SLON

SOCIOLOGY PRESS (SOCIOLOGICKÉ NAKLADATELSTVÍ in Czech, abbreviated as SLON) was established in 1991 as a joint venture of Alena Miltová and Jiří Ryba. From the end of May 2021, SLON became part of the Karolinum Press publishing house. The founders of SLON joined the Karolinum Press team, bringing with them several successful series and many publications, which will continue to thrive at Karolinum Press.

From the beginning, SLON specialized in scholarly literature in sociology and related disciplines, including political science, social policy and social work, cultural and social anthropology, gender studies, demography and social geography. Over the 30 years of its existence, it published over 400 books, many of them in multiple editions.

SLON was conceived to fill in a huge gap in the publication of scholarly literature in social sciences during the normalization period. The first published titles included Jan Keller’s Introduction to Sociology (which has had six editions) and a series of textbooks for social work. The handbooks in the Sociological Terminology series, based on entries of the future Comprehensive Sociological Dictionary, eventually published by Karolinum Press in 1996, were also intended for use as study materials. In addition to textbooks, SLON published original books by Czech (and Slovak) scholars and soon also included translations, starting with those published in the samizdat.

From the beginning, the SLON production was divided into series – out of the original nine series, the most viable were the Studies, Study Texts and Sociological News series. The first addition to the more recent ones was ABC of Sociology, bringing original synoptic works in different sociological disciplines, and later also three translation-based series, created by Miroslav Petrusek – KLAS (Classical Sociological Tradition), MOST (Modern Sociological Theories) and POST. The Political Systems and Gender Probes series emerged later, with the last addition being the Cargo series.

Over the last 10 to 15 years, many publications were compiled as co-series with institutes of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and faculties of Charles University and other Czech universities. They are all original works presenting research results of the middle and younger generations, which is also why the Studies series features the most titles.

From the beginning, SLON’s small editorial team has made use of many external academic collaborators, who helped evaluate publishing ideas, proposed titles for translation, helped edit them, etc. The editorial board was officially established in 2009 and includes experts in the fields of social sciences from different regions of the Czech Republic.