Johdanto: Suomalaisen sosiologian institutionalisoituminen ja The Westermarck Society

The introduction to this volume on the history of The Westermarck Society – the professional and scientific organization of Finnish sociologists – begins by an outline of the field of Finnish sociology at the time of the society’s foundation (1940), and then examines the role it played in the development of the discipline. A preliminary overview of the volume’s contents follows. In the early decades of Finland’s independence, Finnish sociology began to institutionalize through the establishment of personal professorships at the University of Turku, the University of Helsinki and Åbo Akademi University. All three professors were students of Edward Westermarck (1867–1939).
The Westermarck Society was founded in Turku in 1940 for the purposes of cherishing Westermarck’s memory and continuing his scientific work. However, as the field of sociology expanded and diversified in the 1950s, the Society’s goals changed: it became a society for all Finnish sociologists. Still in the early 1970s, an attempt was made to strengthen the position of Marxism in sociology using the Society as a bridgehead, but such ambitions soon came to nothing when board members started to be elected according to proposals from the sociology departments of universities. The position of editor-in-chief of the Society’s scientific journal, Sosiologia, and the organization of the annual Sociologists’ Days
started to rotate between different university locations. There was
no longer any power entity within the Society from which sociology’s
contents or political implications could have been steered.
Decentralization, delegation, the constant renewal of the board,
and the abandonment of attempts to define the discipline have
contributed to the continued vitality of the Westermarck Society.