This is the last issue of Global Dialogue before the ISA’s World Congress of sociology in Yokohama in July which promises to have record attendance with over 5,500 participants. The theme of the Congress – Facing an Unequal World – is fast becoming one of the big issues of the century. Even economists are swarming […]

by Dorothy E. Smith, University of Victoria, Canada Dorothy Smith is a pioneer of feminist sociology and what has come to be known as “institutional ethnography” that locates everyday life in its wider context, especially “relations of ruling.” She is the author of many classic works, starting with the foundational article “Sociology for Women” and […]

by Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University, USA For 50 years Herbert Gans has been one of the most prolific and influential sociologists in the United States. During this time he has been a leader in the fields of urban poverty and anti-poverty planning, equality and stratification, ethnicity and race, the news media and popular culture. […]

An Interview with Nicolás Lynch Nicolás Lynch is a Professor of Sociology at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru. He has been President of the Peruvian College of Sociologists (1998-2000) as well as Minister of Education of Peru (2001-2002), Advisor to the President of the Republic (2002) and Peruvian Ambassador to Argentina […]

by César Germana, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Peru There is ample evidence that we are going through a period in which the entire model of modern-colonial power, which has dominated the planet for the last 500 years, is facing a structural crisis. This is a crisis in the very foundations of the […]

by Markus S. Schulz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA, member of the Program Committee of the 2014 ISA World Congress, and President of the ISA Research Committee on Futures Research (RC07) The year 2014 marks the twentieth anniversary of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between Canada, Mexico, and the USA. NAFTA was […]

by Abdulhay Sayed, formerly with the University of Damascus, Syria The Qatari-financed report drafted by an independent team of former UN prosecutors, which analyzed thousands of smuggled photographs of corpses of starved and tortured detainees in Syrian detention centers, provided further evidence of an already suspected “industrial scale” killing of detainees. The report followed similar […]

by Shirin Ahmad-Nia, Allameh-Tabataba’i University, Iran Iranian society has undergone dramatic socio-political, economic and cultural changes since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, changes that are especially noticeable in new patterns of family, education and urban life. Just before the revolution in Iran, less than half of the people (47%) were living in urban areas, while […]

by Volodymyr Paniotto, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, General Director, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), and member of ISA Research Committee on Logic and Methodology (RC33) “Maidan” is a unique sociological phenomenon. Such terms as “mob,” “meeting,” or “demonstration” do not adequately capture its dynamic character. Technically “Maidan” refers to Independence Square in Kyiv, […]

by Volodymyr Ishchenko, National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and Deputy Director of the Center for Society Research, Kyiv, Ukraine Given that the events in Ukraine are still rapidly developing, driven by “separatist” rallies in the Eastern and Southern regions and by Russian military intervention to Crimea, any attempts at theoretical generalization have to be tentative. […]

by Yuan Tseh Lee, President of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and former President of Academia Sinica, Taiwan and Andrew Wei-Chih Yang, Special Assistant to the President of ICSU At a meeting a couple of years back, we were discussing the need to restrain development in order to prevent dangerous climate change, when an […]

by Herbert Docena, University of California, Berkeley, USA As greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar after 20+ years of UN negotiations, world leaders are relying even more heavily on the market to save us from a catastrophic 4-degree centigrade warming; but a coalition of governments and social movements are fighting back. Herbert Docena reports from […]

by Feizhou Zhou, Peking University, China Since ancient times Chengdu Plain has been a densely populated agricultural area. In 2007 the central government chose Chengdu City as a “Pilot Region for Coordinating Urban and Rural Development” that aimed to change the relationship between urban and rural areas. Chengdu’s reform measures had a strong demonstration effect […]

by Yonghong Zhang, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangdong, China During the unprecedented process of urbanization in China, along with the requisitioning of collective land for urban construction, the management and distribution of rural collective assets have become the main focus of social contradictions and conflicts. In the early 1990s, the urbanization of the Southeastern coastal areas […]

by Ying Xing, China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China In contemporary Chinese society, when conflict arises between officials and ordinary people, there are four major ways for people to seek remedy – class action, group petition, on-the-spot resistance, and collective riot, the combination of group petition and on-the-spot resistance being the most […]

by Adam Müller, Kamil Lipiński, Mikołaj Mierzejewski, Krzysztof Gubański, Karolina Mikołajewska, the Public Sociology Lab, University of Warsaw Jan Szczepański (1913-2004) was a Polish sociologist, who served as President of ISA from 1966 to 1970. He was the first person from the Eastern bloc to occupy this position. His publications appeared in many editions in […]

by Dariusz Jemielniak and Karolina Mikołajewska, Kozminski University, Warsaw, Poland It is not the first time that the condition of contemporary Polish academia adorns the pages of Global Dialogue. In GD 2.4 members of the Public Sociology Lab pointed to the neoliberal reforms of the Polish universities . Over the last seven years the Polish […]

Presented to the Polish Sociological Association by the Public Sociology Lab, University of Warsaw and the Critical Section, Jagiellonian University of Cracow, Poland In September 2013 the 15th Congress of the Polish Sociological Association met in Szczecin. After a series of student debates, the Public Sociology Lab issued an open letter on changes in higher […]

We started our journey of translation with GD 2.4. At the beginning it was difficult to find and organize people who would be willing to be part of this adventure. But now, the editorial team is more or less settled. We live and work in different cities of Turkey. Despite the considerable geographical distances that […]