Anton Golopenţia, contributions to the reconfiguration of the Gusti’s School activity in the 30s. An interdisciplinary approach.
Author: Bondor, Adriana C, adriana@ommani.ro
Department: Sociology
University: University of Bucharest, Romania
Supervisor: PhD, Professor Zoltan Rostas
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: Romanian
Keywords:
history of sociology
, interwar period
, Anton Golopenția
, Romanian Sociology
Areas of Research:
History of Sociology
, Historical and Comparative Sociology
, Theory
Abstract
The phenomenon we generally choose to name The Sociological School from Bucharest is certainly a challenging research project and in the same time full of resources for a better understanding not only of the interwar history, but also of the evolution of sociology in Romania and of the manner it was understood afterwards. As a way of working, the most appropriate is, from our point of view, the one that implies a research of specific subjects, step by step, each arising from previous research topic and connecting them like pieces of a puzzle with other researches in the same category.
The choice of the research topic is primarily determined by the need to reinterpret the interwar period in Romania, an approach that is currently enjoying several lines of development. This context is also favorable for a review of the place Anton Golopenţia had within the Sociological School of Bucharest.
Furthermore, the collaboration covers a period of 10 years, in which Anton Golopenţia closely contributed to the School’s activities and the one linked to these. Since autumn 1930 he took the courses of the Seminar of Sociology, Ethics and Politics, coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti and Henri H. Stahl, and since November 1930 he is named librarian within the Department of Sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters in Bucharest. In 1931 he participated in the monographic campaign in Cornova (presently in Republic of Moldavia), and between June 1932 and November 1933 he performed the duties of head of cabinet during Dimitrie Gusti’s ministry within the Ministry of Instruction, Arts and Culture. After he took his PhD in Germany, between 1933 and 1936, as a Humboldt and Rockefeller scholar, he returned in Romania. In this period he was director within the Romanian Social Institute, editorial secretary and afterwards editor of the journal “Romanian Sociology” and inspector at the Royal Foundation “Prince Charles” until 1940, and honorary assistant at the Department of Sociology. In the last part of the period (1940 - 1948) until the political context forced him to resign, Anton Golopenţia worked within the Central Institute of Statistics.
In each of the periods shortly described above, Anton Golopenţia was actively involved, fulfilling key responsibilities both administratively, theoretically and methodologically. This complex and resourceful activity fully justifies our research theme. Moreover, the research develops based on a wider context of the Romanian interwar period reinterpretation, from a historical, sociological, political and ideological perspective.
