This issue of Global Dialogue opens with Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ reflections on the horrendous killings of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. If ever there was a series of events that cried out for sociological analysis, then these are they – to consider the reason for the killings, the nature of the killers, the impact of […]

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, Portugal and member of the Program Committee of the 2014 ISA World Congress. The heinous nature of the crime against the journalists and cartoonists from Charlie Hebdo makes it extremely difficult to offer a cool-headed analysis of what was entailed in this barbaric act, its context and […]

by Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK, President of ISA Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations (RC05), 2002-6 and Member of the Program Committee for ISA World Congress in Durban, 2006 Nira Yuval-Davis, an Israeli dissident, has been a long-standing defender of human rights: a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism, and […]

Issa Shivji is one of the great public intellectuals of postcolonial Africa. He was a law student (1967-1970) at the University of Dar es Salaam, growing up amidst distinguished leftist scholars such as sociologists Giovanni Arrighi, Immanuel Wallerstein and John Saul. These scholars came from all over the world, attracted to the formative intellectual ferment […]

by Herbert Docena, University of California, Berkeley, USA and member of the ISA Research Committee on Labor Movements (RC44). As has become traditional since 1972, when the first UN conference on the environment was held in Stockholm, thousands of people from around the world once again gathered for an alternative “People’s Summit” in December (2014). […]

by Ariane Hanemaayer, University of Alberta, Canada and Christopher J. Schneider, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada The premise of public sociology is to engage publics in a dialogue of mutual education. There are of course many exciting ways to practice public sociology. In this short essay we explore two “analog” versions of practicing public sociology (for […]

by Simón Escoffier, Oxford University, UK Despite a long history of social mobilization, since 1990 Chile’s urban poor have often been portrayed as passive political actors suffering from segregation and social illnesses. Based on my research in the borough of Peñalolén in Santiago, however, I argue that in some cases at least, the urban poor […]

by María José Álvarez Rivadulla, Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia and Board Member of ISA Research Committee on Regional and Urban Development (RC21) Montevideo changed drastically during the last two decades of the twentieth century: in the confluence of neoliberalism and democratization, Uruguay’s capital city grew increasingly unequal and segregated. Perhaps the most visible change […]

by Cibele Rizek and André Dal’Bó, University of São Paulo, Brazil Brazil’s Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) was established in the late 1990s, uniting “workers, laborers, informal, underemployed and unemployed, who like millions of Brazilians have no access to decent housing, but instead live in rentals, in risky areas or situations of urban insecurity, located mainly […]

by Prishani Naidoo, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa The dominant narrative of South Africa’s first twenty years of non-racial electoral democracy emphasizes the successes of the formal political institutions, players, policies and processes shaped and activated in this period. Nonetheless, the informal intrudes constantly, perhaps most vocally in the form of protests that emerge in […]

by Singumbe Muyeba, University of Cape Town, South Africa In April 2013, fifteen armored vehicles and policemen stormed plot 10144 in Lusaka West. Unsuspecting residents woke up to the shock of being evicted. They could not do anything but watch because they were being threatened with weapons. Police demolished 33 houses. About 365 people, many […]

by Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann, Marie-Christine Bureau, and Michel Lallement, LISE-CNRS, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France New forms of sharing, as well as new ways of collaborative production and consumption, are raising questions for the current economy. Fablabs and hackerspaces have a particular place in this context where commons-inspired wealth is based on access […]

by Bernard Fusulier, FNRS, University of Louvain, Belgium, and Chantal Nicole-Drancourt, CNRS-LISE, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France Declining birth rates, decreasing employment rates among mothers, and the renunciation of motherhood are increasingly considered major risks, connected to the demography and levels of social welfare in “developed” countries. Although the financial and budgetary […]

by Anne-Marie Waser, Dominique Lhuilier, Frédéric Brugeilles, Pierre Lénel, Guillaume Huez, Joëlle Mezza, and Cathy Hermand, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France In France, keeping the working-age population employed has become a matter of concern for two reasons: this population is aging and increased percentages have been diagnosed with chronic illnesses, particularly cancer. […]

by Lucia Ratih Kusumadewi, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, Member of ISA Research Committees on Sociology of Religion (RC22) and Social Classes and Social Movements (RC47) “Greetings! Two fingers! Don’t forget to vote for Jokowi!” Slank, a famous rock band, sang with joy and jubilation in support of Indonesia’s presidential candidate Jokowi and his vice-presidential […]

by Kamanto Sunarto, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, Member of ISA Research Committees on Sociology of Education (RC04) and History of Sociology (RC08) After the Indonesian reform movement ended 32 years of authoritarian military rule in 1998, the state introduced hotly contested educational reforms. Since 2003 the establishment of the Constitutional Court opened a new […]

by Hari Nugroho, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, Member of ISA Research Committees on Labor Movements (RC44) and Social Movements, Collective Actions and Social Change (RC48) After a long period of absence from the political arena, the labor movement in Indonesia seems on the verge of a new political activism. In 2014, a number of […]

by Antonius Cahyadi, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, Member of ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Religion (RC22) and ISA Thematic Group on Human Rights and Global Justice (TG03) At the end of the Suharto era (1990s), the Indonesian public sphere was marked by religious sentiment and racial intolerance. Being non-Muslim or Chinese and, therefore, […]

by Indera Ratna Irawati Pattinasarany, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia, Member of ISA Research Committees on Sociology of Education (RC04) and Social Stratification (RC28) Indonesia experienced tremendous economic recovery after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, going from a low middle-income country to joining the G-20 group. In addition, Indonesia has attained political, financial and economic […]