SEMINAR: CURRICULARS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES IN GREECE

Between the two pillars, Legal Science and History, which define and frame them, next to Economics but also including them, the social sciences found ground to flourish during the 20th century and became established as the sciences that study the individual. and society, social realities and human groups. Sociology and Political Science, Demography and Geography, Education Science and Social Psychology, Anthropology, form a set of disciplines that seek to understand and interpret aspects of social life and human activity.

In our country the social sciences are currently treated in a number of universities and colleges of the same name, as well as in research centers, including the National Center for Social Research (EKKE). In fact, their existence, no matter how degraded nowadays, is considered stable and self-evident. However, little is known about their history and prehistory.

What paths did the social sciences follow in 20th century Greece? Which stream of European thought mainly influenced the people who served them? When and how were they institutionalized as scientific disciplines and established as autonomous research fields and objects? How has the research landscape evolved since the late 1950s, and what terms defined the trends in social research both during the military dictatorship and in the post-colonial years?

Answers to these questions are attempted to give for the first time three cycles of "open" seminars organized by the National Center for Social Research on the history of social sciences in Greece, defining its own role in social research.

The first cycle, the spring semester of 2017, focuses on the period of social science institutionalization from the beginning of the 20th century until the dictatorship in 1967. During it, historians, anthropologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists and anthropographers discuss the processes that contributed to the development and establishment of the social sciences in Greece. The shaping of the subjects, the influences from abroad, the institutionalization of the first chairs in the universities and the higher schools are issues that concern the seminar along with the political and social realities that contributed equally to different types of research hierarchies. closes the critical decade 1940-50, as well as the difficult post-civil war but also productive seventeen years 1950-67.

The establishment and operation of research centers in the late 1950s, including the Athens Center for Social Sciences (KKEA), are indications of the modernization trajectory that Greece intends to follow, while at the same time being safe steps for its integration into the European research landscape. Under the auspices of UNESCO and under its auspices, the KKEA houses the searches of Greek and foreign social scientists, laying the foundations for the consolidation of empirical social research, which will experience a first boom, mainly from 1964 to 1967, before being stopped prematurely by the imposition of military dictatorship.

The second cycle, spring semester of 2018, focuses on the period of the seven-year military dictatorship (1967-1974) and monitors what is recorded during it in the "sensitive" field of social sciences. If the beginning of the "new era" is symbolically declared by the persecution and dismissal of part of the teaching and research staff, the seminar highlights the scope and different levels of control and repression in the research area.

The new institutional framework is also examined, in which the transition from the "Athens Center for Social Sciences" to the "National Center for Social Research" takes place in 1968, the new research currents that find expression in the newly established EKKE and the fate of research projects and collaborations that were still in progress in the days of dictatorship. At the same time, the directions in which the research / scientific activity of those social scientists who preferred to leave the country continued abroad are sought, but the conditions for teaching social sciences in the "supervised" Greek universities.

Seeking to shed light on the different levels of penetration of the regime and especially the peculiar situation in which the social sciences found themselves precisely because the dictatorship intervened in search of legitimacy and creating foundations, we watch the picture that shows, within the bans, the Greek publishing landscape - especially in the field of social sciences, the scientific fields in which the publishing activity of EKKE moves, and the coordinates of the newly established Social Research Inspectorate. This cycle concludes with a public debate by representatives of various research bodies on "Research and Dictatorship".

The third cycle, spring semester 2019, focuses on the new horizons that open up for the social sciences and social research in the regime change years, especially in the first critical twenty years. If the "disengagement" in Greek universities was determined by the dynamics of the active anti-dictatorship student movement, in the field of research centers it was determined by the ambiguities of the public administration and the connections with politics. In the "sensitive" area of ​​social research, in particular, the demand for decontamination was linked to a crisis and was exhausted on the terms of the critical transition.

The seminar independently examines the different periods associated with the emergence of new institutional frameworks for research and the "explosion" of the social sciences in the post-colonial years. We monitor the conditions for the formation of the research web in the country, the emergence of trade union representation in research centers, the proposals for dialogue between researchers with official government agencies and the representatives of political parties. As political planning is also linked to the dynamics created for research by the country's integration into the European Communities, we also monitor the different policy frameworks of social research in relation to the respective "funding packages".

EKKE and its people, administrations and research staff, find their place in this seminar cycle, depending on the respective research applicants. In the same context, we monitor the transition from informal research groups to institutionalized institutes, research production and its imprinting in the publications of EKKE in the fertile period for social research and our center during the regime change period.

Organizational Committee


Ioanna Papathanasiou, Maria Thanopoulou, Ioanna Tsiganou, Elissavet Allison, Dimitra Kondyli, Olympia Selekou


The 3 cycles have been completed. The 3 cycle programs are available here:

First cycle
Second cycle
Third cycle