TUDOR BUGNARIU AND A FAILED PROJECT TO RE-INSTITUTIONALIZE SOCIOLOGY IN COMMUNIST ROMANIA

• Main Author: ŞTEFAN BOSOMITU
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Romanian Academy 2017-03-01
• Series: Revista Română de Sociologie
• Online Access: http://revistadesociologie.ro/en/sites/default/files/pictures/05-sbosomitu.pdf

After the establishment of the Soviet-type Communist regime in Romania, sociology – a discipline with an important interwar tradition –, was to be labeled as “bourgeois” and subsequently banned. Political repression and the ideological inflexibility of the Communist regime delayed the re-institutionalization of the discipline for almost two decades. The rehabilitation of sociology occurred only in the early 1960s, in a political and cultural context which allowed it. The process that led to the revival of the discipline in the late 1950s and early 1960s confronted with various initiatives and actors, but the political power was the one that admitted and “validated” the re-institutionalization. This article will discuss one of the projects which aimed a reconsideration of sociology – addressed by Tudor Bugnariu, Marxist philosopher, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Bucharest, and member of the clandestine Communist Party in the 1930s. Bugnariu’s project was an interesting case since it intended to link the new Romanian Marxist sociology to its prewar tradition (i.e. Bucharest Sociological School). The article also highlights the main reasons for which Tudor Bugnariu’s project failed