`No Brains, No Initiative, No Collaboration' - The Austrian Case

Established formally in 1950, the Austrian Society of Sociology did not really exist during its first decade, though at the end of the 1950s one man entered the International Sociological Association under the guise of the Austrian Society of Sociology. In the middle of the 1960s, when the government began a reform of the university system, sociology was established as a full programme and the Society was resuscitated. At the end of the 1960s, the worldwide student movement spilled over into Austria, and self-proclaimed revolutionaries came to power. From the mid-1970s the Society became a more or less normal association: it published a journal and a newsletter, and organized annual conferences and sections for academic discussion. The time-lag between the intellectual beginnings of sociology and the establishment of the Society is remarkable. The Society does not function as a professional organization. Its influence on the university curriculum and the recruitment policies of departments has been weak, the participation of its members is poor, and its international standing is negligible. All in all, the history of the Society seems to confirm what the ex-Austrian Paul F. Lazarsfeld wrote in 1959 about the Austrian situation: `no brains, no initiative, no collaboration'.