Introduction

Abstract

The present volume offers a brief but comprehensive overview of the history of sociology in Sweden. After recounting its pre-war background, the book ranges from sociology’s establishment in the Swedish university system in the 1940s and 1950s, over the critical 1960s, through the crises of the 1970s and 1980s to the challenges posed by transformations in Swedish society and university organization in the 1990s and 2000s. The authors focus on scientific boundaries, gender and the relationship between sociology and the Swedish welfare state.