5th NORDIC-BALTIC CONFERENCE IN REGIONAL SCIENCE
GLOBAL-LOCAL INTERPLAY IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION
Pärnu, Estonia, October 1-4, 1998

Jesper Manniche
Research fellow, Research Centre of Bornholm

The paper presents some results from a survey of universities and research institutions in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany, intending to provide a better general view over current activities, actors, deficiencies and trends within the field of social science research on the Baltic Sea Region (BSR). The survey indicates that there is a lot of research. However, it is spread over a large number of institutions and generally carried out through mostly discipline oriented projects by individual researchers or individual groups of researchers without common comprehensive bases and directions. While political science, economics, and the differently entitled disciplines of human geography and regional/physical/environmental planning are frequently applied disciplines, sociological research are very modestly represented. The lack of sociological research is highly problematic, as knowledge on the social structures, relations and mechanisms underlying and constructing the economic, political and technological base of the former communist Baltic Sea countries are crucial for adequate analyses of these societies’ transition. The paper also discusses the very concept of "Baltic" research. Does the BSR constitute an independent field of research with its own set of problems, characteristics and theories - or is it just one case of more general contemporary processes of transition and change? Presently, with very few exceptions among the investigated universities and research institutions the "Baltic" dimension is not a distinctly defined, prioritised and organised field of research.