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This paper discusses the content of the cadre file of Henri H. Stahl preserved in the Archives of the University of Bucharest’s Rectorate. In the form in which it has been preserved after 1989, the personnel file of H.H. Stahl seems, from several points of view, atypical. If we compare it with the cadre files of the 1950s, it surprises by the apparent “goodwill” of the communist cadres towards H.H. Stahl. This ideological solicitude is manifested in the interpretation given to main cultural and political events in H.H. Stahl’s life. In other circumstances such political past could be labeled as unusable in a communist context. Equally curious and noteworthy is the issue of the ethnic origin attributed (and not necessarily real or assumed by the one described in the file), more precisely the issue of Stahl’s nationality ( Jewish) which was recorded in the file. Analyzing Stahl cadre file we can wonder if the integrity of this dossier has not been compromised by removing, extracting or modifying documents by the personel staff services or by someone else. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses letters – some unpublished – from the mid-1940s and the second half of the 1970s exchanged by Mattei Dogan and Henri H. Stahl, to render the way sociological education was organized at the University of Bucharest immediately after the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper assesses the intellectual profile of Romanian ethnologist Mihai Pop, from the doublefold perspective of theoretical thinking and institutional work in his field. Lettered in Russian Formalism and Czech Structuralism during the inter-war period, Mihai Pop managed to accomplish his formation in a remarkable structuralist-semiotic setting in postwar Romania, in a theoretical stance which remained singular in Romanian research during communism and acquired a well-deserved international recognition. Among others, this stance enabled Mihai Pop to rebuild the domain of Romanian Folklore studies, after the 1948 education reform, and safeguard the field against ideologization, which was about to return in full force after 1971 and after his 1975 retirement . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing interest in decolonizing Sociology. Yet, there is no agreed upon definition of what this entails. In this essay I address two questions related to the decolonizing sociology effort. The first one is whether sociology has a mainstream and, if so, how can we describe it? In discussing this question, I also address the relationship between sociology and science. The second question is how do we go about decolonizing the discipline? I present the outlines of a proposal to decolonize sociology’s methodologies and practices and I also discuss the differences between alternative approaches and the question of what labels should we use. I don’t presume to have definitive answers to these questions. I offer these reflections as a contribution to the effort of rethinking sociology, a process that needs to be a collective endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines W.E.B. Du Bois’s general sociological theory and literary activity in connection to the recent study of Jose Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown, The Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois. Racialized Modernity and the Global Color Line. It describes the role of Double Consciousness and Racialized Modernity within postcolonial and decolonial theory and explains how postcolonial Romanian studies have engaged with postcolonial theory by avoiding these concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of Czech sociology is inevitably connected with the political history of the Czech nation. The national awakening and the national affirmation of the Czech people at the end of the 19th century coincides with the genesis of the Czech sociology, promoted by its first master, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, who viewed sociology as the key scientific tool in the formation of Czech nation and state. The peculiar philosophical and moralist approach to sociology promoted by no less than the state president stimulated and in the same time hindered the development of the interwar Czech sociology, which established its basic institutional layout before WWII. The German occupation and the short transitory of "popular democracy" was followed by years of abolishment, until the gradual restoration and powerful revival of sociology in the second half of the sixties, which designated sociology as the motor of the Prague Spring of 1968. During the neo-Stalinist normalization era the institutional settings were largely maintained, but emptied, unless the Velvet Revolution of 1989 opened up a new era for the discipline. The third institutionalization started with a welcome upgrade and institutional renewal, after the EU-integration ending up in a highly pluralized, fragmented and professional domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]