BOOK REVIEW. ‟SOCIOLOGIA ISTORICĂ A LUI HENRI H. STAHL” [THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF HENRY H. STAHL] BY ȘTEFAN GUGA. CLUJ-NAPOCA: TACT PUBLISHING HOUSE, 2015, 387 P.

Abstract

Reading Ștefan Guga’s book, The Historical Sociology of Henry H. Stahl is first and foremost an exercise in iconoclasm. Don’t get it wrong: the author deeply resonates with Stahl’s perspectives, bringing out his main scientific endeavour and a much needed synthesis of the sociologist’s works. Where the iconoclasm applies is in the revisiting of the post-1990 interpretations of Stahl’s works by the Romanian sociological milieu. The unambiguous pattern found in most of the articles dedicated to Stahl by sociologists, was to see his Marxism either as a marginal and minor key, or as an understandable compromise made instrumentally by the thinker for his writings to pass the communist censorship. Guga claims that both perspectives are wrong, and, in order to prove that, he produced a book focused on the historical materialism embraced by the great sociologist in his entire work.