In the essay, the author describes how sociology as a teaching and research-based social science discipline emerged and developed in Slovenia (and Yugoslavia). He shows its initial dogmatic narrowness and gradual development as it became an empirically grounded scientific-cognitive activity. He does this by outlining the transition from the original subject of teaching (at law faculties) in the early 1960s to the conception of study programmes of sociology (department chairs at philosophy faculties, mainly in Belgrade, Ljubljana and Zagreb) and research programmes (the establishing of institutes for social sciences and sociology). The author reveals all the contradictions in the relationship between the ruling politics and sociology, as expressed in the transition from a relationship of opening up, supporting, tolerating and preventing, to a dogmatic blocking of its cognitive activity, autonomous research and bringing critical insights into the public domain.
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