ABSTRACT
The roots of sociology in the Netherlands go back a century to the sociographic work of S.R. Steinmetz (1862–1940). The sociographic objective was ‘the description of social life in all its aspects and in various settings’ (Laeyendecker 1990: 221). In the first half of the twentieth century many sociographic case studies were written describing in great detail life in villages, neighbourhoods and regions, as well as specific groups. This empirical orientation had a substantial influence on the development of Dutch sociology after the Second World War, when some of Steinmetz’s students added a theoretical sociological perspective to this tradition. Most of the institutional history of Dutch sociology can be located after 1945. In the 1950s and 1960s, the sociological discipline became rooted in all Dutch universities, with chairs being established and growing numbers of students and staff. Its popularity reached a high point in the early 1970s, before entering a period of social criticism and severe budget cuts in the 1980s. Dutch sociology went through a period of decline which lasted until the turn of the millennium. At that time there were only six Dutch universities offering a sociology curricula. Since then, a modest revival of sociology appears to have been under way in the Netherlands.
