by Markus S. Schulz, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA, and Member of the ISA Program Committee for Yokohama World Congress, 2014 The ISA’s Research Committee on Futures Research (RC07) convenes its program for the upcoming Forum in Buenos Aires under the motto “Democratizing Futures.” This motto is meant to connect the Forum’s overall theme of […]

by Günnur Ertong and Yonca Odabaş, Ankara University, Turkey We are a group of sociologists working with Professor Aytül Kasapoğlu in the Department of Sociology of Ankara University. Our group includes graduate students, young postgraduates and fully-fledged academicians. Our group is a dynamic one; people join us to study, they contribute to our publications and […]

by Ishwar Modi, President of the Indian Sociological Society, and ISA Executive Committee Member, 2010-2014 Indian sociology has attained an admirable height in terms of teaching and research. In this achievement the Indian Sociological Society (ISS) has played a significant role over the six decades of its existence. I am extremely happy to be its […]

by Jennifer Platt, University of Sussex, UK, and ISA Vice-President for Publications, 2010-14 This note supplements André Petitat’s article with some more data and background information about the AISLF’s long relationship with ISA – at one time a relationship which reflected some internal frictions. The 1949 foundation of the ISA was initiated by UNESCO, whose […]

by André Petitat, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and AISLF President The 19th Congress of the International Association of French-Speaking Sociologists (AISLF) on “Uncertainty” (Penser l’incertain) will take place on July 2-7, 2012 in Rabat. AISLF, member of ISA, was founded in 1958 in a context of US military, economic, technological and scientific hegemony. From the […]

by Reyhaneh Javadi, University of Tehran, Iran During the translation of the Japanese team’s introduction (GD2.3), when I was reading the degrees and the research areas – remembering the Paulista team – all I was thinking was “Heavens! What we are doing among all of these PhDs and professors? We are just a bunch of […]

by Mikołaj Mierzejewski, Karolina Mikołajewska, and Jakub Rozenbaum, Public Sociology Laboratory, University of Warsaw, Poland[1] With its lively debate on the status of sociology in an unequal world, Global Dialogue 2.2 was the first issue published in Polish. The local editorial team, working together in the student-organized Public Sociology Lab, decided to move the global discussion into […]

by Amina Arabi and Julian Jürgenmeyer, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Lebanon The fate of the popular uprisings in the Arab world remains uncertain. Yet, it is already clear that the political landscape in the region has been transformed to an extent unseen since the formal end of colonialism, and that the seemingly ineradicable essentialist idea of “Arab exceptionalism” […]

by Laleh Behbehanian, University of California, Berkeley, USA Laleh Behbehanian hosted the program “Journeys through Sociology”. Global Dialogue asked her to assess what she learned from her interviews with the ISA Executive Committee. Journeys through Sociology is a series of recorded interviews with the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. Conducted via Skype with […]

by Tina Uys, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and ISA Vice-President for National Associations, 2010-2014 The Tenth ISA Doctoral Laboratory took place in the secluded environment of the University of Johannesburg Island in the Vaal Dam near Vereeniging in South Africa, November 8-11, 2011. A diverse group of twelve students from places as far apart […]

by Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley, and ISA President In its annual meeting the ISA Executive Committee met for five days at the American University of Beirut (AUB), generously hosted by Professor Sari Hanafi and his colleagues in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies. Two days of our meeting coincided with a […]

by Milton L. Vidal, Academic University of Christian Humanism, Santiago, Chile Chile is a small country in the far south. According to the dominant view of world cartography, you can find us at the tip of South America. It is a place that draws international news headlines from time to time. In 2011, a movement […]

by Nadia Margarita Rodríguez, University of Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia Controversy over land restitution in Colombia began with the passing of Law 1448, also known as Law of Victims, on June 10, 2011. It was a historical milestone given the tremendous political, economic, social and legal challenges posed by land restitution and given the state’s explicit […]

by Johanna Parra, Universidad Icesi, Cali, Colombia Factional violence taking place in Colombia has become an object of sociological analysis, particularly through the specialty known as Violentology. This Colombian branch of sociology was initially dedicated to the study of the Colombian historical period called La Violencia (1945-1965), grounded in the seminal book La Violencia en […]

by Vedat Milor, Istanbul, Turkey One may think that the fellow on the television screen in front of me is attending a spiritual meeting, and he is in deep prayer. He is holding his head with his two hands, and his half shut eyes are focused on a single point. Suddenly his cell phone falls […]

by Robert van Krieken, University of Sydney, Australia, and ISA Vice-President for Finance and Membership, 2010-2014 In universities today one can clearly see a number of fracture lines that are growing longer and wider, dividing the academic community into roughly three classes: an elite of high-profile researchers with little or no teaching or administrative responsibilities; […]

This interview was conducted by Michael Burawoy for Global Dialogue with the mediating work of Professor Yuan Shen, Lina Hu and Xiuying Cheng. Liping Sun is one of the leading public intellectuals in China today. He is a Professor of Sociology at Tsinghua University, Beijing. MB: Recently you have written about the stalemate or stagnation […]

ISA-on-line – The Future of Sociology Global Dialogue has been running for two years. We’ve expanded from 8 to 30 pages, from 5 to 14 languages, from a standard template to a special design, from a newsletter to a magazine. It appears electronically — although wherever I go my bags are weighed down with hard […]