Our Perception of Sociology:
Sakarya University’s Sociology Department was established in 1993 with the aim of bringing a new meaning and perspective to the perception of sociology. This perspective is based on the thesis that social sciences, and sociology in particular, should determine its own framework with a local understanding and material, rather than being taught only via western theories and findings.
In the West, various thoughts on the social phenomena have been developed on a ground resulting from the fact that each social scientist has carried out studies limited to his own country and social structure. In particular, the shared values of the French, German, British and other western countries have enabled them to present this knowledge within their own common culture with nuances and to develop it in the direction of an intense western history and social movements.
It is a responsibility for Turkish sociology to establish a sociological approach within the scope of its own social realities, social structure and values. Studies carried out in this direction developed within the framework of historical research before the discipline of sociology gained its name, and through the works of Ibn Khaldun, who is one of the world's great social scientists, it created its own methodology and philosophy of knowledge.
Beginning from Dede Korkut until the Constitutional Monarchy period in the Ottoman Empire many Turkish Muslim social scientists carried out sociological researches within the science of history from. Historians such as Yusuf Has Hacip, Katip Çelebi, Farabi, Naima Mustafa, Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, Mustafa Nuri Pasha, and many others have made serious social analyses by dealing with sociological studies from a scientific perspective long before Saint Simon and Auguste Comte. Even today, these sources lay in front of researchers as a very serious accumulation of knowledge.
Unfortunately, with the westernisation movements in Turkey in the form of copying or adaptation, these basic sources and the accumulated knowledge were neglected and the knowledge and experience of the west were taken as the sole reference. Our understanding and philosophy of knowledge belonging to our society and civilisation was, in a sense, made disabled and we were allowed to think and work only within the scope of western knowledge methods.
The most important feature of a society in terms of science is that it can reach the level of creating its own philosophy of knowledge and theory. However, the methods and theories adapted from the West have become an obstacle and the production of original sociological studies has been made impossible. Inevitably, such a paradigm has eliminated the possibility of carrying out social scientific studies in Turkey to create a different view and orientation for the international scientific world.
Turkey’s experience of social science is intertwined with the wide range of social practices and knowledge within the civilisation of Islamic societies and represents a different tradition and perspective than that of the West. Therefore, while the knowledge of the western tradition is important as a factor of comparison, the values and specific conditions of the West do not add any binding feature for Turkish sociology and social sciences.
Sakarya University’s Sociology Department has set itself a realistic mission in the history of Turkish social science by putting forward the understanding of local sociology as a vital aim. The fact that sociological education and research is carried out within such a framework increases the confidence of our students, their sources of information and lends a different impetus to social research.
With these feelings and thoughts, while equipping with modern sociological knowledge, we are also trying to educate our students by teaching our own tradition with the motto of Mevlana’s “My one foot is fixed and the other foot travels around the world”.
I wholeheartedly believe that with the difference in our Department, you will not break away from the realities of the world, but you will find your very self.
I wish success to our students who have chosen and will choose our department.
Prof. Dr. Mustafa Kemal Şan
