Among Dimitrie Gusti’s Sources of inspiration:
Women’s and Feminist Organizations as (possible) precursors of
Gustian monographic and interventionist activities
In this paper I situate, from an organizational and social perspective, women’s participation in the sociological monographic campaigns and in the social intervention activities initiated and/ or coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti. The main questions that have guided my inquiry are: What are the general social contexts and the contexts specific to social intervention and to organizational endeavors that contributed to the participation of a significant number of women in sociological research, voluntary royal student teams that performed “cultural action,” and in the preparation for the implementation of the Social Service Law? What are the organizational and social interventionist antecedents that would better explain the inclusion of some research interests predominantly associated with women’s lives and work – hitherto situated outside “legitimate” scholarly consideration – in the sociological examination and social intervention undertaken by the Bucharest Sociological School?
Thus, in my paper, I first show that women’s involvement in studies tackling the living and working conditions of Romania’s poor, especially those of women and children, and in education and social work activities was constant starting in the second half of the nineteenth century and particularly persistent during the first two decades of the twentieth century. This fundamental characteristic of women’s and feminist organizations from the Romanian provinces and later Romania, on the one hand, shows that the inclusion of women students and researchers in the Gustian school did not occur in a vacuum and that there was a history of social research undertaken by women, and, on the other hand, supports the argument that Dimitrie Gusti took up or, at least, was aware and integrated in his sociological and interventionist system research topics, objectives and strategies – at least in the areas of family, women’s lives and work, raring children, domestic industry – previously initiated and carried out by women’s and feminist organizations.
The sociological monographic campaigns, the work of voluntary royal student teams and the preparations for the implementation of the Social Service Law constituted, from the beginning, a part of a broad project of social change wherein nation building was an essential component. Thus, sociological research represented the scientific foundation, based on unmediated field investigations, of a set of social activities and interventions that was targeted at the betterment, first and foremost, of the living and working conditions of the rural population, and, to a lesser degree, of the urban one, especially towards the end of the 1920s. Conceptually and organizationally, the research and interventionist concerns of the institutions created and/ or coordinated by Dimitrie Gusti were, on the one hand, influenced by analogous activities and organizations undertaken in other countries. On the other hand, they were determined by the Romanian social, economic and political contexts and were inspired by previous social change activities carried out in the territories inhabited by Romanians. Within these latter approaches, I argue that women’s and feminist organizations and activities constituted an important source of inspiration. This aspect has so far neither been observed, nor examined in the research on the Bucharest Sociological School.
Keywords: Bucharest Sociological School; history of women’s and feminist movements; women’s history; history of sociology in Romania; Dimitrie Gusti.
