Newsletter - Social Science in Eastern Europe 2001- 3
Scientific Networks
Collegium Budapest Social Science Project Supported by the European
Commission
Collegium Budapest, a European Centre of Excellence, has launched an
ambitious project entitled `The State of Three Social Science Disciplines in
Central and Eastern Europe' (acronym: SSCEE).
Assessing the `state of the art' is a necessary step towards the construction
of an operational network of social scientists in Europe on the way to
integration. The rector of Collegium Budapest invited Max Kaase (International
University, Bremen) to lead the project, with the assistance of Mihaly Csako
(Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest) and Vera Sparschuh (InformationsZentrum
Sozialwissenschaften, Berlin). The project has attracted the interest of social
scientists in Western and Eastern European countries alike and finally obtained
support from the EU Fifth Framework Programme: `Improving Human Research
Potential and the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base' - Accompanying Measures.
Preliminary talks started as early as July 2000, when M. Csako met M. Kaase
in Berlin. Ulrike Becker, InformationsZentrum Sozialwis-senschaften, Abteilung
Informationstransfer Osteuropa in der GESIS Aussenstelle (Berlin), representing
an institution with an excellent reputation for collecting information on the
structure and development of the social sciences in Europe, also joined the
project.
In October 2000, Collegium Budapest convened a group of social scientists
from CEE and EU countries, representing reputed international institutions in
the social sciences: John Smith from the Institut für die Wissenschaft vom
Menschen (Vienna), Catherine Colliot-Thelene, Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin), Ulrike
Becker, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Wissenschaftszentrum für Sozialforschung (WZB)
(Berlin), Pal Tamas, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Sorin Antohi, CEU.
Fellows of Collegium Budapest representing several social sciences also took
part in the seminar. The participants discussed the idea and the first draft of
the project. They agreed that one project could not embrace all the social
sciences and all the countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The scope of the
project should therefore be limited to selected disciplines or topics and to
selected countries. Several approaches to accomplish the selection were
discussed. After a long debate it was agreed that (a) economics, political
science, and sociology will be covered in the form of country reports by
selected rapporteurs, and (b) `Central and Eastern Europe' will be
operationalised as the ten so-called `EU accession countries'. National reports
will be supported by the information collected by a questionnaire from IZ
Sozialwissenschaften and completed by selected national rapporteurs. Even so,
this kind of systematic analysis requires good coordination and a deep
understanding of the goals of the project. An interim Workshop in October 2001
(10-12) is foreseen to unite all the participants for a first exchange of ideas
and discussion of the national reports by discipline and country. The
rapporteurs will be asked to address the following topics in their articles:
analysis of the situation before the transformation (until 1989); status and
development of the discipline 1990-2000, from both the synchronic and the
diachronic perspective; thematic orientation; core theoretical and
methodological approaches, core research methods; international co-operation;
funding situation; ideas about further development. The reports will be passed
over to discussants with a view to improving the content. With regard to the
comprehensiveness of the reports, discussants, preferably from other
institutions and research orientations will comment the papers by the
rapporteurs.
After the requisite preparations, Collegium Budapest presented an application
for European support in December 2000 and continued making preparations while
awaiting the Brussels decision. A meeting was held in February 2001 with the
participation of M. Csako, J. J. Hesse (Berlin), G. Klaniczay, A. Kurylev (St.
Petersburg), I. Mozny (Brno), P. Sztompka (Kracow), and V. Sparschuh at
Collegium Budapest. They discussed the problem of disciplines and the analytical
dimensions, while Edouard Conte, anthropologist (Paris), stressed the importance
of setting up a real network integrating social scientists in both Western and
Eastern Europe. A list of possible participants by country and discipline has
been drawn up and updated.
Several efforts have been undertaken to analyse the situation of the social
sciences in CEE, but a comprehensive `orientation map' concerning the East
European research area is still missing. Therefore, this Collegium Budapest
project can be regarded as an important step towards establishing pertinent
features of this map and paving the way to more work aiming at the creation of
an extensive overview. On this basis important points found on this map will be
analysed: the purpose of the conference in January 2002 is discussion of the
results contained in the final drafts of the country reports. Besides the
detailed discussion on the three disciplines in the ten countries, the
conference is designed to synthesise the findings with other available evidence
and thereby contribute a new encompassing view, including considerations on
other social science disciplines. To achieve this goal, representatives from
social science fields not studied in detail within the framework of the project
(for instance, anthropology, demography, geography, history, law) will also be
invited. Thus, the January conference should produce a truly comparative and
interdisciplinary assessment of the state of the social sciences in Central and
Eastern Europe. The conference is not only expected to constitute and promote an
integrated European research network, but should also help to link people from
different countries, institutional backgrounds, and disciplines
While the two conferences are the core of the project they will hopefully
also serve to further dissemination of ideas and results. The papers will
constitute a handbook containing all the country and disciplinary reports.
Collegium Budapest hopes the handbook will become a reference book for everybody
around the world who is interested in the social sciences in Central and Eastern
Europe. The contents of the book will also (after six months) be put on the
Internet and this database is expected to be developed as `work-in-progress'.
All the information collected to form the basis of the national discipline
reports will be gathered into a database maintained by the IZ Berlin in
collaboration with CB (and hopefully the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme). This
database will be further developed after the project and will continue as a
living database to serve the social science community in Europe. In this way the
project can also be expected to have a long-term impact.
In a letter of 26 April 2001 the Research Directorate General of the European
Commission formally notified Collegium Budapest that the SSCEE project would be
supported.
Mihaly Csako/Vera Sparschuh
|
 |
|
Issue