As I write the Libyan order has collapsed and all thoughts are turned to what will come next, not just in Libya, but across Arab lands. Turbulence has assumed global dimensions and so in this issue Göran Therborn diagnoses inequality on a global scale, and postulates the return of class politics; Boaventura de Sousa Santos […]

by Göran Therborn, University of Cambridge, UK, Linnaeus University, Sweden, and Member of the Program Committee for the ISA World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama The last two decades have been good for poor nations of the world. Since the late 1980s, what the international economic organizations call “developing Asia”, mainly China, India and the […]

by Aya Fabros, Research Associate with Focus on the Global South, Philippines Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak (KOMTAR), in Penang, Malaysia, is a run-down shopping complex revived and appropriated by migrants. Although frequented by foreigners, it is not your typical tourist spot, offering a glimpse to a grimier side of the global. Accommodating a neatly compartmentalized […]

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, School of Economics, University of Coimbra, Portugal, University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, USA and Member of the Program Committee for the ISA World Congress of Sociology in Yokohama In spite of their specificity, the violent riots in London and other British cities should not be seen as an isolated phenomenon. […]

by Nicolás Lynch, National University of San Marcos, and former Minister of Education of Peru Currently, Peruvian sociology exists as a scientific discipline and as a profession. Nonetheless, it is not well institutionalized, as well as lacking recognition and influence. The development of sociology in Peru has gone through four stages: concern with social issues, […]

by Marian Preda and Liviu Chelcea, University of Bucharest, Romania If one thinks of Michael Burawoy’s classification into professional, critical, policy and public sociology, one may say that sociology in Romania is strong on policy sociology and improving (read weaker) on the other three types. Sociology in Romania was first taught at the end of […]

by Renato Ortiz, State University of Campinas, Brazil English is the official language of globalization. I say ‘officially’ because the presence of other languages is constitutive of our contemporary condition, even though one language, above others, takes a privileged position. In the global market of linguistic goods English becomes the language of global modernity. What […]

by Ayodele Samuel Jegede, Professor and Head, Department of Sociology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and ISA Member Ulf Himmelstrand (1924-2011), the father of sociology in Nigeria is dead. Himmelstrand, 87, died on June 8 in his hometown, Uppsala, Sweden. Himmelstrand was born, and much of his childhood was spent, in India, where his father was […]

by Margaret Archer, University of Warwick, UK, and former ISA President 1986-1990 With the death of Ulf Himmelstrand on June 8th 2011 world sociology has lost one of its gentlest and most dedicated of friends. To him ‘globalization’ was neither merely a concept nor a cause, it was something he lived. Never one to inflict […]

by Jennifer Platt, University of Sussex, UK, and ISA Vice-President for Publications 2010-2014 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 […]

by Gohar Shahnazaryan, Yerevan State University, Armenia The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 inaugurated a challenging new stage for the women’s movement in Armenia and the whole region of the South Caucasus. With the assistance of international organizations and funds, women’s non-governmental organizations were established. In 2003 we formed a group of young […]

by Ari Sitas, University of Cape Town, former ISA Vice-President 2002-2006, and Sarah Mosoetsa, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa South African Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, commissioned sociologists Ari Sitas and Sarah Mosoetsa to chart the future of and make proposals for the Humanities and the Social Sciences. Global Dialogue asked them […]

by Emma Porio, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines, and Member of ISA Executive Committee 2006-2014 Right after the XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology (2010) in Gothenburg, then newly elected Michael Burawoy constituted a subcommittee to know more about the status of early career sociologists in the ISA. The following is a summary of the […]

by Ann Denis, University of Ottawa, Canada, President RC05, and former ISA Vice-President for Research 2002-2006 Women’s Worlds, an international interdisciplinary conference on women held every three years in different parts of the world, was co-hosted this year by Carleton University and the University of Ottawa/Université d’Ottawa, with the support of Université du Québec en […]

by Elisa P. Reis, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and former member of the ISA Executive Committee 2006-2010 The XVth Congress of the Brazilian Sociological Society (SBS) took place in Curitiba from the 26th to the 29th of July, 201l. Around two thousand sociologists gathered together in the capital city of the state […]