Sociologen op het land. Naoorlogse Nederlandse sociologie en praktijk

Samenvatting

Sociology in the Countryside: Dutch Postwar Sociology in Practice. Dutch postwar sociology used to present itself as a typical intervention science, inspired by pragmatic US sociologists and aimed toward understanding and changing society. To establish whether, how, and with what results theoretical knowledge was actually applied in the field, social policies in the so-called Dutch development areas (eg, underdeveloped, rural areas with high unemployment rates) in the 1950s and 1960s are examined. Industrialization policies developed for these areas were accompanied by active social policies to ease the transition into employment and thus limit the social consequences of industrialization. A discussion of the diffusion vs translation or transformation models for application of sociological knowledge is followed by a reconstruction of the social policy carried out in three villages. It is found that sociological knowledge and ideas did indeed reach the local level, but these ideas were translated in other ways than originally meant. Three translation mechanisms are distinguished: selective use of scientific insights, fitting ideas into existing organizational patterns, and specification or rewriting of scientific notions and results. 48 References. Adapted from the source document.