Sociology of Innovation in the Context of Post-Socialist Societies: The Case of Croatia
Jadranka Švarc, Marina Dabić and Jasminka Lažnjak
This research is motivated by the increasing recognition that innovation policy, as a form of state intervention to promote technological development, is undergoing a normative shift—from driving economic growth to addressing societal challenges and promoting socio-economic sustainability. This discourse creates significant opportunities for sociology of innovation to actively contribute to the socio-technical transformation of society driven by the current technologically and socially disruptive innovations.
However, in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, such as Croatia, the principles and methods of innovation policy were not well understood by political elites due to various socio-cultural factors. Sociology in post-transition has been keeping its marginal role in creating analytical concepts that might have influenced any hegemonic discourse, especially in the field of technology and innovation studies. In the attempt to set the ground that alters the current position of the discipline we are proposing the answers on three main research questions:
- What is the intellectual base and the theoretical and conceptual roots of sociology of innovation?
- What is the research subject and tasks of sociology of innovation within the socio-technical transition?
- How the post-transitional sociocultural context influenced Croatian sociology and vice versa?
This research is divided into three parts. The first part discussed the position of sociology in Croatia. The second part delineates how innovation has evolved into one of the key determinants of society and the third part explores the theoretical foundations of the sociology of innovation and its historical embeddedness in neighbouring disciplines, up to the current theories of socio-technical transformation. The remaining sections highlight future perspectives of the sociology of innovation, attempting to establish analytical distinctiveness of its research subject.