CIS - Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas

José Jiménez Blanco was born in 1930 in Seville to a family from Granada, and it is at the University of the latter city where he completed his degree in Law and where, already oriented towards the field of social sciences, he began to prepare his thesis with Mr. Francisco Murillo . Since Murillo obtained the Chair of Political Law at the University of Valencia in 1952, Jiménez Blanco followed him there as an assistant professor. Once he had read the thesis (a content analysis of the Propositions of the Cortes of Castile, a pioneer in this type of work), he went in 1959 to the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, to pursue postgraduate studies in Sociology. Returning to Spain, in 1962 he obtained the Chair of Sociology at the Faculty of Political, Economic and Commercial Sciences of Bilbao. In 1964 he moved to Malaga, and in 1967 he returned to Valencia, in both cases as organizer and first Dean of a new Faculty, and from Valencia he moved in 1969 to the newly created Autonomous University of Madrid, to the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences. . He finally settled in 1979 at the Complutense University, now in the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, where, after teaching for almost a quarter of a century, he retired in 2000, and is currently Professor Emeritus.

It would be said that Jiménez Blanco's academic career reflects the course of the academic institutionalization of Spanish Sociology: his chain of transfer competitions, from North to South and from East to West, opens Sociology chairs throughout the map of Spain, and always in the Faculties of Economic Sciences, until he ended up teaching at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology, where he remained until his retirement, which coincided, closing a long and fruitful cycle, with his appointment as Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Granada awarded the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise. And it will not be out of place to note the four years in which he served as director of the INCIE (National Institute of Educational Sciences), to which he gave a strong international projection.

A profile of Professor Jiménez Blanco should not become a kind of summary of his curriculum, but several of his publications must be highlighted as being of very special importance. One of them is the translation, carried out in 1966 together with José Cazorla, Professor of Political Science at the University of Granada, of Parsons' The Social System: a translation that is a prodigy of precision in the use of Spanish and terminology. sociological, and which reveals an unusual knowledge of Parsonian theory.

Along with this splendid translation, and due to its striking thematic and academic contrast with it, a small book published in 1978 with the title From Franco to the general elections, which includes the collection of articles published by José Jiménez Blanco in newspapers, should be mentioned as another notable contribution. and magazines from the dates immediately before Franco's death until June 15, 1977: just over sixty articles in just under two years, written, as the author himself confesses in the prologue, because he felt obliged to "close the shoulder" in the delicate process that was taking place, but without dedicating himself to politics or neglecting his teaching vocation.

Worthy of remembering, on the other hand, is an Introduction to Sociology, in pocket book format, which in 150 pages deals with the most substantive of the fundamental topics of culture, personality, the ecological environment, the group, the family. and stratification, in a way that brilliantly combines the most demanding rigor with an accessibility driven by didactic concern. And again as a contrast to the work that has just been mentioned, the exceptional series of four articles that, with the common title of "on the dispute of positivism in German sociology" and numbered from I to IV, published in numbers 36 , 37, 39 and 42 of the then still called Spanish Magazine of Public Opinion, corresponding to 1974 and 1975. The reader of this luminous series, written, obviously, following the publication in Spain of the book to which it refers The title of the articles (book that collected the debates at the 1961 Congress of the German Society of Sociology), is found with an unusual exercise of conceptual and argumentative analysis. If, as we have said, the small Introduction was presided over by didactic concern, in the series on the dispute over positivism the crystalline hardness of scientific rigor (or philosophical, as you prefer) prevails over any other consideration, although with a plain clarity that He frequently recalls the happiest texts of his admired Zubiri.

These four samples would be enough to reveal the basic features of the varied intellectual production of Jiménez Blanco, although the reader who limited his reference to the aforementioned publications would have to miss a pioneering article on “the sociology of mass communications in the United States”, from 1958, until the research sponsored by the OECD and published in 1970 with the title Socioeconomic Study of Andalusia, whose volume on the social structure of said region is the work of Francisco Murillo and Jiménez Blanco. In the same way, we should take into account Regional Consciousness in Spain, which he directed in 1977 and in which García Ferrando, López-Aranguren and Beltrán collaborated, and the now classic Contemporary Sociological Theory that he compiled in 1987 with Carlos Moya, going through History. and sociology of science in Spain, which he directed and published in 1979. And this is not to mention his refined translation of Hawley's first book published in Spanish (in 1962), which contributed so decisively to the reception of human ecology in Spain .

Jiménez Blanco belongs to the university group that is usually called the “Granada school” of social sciences, and is, apart from Arboleya, the first of its members to be a Professor of Sociology. A school whose powerful intellectual tradition includes Professors Fernando de los Ríos, Francisco Ayala and Joaquín García Labella as predecessors, and which includes social scientists of the stature of Enrique Gómez Arboleya, Nicolás Ramiro Rico, Luis Sánchez Agesta, and Francisco Murillo Ferrol , as well as José Jiménez Blanco himself, Professor of Sociology, and José Cazorla Pérez, Professor of Political Science (also recently retired), followed by a large list of political scientists, constitutionalists, sociologists and anthropologists that it is not appropriate to mention here, to those in which the teaching of Mr. Francisco Murillo was decisive in his intellectual and scientific formation. It is in this context that Jiménez Blanco represents a permanent reference for all of his colleagues in the Spanish social sciences.

The retirement of Professor Jiménez Blanco has been the occasion to present him with a tribute book, composed of contributions whose content has been freely chosen by its authors, and which has been coordinated by a Promoting Committee that reflects in its composition the institutional journey traveled by Jiménez Blanco in the Spanish Universities: Julio Iglesias de Ussel represented the University of Granada on the promoting committee, Víctor Urrutia represented the University of Bilbao, Juan del Pino represented the University of Malaga, Manuel García Ferrando the University of Valencia, and Miguel Beltrán the Autonomous University of Madrid. and the Complutense, because it was so large, was represented by two colleagues: Antonio Izquierdo and Amando de Miguel. Each member of the committee invited potential collaborators from the corresponding academic field to participate, received the contributions they sent, and participated both in writing the introduction that precedes the volume, and in the organization and systematization of the index.

Which opens with a section titled “Personalia”, which does not include academic contributions, but rather texts that have to do with memories of its authors in relation to Jiménez Blanco: and thus, some masterful pages by Mr. Francisco appear first. Murillo, followed by the memories, in this case disciples, of Ricardo Montoso at the Autonomous University, and those of José Ortiz Díaz related to the “foundation” of the Faculty of Malaga. The present profile cannot include a review of the tribute book, as the quantity and quality of his works would require, so a mere reference to its subject matter must suffice here: the second section deals with “Aspects of Spanish society”, including issues of religiosity and secularization, family and youth, immigration and some regional issues. The third section, which corresponds to the label “The height of times”, deals with postmodernity and globalization, communication technologies and lifestyles, knowledge, tourism and, finally, time. . Under the title of “Politics, economy and law”, fourthly, a set of contributions are grouped that reveal the articulation that such structures show in the general context of the social system: here we talk about democracy and public entities , of the State and the nation, of intergovernmental relations and federalism, of judges and of the European Union. The volume closes with two sections: a very extensive one on Sociological Theory, which refers to culture, ideology, identity, the sociology of sociology and various other issues, and a shorter one on methodology which, together with a dictated reflection Due to long and recognized experience, it refers to indicators, statistical analysis and surveys.

This succinct reference to the content of the almost twelve hundred pages of the volume is valid as an overview of an exceptional work due to the quality of its work and that of those who contribute to it. It will remain as an example of the prestige and affection that Professor José Jiménez Blanco enjoys in Spanish sciences.