Too Thinly Spread? The Effects of the Rockefeller Foundation Funding on Czechoslovak Social Sciences, 1924-1948

• In Event: 592 - Section on History of Sociology Paper Session. Using Sociological Archives

Abstract

The role of the Rockefeller Foundation in sponsoring the growth of social sciences in the interwar period has been widely documented in the historiography of sociology in the United States and major Western European countries. This paper which is based on the archival documents from the Rockefeller Archive Center and Czech National Archive studies the influence of the RF on sociology and other social sciences in interwar Czechoslovakia. It is argued that RF funding was important given the relative lack of institutionalization of social sciences in Czechoslovakia, but it failed to achieve its principal objectives. The RF provided two forms of support: individual fellowships and grants for specific research projects awarded to institutions. The effects of fellowships are analyzed using the collective biography method applied by Christian Fleck to German-speaking fellows. The analysis of professional careers of Czechoslovak fellows demonstrates that the RF’s objective to promote empirical social research by supporting able individuals who would occupy influential academic positions in their country was thwarted by conservative academic climate and hostile political circumstances. The fellows produced some significant research work, but the country’s fledgling structures for the social sciences were too slow to develop. The RF grants for specific projects were awarded to the Czechoslovak Social Institute, and although they were small, the RF’s support played an important role as a symbolic asset which the partisans of empirical social research could use in their - unsuccessful, again - effort to enhance the organizational basis of social sciences.

Author

• Marek Skovajsa, Charles University Prague