In this issue’s interview, labor historian Raquel Varela looks back at Portugal’s Carnation Revolution of April 1974. She discusses why it is important to tell world events “from below,” taking up working people’s perspectives and contributions and addresses the lasting impacts of the revolution left in Portugal’s social and economic fabric. In July 2020, sociologists […]

Raquel Varela is a historian based at the NOVA University of Lisbon in Portugal. Her work focuses on labor history, the welfare state, the history of Portugal and Europe in the twentieth century, as well as the history of social movements. She is the co-founder of the Network for Global Labor Studies and president of […]

by Geoffrey Pleyers, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology and ISA Vice-President for Research (2018-22), past-president of ISA Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC47), and member of ISA Research Committees on Sociology of Religion (RC22), Sociology of Youth (RC34), and Social Movements, Collective Action and […]

by Jacob Carlos Lima, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, President of theBrazilian Sociological Society, and member of ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Work (RC30) In 2017, the Brazilian Sociological Society (Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia, or SBS) completed 70 years of existence. Founded in 1937 as the Paulista Society of Sociology, it was only […]

by Hermílio Santos, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil,Chair of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology, and President of the ISA Research Committee on Biography and Society (RC38), André Salata, PUCRS, Brazil, and Vice-chair of the LOC of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology, and […]

by Veridiana Domingos Cordeiro, University of São Paulo, Brazil and member of ISA Research Committee on Biography and Society (RC38) During the military dictatorship (1964-1985), Brazil not only witnessed political persecution, detention, torture, censorship, and disappearances, but also coercive practices to control marginalized and abandoned children. For that, the government had created the National Foundation […]

by Gustavo Conde Margarites, Federal Institute of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Since the structuring of the modern Brazilian state, social assistance has been administered erratically and with little state involvement. Initiatives in this area have been oriented by the ideas of philanthropy and charity. In addition to this, social assistance actions were applied as […]

by Priscila Susin, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil The housing deficit in major Brazilian cities affects significant sectors of the impoverished population, having greater impact on black women. The rise of housing social movements (squatting movements) in urban areas has evoked new political repertoires since the 1980s, exposing the high number […]

by Ricardo Caldas Cavalcanti, Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Brazil, and member of the Latin American Sociological Association (ALAS) The issue of governance or (formal and informal) regulation of violence in disenfranchised territories in Latin America has been the subject of sociological research for many years. This study, which was the subject of my master […]

by Lucas Pereira Wan Der Maas, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil Due to the expansion and democratization of higher education in the country, the professional world in Brazil has changed. Between 2000 and 2010, the population with university credentials more than doubled, including more people with traditionally low participation in higher education, more […]

by Izabelle Vieira, PPCIS/UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University), Brazil In the 2000s Brazil experienced a favorable economic moment, when the population experienced an increase in income and consumption levels. In 2014, a serious political and economic crisis broke out in the country, felt mainly through the loss of jobs and the devaluation of money. […]

by Maria Petmesidou, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, Ana Guillén, University of Oviedo, Spain, and Emmanuele Pavolini, University of Macerata, Italy Any changes in the scope of collectively provided services and the conditions establishing entitlement to them can significantly alter the contours of universalism and the underlying pattern of solidarity. Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece […]

by Daniel Clegg, University of Edinburgh, UK The provision of replacement incomes to adults who are physically capable of work has always been among the most controversial questions in social policy. Intended to protect against income loss due to involuntary exclusion from paid work, unemployment benefits have long been criticized by some as a subsidy […]

by Roland Atzmüller, Johannes Kepler University, Austria The evolution of welfare regimes not only, but particularly, in Europe has been dominated by a shift from so-called passive welfare activities tied to wage-led growth models (Fordism) to so-called austerity states and the dominance of supply-side oriented social policy activities. These have been implemented by nationally varied […]

by Sigita Doblytė, member of ISA Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy (RC19) and Aroa Tejero, University of Oviedo, Spain One of the challenges both individuals and welfare states face today is the need for more balanced work-life trajectories. While welfare states try to encourage women’s labor participation as a protection strategy […]

by Silke van Dyk and Tine Haubner, Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena, Germany We are currently experiencing a crisis of care and social reproduction caused by the dismantling of welfare states, new needs due to demographic change, and changes in gender and family relations. In times when less and less women are available full-time as a […]

by Beatrice Carella, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy On November 17, 2017, the Presidents of the European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European Council jointly signed a political declaration enshrining the social principles that the European Union (EU) embraces and fosters, titled the European Pillar of Social Rights (the Pillar or EPSR). This represented […]

by Paola Tubaro, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paris-Saclay, France The extraordinary successes of present-day artificial intelligence (AI) rest on the “micro-work” of a multitude of real men and women. They tag objects in images, transcribe commercial receipts, translate bits of text, and record their voice while reading aloud short sentences. Simple and […]

by Lévio Scattolini, State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), Brazil Those that are a bit skeptical about what capitalism is still able to deliver in terms of civilizational achievements tend to receive with suspicion the promises surrounding technologies like those of the so-called Digital or Information Age. Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, Big Data, Internet […]

by Felix Sühlmann-Faul, Germany Many things show us what digitalization means. Take a record store for instance. We used to hear something on the radio that we liked, or a friend gave us a tip, and then we went to a record store and bought a medium with music. A material thing, which became our […]

by Srujana Katta, Kelle Howson, and Mark Graham, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, UK Ola Cabs, the Indian ride-sharing firm, is one of an increasing number of companies around the world whose business model relies on using a digital platform to match the supply and demand for labor. Specifically, Ola’s mobile application allows passengers […]

by Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy The fiftieth anniversary of the “Hot Autumn” of 1969, which had made sociologists like Colin Crouch and Alessandro Pizzorno talk of a “resurgence of the class struggle,” has been marked by the emergence of a global wave of massive protests, including millions’ marches and civil disobedience, […]

by Vishwas Satgar, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and member of ISA Research Committees on Economy and Society (RC02) and Labour Movements (RC44) Samir Amin passed away on August 12, 2018. Africa’s intellectual history in the twentieth century will not be complete without acknowledging his contributions. His intellectual itinerary intersected with key moments in the […]

by Sari Hanafi, American University of Beirut, Lebanon and President of the International Sociological Association (2018-2022), and Stéphane Dufoix, University of Paris Nanterre and Institut universitaire de France, and member of ISA Research Committee on the History of Sociology (RC08) Many events have troubled our sociological community in the last few months. Three prominent sociologists […]

by Frank Welz, University of Innsbruck, Austria and member of ISA Research Committees on the History of Sociology (RC08) and Sociological Theory (RC16), and Anand Kumar, Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India Reflecting on the 2018 ISA World Congress in the Canadian Review of Sociology, Frédéric Vandenberghe and Stephan Fuchs emphasized […]

by Veronica Montes, Bryn Mawr College, USA On a spring afternoon in May 2019, I saw Lucia and Hector once again. This was the third time I had seen them over a period of six months. This time they were at the US-Mexico border city of Tijuana. Lucia and Hector were part of the thousands […]

by Ayşegül Balta Özgen, Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Immigration, University of Pennsylvania, USA and member of ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Migration (RC31) The US has had a well-established refugee resettlement system since the Refugee Act of 1980. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State coordinate the […]