Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the support and helpful care of colleagues and friends in Bulgaria, France, and Canada who were always reliable companions on the road to its completion.
I would like to extend my gratitude to all my colleagues from the Department of Knowledge Society: Science, Education, Innovations at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (issk/bas); communicating with them brought constant confirmation of Kant’s maxim that the ‘correctness’ of our thinking lies in that we think in community with others.
I owe special thanks to Professors Pepka Boyadjieva, Liliana Deyanova, Georgi Fotev, Galin Gornev, Petar-Emil Mitev, Tanya Nedelcheva and Kristina Petkova for the scientific rigor and intellectual generosity with which they reviewed my dissertation “Sociology in Central and Eastern Europe, 1945–1989. Towards a Reflexive History of the Discipline” defended at the issk/bas for the scientific degree Doctor of Science.
At various stages of my work, I have received stimulating remarks, ideas, suggestions, and comments from Associate Professor Patricia Vannier (University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès), Professor Jacques Boucher (University of Quebec in Outaouais), Professor Guy Ménard (University of Nancy). Professor Marie-Blanche Tahon at Ottawa University, Professor Shirley Roy at the University of Quebec in Montreal, and Claude Gauthier in Montreal created an atmosphere of intellectual care and empathy that enabled me to keep up my courage at the final, decisive stage of writing this book. To all of them I am deeply thankful.
The work would not have been more than a fond project without the invitation of Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at National Center of Scientific Research cnrs (France) and Series Editor at Brill; and without the professional skill and devoted efforts of the translator Vladimir Vladov, my colleague at the issk/bas, it would not have reached the reading audience in English.
I want to thank my family and all my friends for their patience and their faith in me all along my professional path.