The Leap Forward: The Benefits and Challenges of the Institutionalization of Macedonian Sociology (1960s–Early 1970s)

The processes of professionalizing and institutionalizing Macedonian sociology progressed from the earliest such initiatives in the mid-1950s, the first sociological courses and empirical research in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, to the establishment of the first sociological research institute in Skopje in 1965. It took a bit more time, however, for Macedonian sociology to acquire the label of a resolute discipline and situate itself as an undisputed scientific discourse. In this chapter, I map all the major events against the background of the emerging anti-dogmatic sociology in and beyond Yugoslavia. I also highlight the episodes of cross-national sociological knowledge transfers in the 1960s and finish up with the formative sociological exchanges in Macedonia from the late 1960s and the early 1970s.