1 Nordic Sociology Patrik Aspers patrik.aspers@soc.uu.se Jukka Gronow jgronow@mappi.helsinki.fi Lars Bo Kaspersen lbk@ifs.ku.dk Lars Mjøset lars.mjoset@sosgeo.uio.no Guðbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir glr@hi.is Aino Sinnemäki Aino.Sinnemaki@helsinki.fi Abstract This chapter analyses trends in the development of sociology as a discipline in the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, focusing on the period 1980-2010. We use an approach that divides the development of sociology into phases, which is our lens for analysing the specific developments of Nordic sociology. Introduction This chapter analyses trends in the development of sociology as a discipline in the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, with a focus on the period from 1980 to 2010. Our aim is to provide readers with an introduction and overview of Nordic sociology. The analysis uses a descriptive scheme of phases of sociology. We begin by briefly outlining these phases. This scheme is a background that covers general trends in sociologyin the Nordic countries. Three phases in the development of postwar Western sociology The period we analyse, 1980-2010, can be regarded as the third phase in the development of postwar sociology. Table 1 defines the three periods with reference to a typology of notions of theory (Mjøset 2009), largely applicable to all Western countries. In the contemporary phase, it is possible to distinguish three sets of basic methodological presuppositions (meta-methodologies) and six concepts of theory. Looking back at the two earlier phases – the early pioneer phase and the turbulent decades of the 1960s and 1970s – we can roughly trace the timing of the introduction of the notions of theory into postwar sociology. In the first phase, 1945 to the early 1960s, a standard view of social science dominated. Experimental natural science, with its assisting sciences of mathematics and statistics, was the benchmark for others sciences, and thus also for sociology as one of the social sciences. In light of present-day sociology, that understanding of theory that was inspired by postwar modifications of Vienna school logical positivism – we may call it a law-oriented notion of theory – is only one out of the six present understandings of theory distinguished in Table 1. We can portray – in a highly schematic and condensed fashion – the development through the three phases with reference to the notions of theory that have been added (either as criticisms or revisions) to the original law-