Neither “bourgeois” nor “communist” science: Sociology in communist and post-communist Albania

Abstract

Abstract In most parts of communist Eastern Europe there has been some tradition of sociology. This was not the case in Albania where sociology was totally excluded from the university curriculum, as well as from the foci of scientific research, during the years of communist authoritarian rule. The beginning of the democratic movement in Albania in 1990 that was followed by the establishment of a multiparty system and the first free elections in 1991 raised many hopes for social scientists and seemed to provide new opportunities for sociological research and for sociology to develop as an academic discipline. However, the four-to-five year term of the new Democratic administration has, so far, given little proof that things can become ordered easily and quickly. On the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that ideas reminiscent of the old communist days are prevailing and a new form of authoritarian rule is emerging, putting the democratization process at risk. Once “outlawed” by the communists as a bourgeois science, sociology in Albania is again “outlawed,” today regarded by the anti-communists as a “communist” science. The closing of the newly-formed Faculty of Sociology by the current government in 1992 was an unfortunate, undemocratic, and misplaced effort to politicize the very fragile system of higher education, and social studies in particular, in the aftermath of the fall of communism in Albania.