Abstract
The article explores the challenges of globalization processes for the development of national sociologies and shows that a view from the ‘edge’ can aid our understanding of these global shifts and their articulation with local structures and practices of ‘doing sociology’. The article identifies the close link between government and the development of sociology within Aotearoa/New Zealand as government has been the chief source of funds for both research and tertiary education. Extensive reforms through the 1980s and 1990s to research funding and tertiary education are examined and shown to have created a more competitive model and increasingly given priority to creating ‘knowledge’ for commercial and end-user development. For sociology, end-users have been largely government, so the reworking here has been principally about the renewed emphasis upon the evidencebased research and policy agenda. Such an agenda has largely focused on sociology, along with other social sciences, as suppliers of technical competencies and thus led to increased emphasis on multidisciplinarity. The consequences for the shape of sociology are traced and the tensions and dilemmas facing the future of its national sociology are outlined.
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