The state-sponsored and centralised institutionalisation of an academic discipline: Sociology in South Africa, 1920–1970

Abstract

Abstract This paper is the first of a two-part article. It is an exploratory attempt to expand our understanding of the organization of sociological knowledge within both the university and extra-university sectors in South Africa and the state's key role in that process. It tracks the institutional development of the discipline within the state's universities, as well as the centralised bureaucratic mechanisms of state power through which social research was commissioned, funded, practised and monitored. It outlines the three major ethnically and racially separate streams of sociology in the university system and identifies the key academic groupings and individuals involved. Similarly, the establishment and the role of highly centralised, state-sponsored and organized insitutions is traced, thereby showing how state agencies have co-ordinated, shaped and directed the actual content of sociological research.