Zum Verschwinden der deutschen öffentlichen Soziologie

Until now, the history of sociology in Germany has concentrated on the different trends in this subject area after World War II. This focus has revealed that there was a widespread progressive movement within sociology after 1945 termed ‘applied enlightenment’ or ‘public sociology’, which rendered sociology the key academic discipline in the newly formed federal republic. This book examines the reasons why this concept has been increasingly called into question within the subject since the 1970s and why sociology has lost its once strong standing in the eyes of the public. The investigation the book conducts is therefore related to more recent discussions on the relationship between academia and the public domain, ‘open science’, ‘public sociology’, ‘science communication’ and ‘public communication of science’, which have so far insufficiently acknowledged that this is not a new development, as this study shows.