An emerging discipline in a warring world: the impact of the First World War on the intellectual foundations of sociology

The outbreak of WWI was a blow to the emerging foundations of the discipline of sociology, which up to that point had largely sought to examine social and cultural patterns that were understood to go beneath and beyond the specificities of particular nation-states. The uncompromising centrality of nation-states in carrying out the war and the overwhelming ideological weight of the state-led war mobilization demanded a fundamental recalibration of pre-war sociological theories. Navigating such high stakes and uncertain consequences posed formidable personal and political challenges, while the questions raised by the war influenced established sociological views and reshaped the foundations of the new discipline. The proposed panel presents current research from an international project that systematically examines the impact of the war on the formation of sociology, and contributions of the founding figures of sociology and heterodox social theorists to the sociopolitical developments in the WWI era.