Mattei Dogan's affiliation with Romanian sociology (1990-2000)

Abstract

The article reconstructs the mechanisms through which the work of the French scholar of Romanian origin, Mattei Dogan was brought to light in Romania after 1990 thanks to the efforts of the community of sociologists. Romanian sociologists used three methods to assimilate the author who is considered the founder of comparative political analysis and who left Romania immediately after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in sociology under Henri H. Stahl supervision: they translated Dogan’s articles and books, they made him a member of prestigious institutions and they included him in the post-communist effort to reclaim the legacy of the school founded by Dimitrie Gusti. To capture the institutional and editorial strategies that were used, I conducted interviews with several protagonists of the Romanian sociology renaissance movement. I also used epistolary resources, sociology and political science journals, press articles, as well as documents from the archives of the University of Bucharest and from the Mattei Dogan Foundation. The article shows the success of some methods and the failure of others. It also brings to light a text that was ignored in the studies and bibliographies that discuss the work of the scholar who was born in Roman in 1920 and who went by the name of Matei Pinsler until 1945 (Preda, 2020). This research paper is relevant for various reasons. Firstly, it complements not only the biography of Dogan, but also that of Henri H. Stahl. Furthermore, it highlights the trajectory of a discipline in a period of dissociation with the communist past while restoring the connections with the interwar period.