Conclusion

Abstract

In this book, Baudry Rocquin compared the different versions of sociology in the two countries and the differential success of the British and French disciplines in building on their pre-war foundations. Rocquin makes a number of stimulating suggestions about the factors responsible for intellectual success and failure, and, rather controversially, argues that Britain was more successful than France in developing its sociological work in empirical studies. If both countries were affected by the same problems throughout the interwar years, they ended with two different solutions in the guise of sociologie and social anthropology. If the French won the first hand, their monopoly was increasingly called into question in the 1920s and 1930s. The British sociological field was always divided between a nativist, Idealist approach following Hobhouse and an internationalist, pro-Continent version following Geddes. The divide is still somehow relevant to understand the present sociological situation.