The Development and Institutionalization of Sociology as an Academic Discipline (1963–1980)

Abstract

Several characteristics of sociology in France during the 1960s contrast markedly with those observed during the preceding decade. With the creation of the Bachelor’s degree in Sociology, the subject became a fully integrated university discipline. From 1963, sociological research was largely subsidized by the centralized “Planification,” which was favourable to the growth and multiplication of research laboratories. Several reviews were founded around the beginning of the 1960s, and about a dozen books published in this period were to become classics in France. With this institutional expansion, French Sociology gained independence from neighbouring disciplines such as philosophy and the other social sciences.