded
to maintain, the themes it treats to broaden with transition and islandity, and to open it to researches in spatial and social-cultural
development, to deepen the elaboration of social aspects of the food
production and bio-ethics, as well as of the village and rural area renewal, to achieve a stable response from collaborators from abroad
and to increase international communicativeness. On the other hand,
the Sociologija sela deserves everyone's acknowledgment for its entire openness to what is worth and productive in science and the
scientists owe it their participation in researches in the stream of rural
sociology developmental tendencies and in accordance with the peasant's benefit and the village and rural areas development.
In his paper entitled »Rural sociology and the possibility of authentic agrarian policy«, following the fact that the rural organization of life
imposes the grasp of the totality of rural life and the multidisciplinary
approach, Zvonimir Baletić expressed his contentment with the fact
that he didn't enter the economy with the market, purchase and sale
analysis but with the system of life reproduction in rural surrounding.
He pointed out how actual Richard Jones's book from 1831 is from the
point of view of the possibility for capitalistic modernization of the Eastern European societies. These societies were founded upon the rural type of life and reproduction and it will be difficult for them to
create the grounds for alternative capitalistic structure and the process which would integrate them into the Western-type capitalism.
Baletić analyses why the actual model isn't rational and sustainable solution, so it threatens the Croatian agrarian policy to collapse and Croatia to remain without agriculture. In order to avoid unrepearable
damage, Croatia today has to revitalize rural sociology which will show is it possible to lead authentic policy conformed to its own needs
and to the integration in Europe, how and to what extent.
Several participants, and in particular Dušica Seferagić, Josip Defilippis and Mirjana Randić spoke about the Sociologija sela's permanent openness to collaborators from the fields of agrarian economy, urban sociology, demography, anthropology and other congenial disciplines. They emphasized the importance of this openness for the journal's and rural sociology development, but also for development of their disciplines. Bosiljka Milinković underlined the stimulating role the Sociologija sela has in bibliographical researches. Hristo Kartalov stresses the decisive role the Sociologija sela quatterly had in inducement of researches and the design of rural sociology in all areas of former Yugoslavia, and in particular within the intellectual
circles of the Republic of Macedonia. Vladimir Stipetić (at the time of
the origination of the Sociologija sela quatterly the scientific director of the Agrarian Institute) depicts a particular atmosphere and the enthusiasm of the group of the journal's founders, points out the journal's scientific worth and reputation, and concludes that rural-sociological analyses, researches and magazine are necessary and
inevitable preconditions for rational and sustainable agrarian policy.
Željko Mataga demonstrated the important role of Zagreb rural sociologists and the Sociologija sela quatterly in concrete cases.
The judgements stated in the editorial of the anniversary issue of the
quarterly were corroborated and confirmed by the speeches of all the
participants. The journal was originated by a group of young Zagreb
rural sociologists and agrarian economists assembled in the Agrarian
Institute Department of Rural Sociology who, together with the Institute, created the Zagreb School of Rural Sociology. S. Šuvar, S.
Livada, V. Puljiz, V. Stipetić and A. Petak agreed that Stipe Šuvar (the
head of the Department for Rural Sociology, founder and editor of
the first two issues of the journal), Svetozar Livada, Vlado Cvjetičanin, Zvonimir Baletić and Mirko Martić made its core. Since the first number was published in October 1963 until the 1967, the core was joined by Vlado Puljiz, Edhem Dilić, Ruža First-Dilič, Milan
Župančić and Ivan Magdalenić. In 1960s this nucleus has established
collaboration with the most meritorious scientists from the world's centres of rural sociology and assembled all the names of greater
importance from all science centres of former Yugoslavia. And among
the latter were: Rudolf Bićanić, Vera St. Erlich, Ivan Klauzer, Vladimir
Stipetić, Bogdan Stojsavljević and Alica Wertheimer-Baletić from Zagreb; Cvetko Kostić, Petar Marković, Rada Boreli, Darinka Marković
and Vojin Radomirović from Belgrade; Borislav Dimkovic, Vojislav Durić and Mladen Stojanov from Novi Sad; Slavoljub Dubič and Joko
Sparavalo from Sarajevo; Matija Golob, Janez Jerovšek and Zdravko
Mlinar from Ljubljana; Ilija Josifovski and Stefan Kostovski from Skopje; Vidak Vujačić from Podgorica and Josip Defilippis from Split.
The initial core and the later participants in this demanding project were characterized with tremendous enthusiasm, entire openness, team work, scientific ethics, »great hunger-for knowledge and the faith in science and its application as the basic lever of the benefit of
the village. (The summary prepared by Antun Petak)
Keywords
Sociologija sela quatterly; journal's mission and significance; pro-rural policy; village; peasantry; transition; scientific researches
Hrčak ID:
36927
URI
Publication date:
12.5.2009.
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