Paradigms and vicissitudes in the perspectives of 20th century Nordic sociology
Both as regards its own development and its cultural impact 20th century was an era of sociology. There was, however, in the central focuses considerable vicissitudes, clearly observable in the sociology of the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. The de-velopmental patterns can be divided into three periods: (1) an emphasis on evolution and evolutionary explanations of social behavior up to the First World War, (2) a during most of the century prevailing dominance of a sociology emphasizing socialization and societies as wholes with their social structure, normative rules and social func-tions, and (3) at the end of the century an emerging rise of a new view of social life with an accentuation of uncer-tainty, agency, and semiotic interpretation. The institu-tionalization of Nordic academic sociology occurred in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s.
Towards the end of this period reorientations and protests against the prevailing sociology began to emerge. The dominant research interests today may be summed up in the following four orientations:cultural sociology with an emphasis on semiotic constructions of reality, feminist studies with a special interest in gendered experiences of women, studies of the conditions of the Nordic welfare state, and historically oriented macro social science with a focus on large-scale both European and global trans-formations.
