BOOK REVIEW. ‟SOCIOLOGIA ISTORICĂ A LUI HENRI H. STAHL” [THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF HENRY H. STAHL] BY ȘTEFAN GUGA. CLUJ-NAPOCA: TACT PUBLISHING HOUSE, 2015, 387 P.

Abstract

Henri H. Stahl is widely perceived as one of the most prominent Romanian sociologists. Yet, for all of the ostensible congruence in evaluating his oeuvre, there is plenty of space for a book such as Ștefan Guga’s, which engages substantially Stahl’s intellectual production throughout his long career. In fact, this analysis is necessary to understand the extent to which Stahl - the great sociologist is a label that covers a multitude of positions towards his work, many of them oversimplifying, driven by an agenda and at times plainly misled. Over the last couple of decades, Stahl has been recovered by sociologists and social historians in Romania primarily as a crucial member of the Gusti School and one of the key social researchers of the interwar period. While this is not inaccurate, it is also far from a fair representation of Stahl’s contribution to sociology, considering the span of his career, the width of his research interests, the originality of his theoretical insights, and the relevance of his analyses for the global debates in the social sciences in the second half of the 20^th century. Guga sets himself the task of overviewing the symbolic struggles around Stahl post-1989 before proceeding to a thorough investigation of his work and looking into its sources and its impact.