History

Rural sociology (Sociologija sela, 1963 – 2007)

‘Rural sociology’ was founded in July 1963 by a group of young Zagreb rural sociologists and agricultural economists, later known as the Zagreb school of rural sociology, at the start of the forming of the Department of rural sociology at the Institute of Agriculture. Since 1973 it was published by the Institute of Social Research in Zagreb. Rural Sociology was one of the rare specialized journals of rural sociology in the world and the oldest Croatian sociological journal. It reflected the fundamental problems of the Croatian rural areas and agriculture and was involved in the development of rural sociology. It was a scientific journal that publishes original scientific and professional articles of national and international authors in the field of rural sociology and related disciplines, reviews of national and international journals, conferences and books. The journal also had two occasional chapters: “From our rural past” and “Our translation”. The latter featured articles by the most prominent international rural sociologists or results of important rural sociological research. Since 1998 the concept of the journal was further developed and the profile better defined so the journal got a subtitle “Journal for research of spatial and socio-cultural development” and afterwards it published sociological and related disciplines articles. The journal was published every three months and ended its publication with 174 issues. In 2007, after 43 years of publishing, ‘Rural Sociology’ changed its name to ‘Sociology and Space’. The reason for this change is the attempt to broaden the topics of the articles that we wanted to publish, since the interest in the scientific area of rural sociology has slowly had its decline. Changing the title of the journal into Sociology and Space, journal’s editorial board with the editor in chief wanted to include wider area of scientists to participate in the journal’s work with the topics that relate to the analysis of spatial dimensions. The reason for this is that sociological analyses oriented towards specific social segments (education, knowledge, youth, religion, gender, culture, etc.) are in often relation with spatial elements. Therefore, we invite new authors to publish their works but also invite authors that have participated in journal’s work with the topics concerning rural sociology to continue publishing in ‘Sociology and Space’.