The Contribution of Sociology to Post-communist Restoration in Lithuania

Taking our inspiration from Michael Burawoy’s analysis of the varieties of sociological labour and from Borut Rončević’s typology of the sociology roles in a society, we discuss the contribution of this social science discipline to post-communist restoration in Lithuania. Describing post-communist transformation in Lithuania as ‘restoration’, we highlight the distinctive features of post-communist social change, which Lithuania shares with other Baltic countries where restoration of state independence was the hegemonic discourse during the demise of the Soviet empire. Despite the absence of critical and public sociology in the late Soviet period, Lithuanian sociology played a strong and autonomous (activist) role in Lithuanian society for a few years (1988–1991). From 1991 to 1992, it moved to a passenger position, and since 1993, it has been struggling against marginalisation. The availability of European Union funding since 2004 enabled it to secure a voyeur role for the most time. However, it lost competition to other social scientific disciplines: study programmes in sociology attracted decreasing numbers of students. We consider the weakness of civil society in post-communist Lithuania as the ultimate cause of the weak and dependent role of sociology in this country.