In this issue we begin with two essays from Asia – one from the Philippines and the other from India – written by distinguished public intellectuals. Walden Bello follows a line of sociologists who have entered politics. For example, Global Dialogue interviewed Fernando Henrique Cardoso who became President of Brazil (GD3.4) and Nicolás Lynch who […]

by Walden Bello, Emeritus Professor, University of the Philippines at Diliman, and former member of the Philippine House of Representatives, 2009-15 Walden Bello is a Filipino sociologist of immense international stature as a scholar and public intellectual. He has published major books on development and politics, including the Anti-Development State (2004), Food Wars (2009) and […]

by Dipankar Gupta, Shiv Nadar University, New Delhi, India Dipankar Gupta is a distinguished Indian sociologist and leading public intellectual. He is Professor and Director of the Centre for Public Affairs and Critical Theory at the Shiv Nadar University in New Delhi. For nearly three decades he taught sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The author […]

by Brigitte Aulenbacher, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria and member of ISA Research Committees on Economy and Society (RC02), Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC19), Sociology of Work (RC30), and Women in Society (RC32) and Vice-Chair of the Local Organizing Committee of the Third ISA Forum of Sociology, Vienna 2016 Care and care work, […]

by Michael D. Fine, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and member of ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Aging (RC11) Walzing Matilda is a deceptively cheerful song about a homeless swaggie who carries his bedding around (walzes his matilda) as he searches for work across the Australian outback. Internationally recognizable as Australian, it typifies the itinerant […]

by Hildegard Theobald, University of Vechta, Germany and member of ISA Research Committees on Aging (RC11) and Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC19) and Yayoi Saito, Osaka University, Japan Since the 1980s, long-term care policies in many Western countries have been considerably restructured, with strong impact on both care users and care workers. Countries […]

by Roland Atzmüller, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria and member of ISA Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC19); Brigitte Aulenbacher, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria and member of ISA Research Committees on Economy and Society (RC02), RC19, Sociology of Work (RC30), and Women in Society (RC32) and Vice-Chair of the Local […]

by Monica Budowski, University of Fribourg, Switzerland and member of ISA Research Committees on Economy and Society (RC02), Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC19), and Social Indicators (RC55); Sebastian Schief, University of Fribourg, Switzerland; W. Daniel Vera Rojas, Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile Societies organize care in different ways. Family and household members, […]

by Elena Moore, University of Cape Town and Jeremy Seekings, University of Cape Town, South Africa and former Vice-President of ISA Research Committee on Regional and Urban Development (RC21) and member of Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare, and Social Policy (RC19) High levels of financial assistance and physical care are needed and given in […]

by the Public Sociology Laboratory, St. Petersburg, Russia The Public Sociology Laboratory is an independent research group of leftist scholars and activists in St. Petersburg. Some of us took part in student protests against the commercialization of education, and the corruption and profanation of science in the sociology department at Moscow State University in 2007-2008, […]

by Natalia Tregubova and Valentin Starikov, St. Petersburg State University, Russia In Russian the word “soviet” means 1) council, assembly, board; 2) advice, recommendation, suggestion; 3) harmony, concord. As a term, it refers to a specific kind of political organization, introduced after the October Revolution of 1917, that radically transformed political power: “Councils of the […]

by Zuzana Sekeráková Búriková, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic “Au pairing” brings together paid domestic work undertaken by temporary migrants, cultural exchange defined by national and international regulations, and basic living arrangements. According to British regulations passed in 2004 and 2005, au pairs are young foreigners who stay for up to two years with families […]

by Irena Kašparová, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic For the last two decades, the school performance of Czech pupils has steadily declined, according to various international means and measures (e.g. PISA standards) – a fact that has provoked a national debate about education, its role, directions and methods. Dissatisfied not only with comparative standards but […]

by Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic It is May 15, 2013 and we are standing in the sunny square in Olomouc, a city halfway between Brno and Ostrava, where we are staging the project Memory of Roma Workers. It is the first big encounter of the whole team. More than ten people […]

by Lefeng Lin, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA Since 2010, when China was hit by a national strike wave, media and activists have often portrayed Chinese workers as restless, engaging in countless riots, strikes, and walkouts. But today, labor NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) and young labor scholars tend to tell similar stories: especially in Southern China, […]

by Ercüment Çelik, University of Freiburg, Germany, and Board Member of ISA Research Committees on Labor Movements (RC44) and Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48) During the last two decades creating a non-hegemonic social science on a world scale has been a major concern for social scientists in both the South and North. […]

by Ellen Kuhlmann, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden; Tuba Agartan, Providence College, USA; Debby Bonnin, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Javier Pablo Hermo, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; Elena Iarskaia-Smirnova, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia; Monika Lengauer, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany; Shaun Ruggunan, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; and Virendra P. Singh, University of Allahabad, […]

by Izabela Barlinska, ISA Executive Secretary, Madrid, Spain In January 1987 a container with ISA files traveled from Amsterdam to Madrid and the ISA Secretariat started a new life. Soon after we had unpacked and installed ourselves, preparations began for the ISA XII World Congress of Sociology in Madrid. In those days the ISA had […]