Jennifer Platt

The ISA’s Publications Committee has a policy of sending members to key conferences to report back on what is going on to inform our editors; this is one of those reports. But how to report on a whole meeting? There were said to be at least 2,600 people attending; 4,000 abstracts had been submitted, of which 3,200 were accepted. It is clearly impossible for any one person to attend everything when there are many simultaneous activities. My strategy...

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 headquarters have always been in Paris, so that the French language had a practical importance as well as a formal status there; historically, too, French...

“Open access” is a movement which is spreading rapidly beyond its points of origin, and brings some threats as it approaches the social sciences. The basic idea is simple and attractive: everyone should be able to benefit from the research knowledge available in journal articles. Important from one side of the movement has been the anger of natural scientists at the excessive prices charged, and profits made, by some publishers of the journals...

Many ISA members will know that since 2005 Vineeta Sinha has been editing one of our membership benefits, the electronic journal which was initially called the ISA E-Bulletin, but recently became the ISA eSymposium. This change marked the shift towards digital presence on a website, so that there could be more interaction with readers, as well as the possibility of including “non-written” visual and audio contributions such...

Current Sociology is one of the longest-standing sociological journals; this year it celebrates its 60th anniversary. Its development shows quite a lot about the general progress of sociology internationally since the 1950s. ISA was founded at the instance of UNESCO, and so the journal started as a UNESCO production; when Tom Bottomore became ISA’s Executive Secretary in 1957 he took over the editorship. (In 1973 Margaret Archer became the...

Devorah Kalekin finishes her term as the founding editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB), and hands over to her successor Mohammed Bamyeh, at the end of 2011. Her important contributions are celebrated in an e-mail interview with Jennifer Platt, ISA Vice-President for Publications.   Goodbye Devorah… JP: How...

A glance at the back end of our new 2010 Directory of Members shows that RC32, Women in Society, is the largest Research Committee, with 291 names. This surely reflects the influence of the women’s movement generally, as well as the important development of intellectual understanding of gender issues to which it has led in sociology. We can trace some simple measures of the quantitative changes this has affected within the ISA. On...

National Associations are collective members of the ISA, and Research Committees are also a vital part of its internal structure, but their functions have changed considerably over time. When the ISA was founded in 1949, under the auspices of UNESCO, the United Nations model of national representation was used. Few national sociological associations existed at that time. That changed rapidly, as countries were encouraged to create them, and by 1959, 35 associations...

With the Executive Committee holding its annual meeting in Mexico City (March 21-25), plus the bonus of a seminar with Mexican colleagues, it is appropriate to write on aspects of the history of the ISA in Mexico. Until the 1990s Latin America as a whole provided only about 4% of ISA’s individual members, but they occupied a larger share of positions in Research Committees and on the Executive, which has almost always had Latin American representation...

ISA members now are accustomed to having Izabela Barlinska at the center of things, running the office in Madrid. She has been there as Executive Secretary since 1987, but this long period of stability follows one of repeated changes in both personnel and locations. Earlier locations have been: Oslo, Norway (1950-53); London, England (1953-59); Louvain, Belgium (1959-62); Genève, Switzerland (1962-7); Milano, Italy (1967-74); Montréal, Canada...

The history of ISA journals throws light on wider trends in the development of the ISA and of sociology.  This account starts in 1973, with the first issues of the only journal we had then, Current Sociology, produced from outside the secretariat or UNESCO staff.  Each issue consisted of extensive bibliographical essays on chosen subfields. That changed in the 1990s to more traditional articles.  In 1984 International Sociology...

Several new editors have been appointed recently for ISA publications. They are Eloísa Martín (Current Sociology), Christine Inglis (International Sociology), Bert Klandermans (Sociopedia) and Sujata Patel (Current Sociology monographs and Sage Studies in International Sociology); we expect great things from all of them in their important tasks. Special thanks go to their retiring predecessors Julia...

ISA’s first newsletter was published in 1971; before then, its news items appeared in UNESCO publications. That was an important year in ISA history: this independent newsletter could report the creation of ordinary individual membership, the representation of Research Committees in ISA’s governance for the first time, and the opening of their membership. Before then, individuals could become ISA members only if there was no association to represent...