Opposition between professionalization and political practice in West German sociology

Science, of course, existed before the establishment of the capitalist mode of production which was dependent on the state of the material productive forces.

For the individual phases of this development see Roth and Kanzow , 1972, pp. 91-147 and Engelhardt and Hoffmann , 1974, pp. 5-27.

The common interests of the owners of various sources of income (labour, land and capital) resulting from the laws of circulation are: interest in the preservation of the source of revenue, interest in the highest possible revenue, interest in a continuous flow of revenue. That this unity of interest is a formal, structurally antagonistic one, results from the laws of surplus value production. The problem touched upon here of the relationship of surface appearance and internal structure and the mystification of the capital relationship cannot be discussed here (cf. on this, Flatow and Huisken , 1973).

It is here simply an analytical division of two forms of work in the social sciences to show shifts and changes in function. In reality both aspects exist to a greater or lesser degree in every sphere of work.

See here the study by the Marxist Project Group Bielefeld 1973 which examined the individual spheres of work of sociologists such as town or educational planning in respect of the objective functions of sociologists and actual demand.

Symptoms of this crisis of legitimation are the intensifying wage struggles, which recently have also aimed at an improvement in conditions of work, citizens' action groups as a new kind of collective dissatisfaction as well as the more individualist reactions, particularly by young people, which have developed into the so-called drug problem.

The papers by Neidhardt and Klima presented to the 17th conference of the West German Sociological Association in Kassel 1974 on the situation and development of sociological theory could unfortunately not be referred to here.

The enormous expansion of university sociology should not be forgotten. According to Lepsius, the number of sociologists working in universities has increased from 150-900 ( Lepsius , 1972, p. 17).

The university faculties of law are already beginning to react to these changes by the introduction of social science components into their courses.

See here the Habermas/Luhmann controversy (1971, 1973, 1974) particularly the approach of Habermas in "Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie?" (1971).

The theory of action and interaction, for example, makes no such claim of being a theory of society. In its application it refers less to processes of directing and planning, as in the case of system theory, but is orientated towards social therapy and fields such as crime and social work.

One indication of this development is the fact that in specialist sociological publications, historical and social philosophical questions are hardly dealt with any longer. Only the representatives on the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School remain within the sociological tradition of social philosophy.

The aim of this study was to contribute to the evaluation of the University of Bielefeld's sociology course which is characterized by practical orientation and specialisation and the concept of active professionalisation. Since the main part of this study is at the moment in the phase of being evaluated only the results of the pre-test can be included. It must further be stressed that the results have the character of examples since the number of graduates in the pre-test — 51 — is too small to allow systematic conclusions.

This must be modified by saying that the high proportion of sociologists according to the Bielefeld investigation is probably accountable for by the phase after the opening of the University of Bielefeld which led to a particularly high demand for sociologists. The fact that 50 % of Bielefeld graduates have remained around Bielefeld lends weight to this assumption.

The university career is excluded from this.

The length of employment — which was a maximum of two years in the case of the graduates in the survey — must of course be taken into consideration as a factor.

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