Contents From the Secretary 1 Reports on Conferences 10 RCHS Council Members 2 In Memoriam 14 Letter from the President 2 New Items 15 Mid-Term Conference Proposals 3 Payment Possibilities 16 Introducing the Executive Council 5 Membership Form 17 Conference Calls 9 Editorial: From the Secretary The first task of this issue is to bring to - the sessions on the History of your attention the urgent need for Sociology at the ASA at Chicago in renewal of memberships. A 2002, and membership (renewal) form is - Jennifer Platt’s retirement attached at the back. I will send out conference. individual reminders shortly. This issue Other features have been inherited reports on suggested mid-term from Christian Fleck's excellent work. conference matters. A report on the This is the preliminary e-mail issue in AGM will appear in the next part designed to get the news out fast, newsletter. The proposal before the but also to test the waters about this executive is to hold the mid-term form of distribution. A printed version conference at Marienthal. Some will be mailed out over the next few session offerings are included here. weeks. Those happy to receive only More will be published in the next the email version (and thus saving issue of the newsletter. Comments on some costs) should please indicate this conference proposal should be this by replying to me by email! directed to me. Thanks. Over the last few months there have Those interested may still download been several events which I am (until the end of the year) abstracts or pleased to have to obtain reports on: papers from the RC08 and other - the RC08 Session meetings at sessions at the Brisbane conference: Brisbane, see http://203.94.129.73/sch_sps_sessions .asp?sc=RC08. Charles Crothers School of Social Sciences Auckland Auckland University of Technology New Zealand Pvt. Bag 92006 [email protected] 1 The 2002-2006 RCHS VicePresidents: Christian Fleck Executive Martin Bulmer Secretary: Charles Crothers President: Jennifer Platt Council members: Martin Albrow H H Bruun Stephen Kalberg Sven Eliaesson Janusz Mucha Irmela Gorges Dick-Pels Andreas Hess Stephen-Turner Dirk Kaesler Letter from the President I make no apology for raising again for a rich variety of theories, the subject of archives for the specialisms, controversies and history of sociology. They are vital subgroups, while the increasing to our work, and this is an urgent ease of international travel has issue, for our generation of those meant that many individuals’ working on that history, even more careers cannot be understood so than it was for our predecessors. without taking cross-national Much less of our intellectual activity influences and their records into is recorded on paper, rather than on account. computer disks, and the material so So, you agree with me? That’s freely generated is probably less wonderful! But what are we going often carefully preserved. The to do about it? I think each of us computer is a wonderful tool, but the has a responsibility to take dynamic technical innovation which appropriate action in our own social leads to continual improvements in setting. What that action is will computing facilities also means that depend on local circumstances. records which rely on it are However, we can all keep key continually becoming outdated. papers of our own, in decent order. (One of my sadder research That means not throwing things experiences was to track down with away, and printing a copy of what’s triumph an archive of the early days on our computer for the filing of an organisation of sociologists, cabinet before deleting the only to find that it was on ‘floppy computer file. We can also urge disks’ which really were floppy - so colleagues, especially those about no machine was now available on to move or retire, to do the same, which I could read them!) and perhaps offer them our help in making decisions helpful to the In addition, the great expansion of future historian. I have argued sociology in the 1960s now means elsewhere that, as sociologists, we that exceptional numbers of those need to pay more attention in our who took part in it have recently historical work to ordinary retired, or are about to retire very sociologists, and to the social soon - and will be thinking of structures in which they participate. vacating their offices, moving to A history of sociology which was smaller or more convenient houses, only the history of its outstanding and throwing out their papers. The individual figures would not even growth of the discipline within allow us to understand them and national systems has allowed space their work. We are not all Max 2 Weber but, despite Weber’s Internet is the answer to all her importance, sociology has not been financial problems. If there is, stationary since his time. Besides formally or informally, a national the records held by individuals, the centre for the archives of the social offices of university departments sciences, that may be the suitable recipient of at least some papers, and can probably provide valuable can be the repository of many advice; if there is not, maybe steps papers of institutional relevance, can be taken to encourage creation and those in charge may have no of one? Those are other arenas in reason to be interested in a more which we may press for policies to distant future than the one of daily meet historical needs. However, concern for administrative purposes. everything cannot be kept; Teaching materials have been decisions need to be made on neglected in existing archives, priorities, and on strategies of despite their significance for systematic sampling from what is understanding how issues have available. I hope that we will been defined and what has been discuss this further in RCHS, and taken for granted or treated as that we might develop guidelines to important, and many of those may be taken back to our local be kept in departmental offices. We situations. I urge members to write can all check our departmental in to the newsletter with accounts of policy. successful policies, useful funding sources, special problems, etc. so If papers are to be kept, where? that we may all learn more about The answer may be an institutional what needs to be done and what archive, probably in the university can be done. library. There a ‘modern’ librarian Jennifer Platt may be primarily concerned with undergraduates, and think that the Mid-term Conference: Marienthal Proposal Suggested dates: at this time and isn't in its final Thursday May 20 as arrival day, overloaded weeks. 21st and 22nd as conference days Christian Fleck and Sunday 23rd as departing day from Proposed Sessions (other Marienthal (or as an additional half suggestions may be provided in day opportunity). the next newsletter) Notes: May 20 is a Catholic holiday in Sociological teaching and textbooks Austria and other Catholic countries, What are the traditions of curriculum like Poland, Italy etc. The US people and textbooks in different national to whom I spoke are much in favour settings, and what factors have of late May and I think the same is influenced these? (Such factors true for most of the Europeans could range from training policy for because the summer term isn't over the labour market to colonial 3 dependence, from the structure of consequences for the development international publishing to the of sociology? Topics under this boundaries of cross-national heading could be the role of linguistic or religious communities.) sociology in state systems of In particular, to what extent have education, the employment of textbooks and curricula been sociologists in government national in coverage and style and, departments and the production of where they have not been purely sociological research (broadly national, have they been defined to include e.g. some international, or perhaps followed aspects of censuses) by patterns of political hegemony? government workers, the uses If several people are interested in made by government of sociological working on this topic, it is hoped that work done outside we might (as for national government, general policies for the sociological associations at the encouragement or discouragement Montreal World Congress) produce of all or some kinds of sociological a set of papers which could develop work, etc. into a book or journal joint Irmela Gorges is prepared to publication. organise this, but would be happy if Jennifer Platt someone else volunteered to take it over. Research funding Jennifer A. Platt How has sociological research historically been funded in different The conceptual history of “Civil settings, with what balance of state Society”. and private sources? Has available Social thought is a battlefield of funding favoured certain topics, or concept formation, and concepts certain categories of researcher? form our understanding of social Have block grants been given to realities. To borrow an example universities or external research from the late Friedrich H Tenbruck: institutions, or single-project grants so called underdeveloped countries to individuals? Has access to did not exist 50 years ago – or did funding been easy, or confined to they? an elite? What have the intellectual Concepts in social science fulfill consequences of the patterns theoretical, classificatory as well as observed been? Such topics could ideological functions. That goes in be addressed from the point of view particular for “civil society”, an old of the researcher, of the funding opaque concept that became a “bat” agency, or of other bodies or the in the debate, in particular following general public. the realignment of the welfare states (Jennifer Platt would be interested and the Soviet implosion.