EPISTEMIC ENCOUNTERS: SOCIAL SCIENCES AND THE RETHINKING OF URBAN PLANNING POLICIES IN THE EARLY 1970S ROMANIA

Mara MARGINEAN

doi:10.2478/subbs-2020-0007

Authors

Mara MARGINEAN Senior researcher at George Baritiu Institute of History, Cluj-Napoca, email: mara-marginean@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2354-7386

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/subbs-2020-0007

Keywords:

social sciences; urban planning; transnational; knowledge production; the 1970s Romania

Abstract

This article aims to conduct a case study on urban planning models drawn by social scientists in 1970s Romania. It looks at the trans-national channels of knowledge circulation and reconstructs specialists’ role in creating new bridges of cooperation between the first and second world. It also analyzes the gradual re-signification of these ideas locally as part of the socialist state development project. More precisely, it wants to answer three intertwined questions: To what extent did the trans-nationalization of knowledge in the late 1960s determine a particular approach to urban planning in Romania? What does this tell us about local professional practices’ autonomy? Which was the international relevance of Romanian social sciences’ practice? The article contributes to an emerging scholarship on the genealogy of these ideas by placing the transnational debates of the late 1960s and early 1970s consumed under the umbrella of various international organizations, such as the ISA and the UN, in conversation with an intellectual tradition dating back to the interwar period.

References

Bădina, Ovidiu (1970). Tineret rural 68. [Rural youth 68]. Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR.

Bădina, Ovidiu (1972). Tineret rural: Participare și acțiune socială. [Rural youth: Participation and social action]. Bucharest: Editura Academiei RSR.

Bădina, Ovidiu (ed.) (1975). Tineretul și societatea noastră socialistă. [Our youth and our socialist society]. Buchrest: Editura Academiei RSR.

Ban, Cornel (2014). Dependență și dezvoltare: O economie politică a capitalismului românesc. [Dependence and development: A political economy of Romanian capitalism]. Cluj-Napoca: Tact.

Bosomitu, Stefan (2015). Miron Constantinescu. O bibliografie. [Miron Constantinescu. A bibliography]. Bucuresti: Humanitas.

Ceaușescu, Nicolae (1972). România pe drumul construirii societății socialiste multilateral dezvoltate. Rapoarte, cuvântări, articole. Mai 1971-februarie 1972. [Romania on the road to building a multilaterally developed socialist society. Reports, speeches, articles. May 1971-February 1972]. Bucuresti: Editura Politică.

Chepeș, Gheorghe (1971). Reflecții ale unui sociolog pe marginea sistematizării ca disciplină și acțiune. [Reflections of a sociologist on systematization as a discipline and action]. Arhitectura RSR [Architectura SRS], 1: 57.

Christian, Michael, Sandrine Kott, Ondřej Matějka (ed) (2018). Planning in Cold War Europe. Competition, Cooperation, Circulations (1950s–1970s). Berlin: De Gruyter.

Constantinescu, Miron (1971). Cercetări sociologice, 1938-1971. [Sociological research, 1938-1971]. București: Editura Academiei RSR.

Cooper, Richard N. (2010). Economic aspects of the Cold War, 1962-1975. In The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. II, Crises and Detente, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Cotoi, Calin (2011). Sociology and Ethnology in Romania: The Avatars of Social Sciences in Socialist Romania. In Sociology and Ethnography in East-Central and South East Europe: Scientific Self-Description in State Socialist Countries, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer, Claudia Kraft et al. Munchen: Oldenbourg Verlag.

Dobos, Corina (2020). Between Statistics, Demography, and Monographic Research:

Gh. Retegan (1916–1998), A(nother) Sociologist Without A Sociology. Studia UBB Sociologia, 65 (LXV), 1: 5-42.

Ellman, Michael (2014). Socialist Planning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ferguson, Niall, Charles S. Maiers, Erez Manela and Daniel J. Sargent (ed.) (2010). The Schock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective. Cambridge Mas: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010.

Granick, David (1975). Enterprise Guidance in Eastern Europe. A Comparison of Four Socialist Economies. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Guga, Stefan (2015). Sociologia istorică a lui Henry Stahl. [The historical sociology of Henry Stahl]. Cluj-Napoca: Tact.

Harvey, David (1991). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Cambridge MA & Oxford: BLACKWELL.

Hâncu, Adela and Viktor Karady (ed.) (2018). Social Sciences in the “Other Europe” since 1945. Budapest: CEU Press.

Hohmann, Hans-Herman (1982). Economic reform in the 1970s - policy with no alternative. In The East European Economies in the 1970s, ed. Alec Nove, Hans-Hermann Hohmann and Gertraud Seidenstecher. London: Butterworth & Co.

Iriye, Akira, Petra Goedde and William I. Hitchcock (2012). The Human Rights Revolution: An International History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Jolly, Richard, Louis Emmerij, Dharam Ghai, and Frédéric Lapeyre (2004). UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Marginean, Mara (2015). Ferestre spre furnalul rosu: Urbanism și cotidian în Hunedoara și Călan, 1945-1968. [Windows to the red furnace: Urbanism and everyday life in Hunedoara and Călan, 1945-1968]. Iasi: Polirom.

Mark, James, Bogdan C. Iacob, Tobias Rupprecht and Ljubica Spaskovska (ed.) (2019). 1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Murgescu, Bogdan (2010). România și Europa: Acumularea decalajelor economice. [Romania and Europe: Accumulation of economic gaps]. Iași: Polirom.

Murphy, Craig N. (2006). The United Nations Development Programme. A Better Way?. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Petrovici, Norbert (2017). The Politics of Mobilizing Local Resources for Growth: ‘Urban Areas’ in Romania. Studia UBB Sociologia, 62 (LXII), 1: 37-64.

Platt, Jenifer and Immanuel Wallerstein (1998). A brief History of ISA: 1948-1997. Madrid: International Sociological Association.

Pula, Besnik (2018). Globalization Under and After Socialism. The Evolution of Transnational Capital in Central and Eastern Europe. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Romano, Angela and Federico Romero (ed.) (2021). European Socialist Regimes’ Fateful Engagement with the West. National Strategies in the Long 1970s. Abington, New York: Routledge.

Rubinson, Paul (2012). «For our Soviet colleagues»: Scientific Internationalism, Human Rights, and the Cold War. In The Human Rights Revolution. An International History, ed. Akira Iriye, Petra Goedde, and William I. Hitchcock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Solovey, Mark and Hamilton Cravens (ed.) (2012). Cold War Social Science: Knowledge Production, Liberal Democracy, and Human Nature. New York: Palgrave.

Stahl H. H. (1969). Organizarea administrativ-teritorială. [Administrative-territorial organization]. Bucharest: Editura Știintifică.

Rostas, Zoltan (2000). Monografia ca utopie: interviuri cu Henri H. Stahl (1985-1987). [Monograph as a utopia: interviews with Henri H. Stahl (1985-1987)]. Bucharest: Padeia.

Verdery, Katherine (1996). What was socialism and what comes next? Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Zamfir, Cătălin, and Iancu Filipescu (ed.) (2015). Sociologia românească: 1900-2010: O istorie socială. [Romanian sociology: 1900-2010: A social history]. Cluj-Napoca: Eikon.