Global Dialogue, Magazine of International Sociology Association

The Fetish of the Particular, and the Sacred as Secular: An Interview with Abdie Kazemipur

by Abdolmohammad (Abdie) Kazemipur, Nazanin Shahrokni

Debates over the global dynamics of sociological knowledge production have intensified in recent years, with growing interest in “national sociologies,” “Southern theory,” and “regional traditions.” Iran offers fertile ground for these discussions, as explored in an interview with Dr. Abdolmohammad (Abdie) Kazemipur, Professor of Sociology and Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Calgary and former president of the Canadian Sociological Association. His recent work examines how the sacred and secular intersect in modern Iran and how...

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Latest Issue. GD 15.3, December 2025

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Between Repression and Relevance: Rethinking Sociology Through the Lens of Iran

by Nazanin Shahrokni, Reyhaneh Javadi

This symposium on the sociology of Iran emerges at a moment when both the practice and the imagination of sociology are under extraordinary pressure. The Iranian sociological community – long animated by debates over its public role – now navigates an increasingly constricted terrain. Political repression, economic precarity, the punitive effects of global sanctions, and restrictive mobility and visa regimes have collectively thinned and unsettled the institutional and intellectual spaces that once sustained Iranian sociology, leaving them weakened but still insistently present. This...

The Iranian Sociological Association and the Institutionalization of Non-Institutionalization

by Esmail Khalili

Sociology entered Iran’s higher education landscape via the establishment of the University of Tehran in 1934, where Gholamhossein Sadighi, a Sorbonne graduate, began teaching the discipline in 1940. In its formative decades, sociology in Iran was a small and elite field, shaped by French intellectual influences and tethered to the modernist nation-building project of the Pahlavi state. It remained a discipline cultivated largely within Tehran’s academic elite, with limited institutional reach and a narrow professional community. The 1979 Revolution and the subsequent Cultural...

Between Politics and Profits: Private Sociology Classes in Iran

by Reyhaneh Javadi, Zohreh Bayatrizi

External, domestic, and international political and economic forces have long shaped university teaching and research, often with both constructive and detrimental effects. In recent decades, underfunding, neoliberal funding models, and the politicization of teaching and research have forced universities in many countries to prioritize vocational training as well as research that is aligned with state or private sector priorities. On the educational front, micro-credentialism, MOOCs (massive open online courses), and certificate-based education are, at least in part, a response to these wider...

Ethnicity in Iran: The Question Iranian Sociology Avoids

by Aghil Daghagheleh

Ethnicity in Iran is an elephant in the room – at least when it comes to mainstream sociology. Iran is home to several ethnic groups, including Persians, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, and Baluchis. Persians constitute the majority in the central plateau, while other ethnic groups are concentrated in peripheral regions. These ethnic divisions intersect with religious differences, as Shia Islam is predominant in the center, and Sunni populations are more prevalent in peripheral regions. Even this brief description raises sociological questions, such as how such ethnic and religious differentiations...

Situated Lives, Contested Knowledge: Reclaiming Gender Studies in Iran

by Shiva Alinaqian

During the eight years I taught courses on gender, ethnography, and narrative in Tehran’s universities, my personal experience was continually entangled with institutional constraints and everyday politics. Being dismissed from my teaching position in 2022 – at the very moment the Woman, Life, Freedom (Jina) uprising unfolded – did not simply mark a personal rupture, it laid bare how the production of critical knowledge on gender in Iran is inseparable from power relations and forms of everyday resistance. In these conditions, even small pedagogical decisions – inviting...

Under Constraint: Sociological Research on Iran. A Roundtable

by Nafiseh Azad, Maral Latifi, Mahbubeh Moghadam, Fatemeh Moghadasi, Ladan Rahbari, Reza Sohrabi, Reyhaneh Javadi, Nazanin Shahrokni

This roundtable brings together six sociologists working on Iran, situated within distinct academic fields and institutional contexts across varied geopolitical locations. While united by their disciplinary training in sociology, the contributors bring divergent positionalities shaped by their locations within and outside Iran, producing knowledge across national, linguistic, and institutional boundaries. The roundtable engages three key methodological questions probing the challenges, innovations, and ethical dilemmas of conducting sociological research on Iran. Though their research spans...

Michael Burawoy, a Compass for Sociology in our Times

by Geoffrey Pleyers

GD 15.3

Michael Burawoy passed away abruptly on February 3, 2025. The International Sociological Association (ISA) mourns one of its most influential and inspiring presidents, a remarkable and creative global sociologist, an advocate for a public sociology relevant to the people and civil society, an inspiring teacher who trained generations of sociologists, and an extraordinary human being. Born in 1947, Michael Burawoy was first trained as a mathematician, until he casually read a book in sociology at Christ’s College library in Cambridge. He completed a Master’s degree...

Michael Burawoy: Sociology as a Vocation

by Nazanin Shahrokni

GD 15.3

Michael Burawoy was more than a sociologist; he was a builder of sociology – not only through his theoretical contributions, but through the institutions he shaped, the relationships he nurtured, and the global solidarities he forged. He transformed the discipline into a reflexive and practice-oriented field – one that interrogates power, centers the margins, and bridges critique with imagination, theory with action. In this spirit, I reflect on Michael’s contributions and highlight his enduring impact on the discipline, its methodologies, pedagogies, and global articulations. Living...

Michael Burawoy: Between Resilient Marxism and Public Sociology

by Ruy Braga

GD 15.3

On the night of February 3, 2025, Michael Burawoy was fatally struck by a vehicle near his home in Oakland, California. The driver fled but was later arrested. Michael’s death marked the loss of the most important contemporary Marxist sociologist, whose career had repositioned Marxism within the university after the collapse of bureaucratic state socialism, while maintaining an organic link between theory and struggles for human emancipation. Michael retired in 2023 from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, after 47 years of dedicated service to...

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