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Joint Sessions
For sessions program and schedule see
Conceptions of the Body and Health in High-Risk Organizations
Joint session of RC01 Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution [host committee] , RC49 Mental Health and Illness and RC54 The Body in the Social SciencesSession Organizer
Gerhard KUEMMEL, Bundeswehr Institute of Social Sciences, Germany, email@example.com
Session in English
We assume that high-risk organizations such as the fire brigades, disaster relief organizations, the police and the military may nourish particular conceptions of the body and health. The exposition to risk, thus we hypothesize, triggers conceptions of the body as being invulnerable and strong. Also, such exposition furthers conceptions of health that exclude the unhealthy. We welcome papers dealing with this issue from theoretical and/or empirical angles.
Boom and Bust: The Community before, during, and after Economic Prosperity
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC03 Community Research [host committee]Session Organizer
Sam HILLYARD, Durham University, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Session in English
The session explores the impact of economic prosperity upon communities. Communities can benefit from the prosperity local resources afford them, but the rewards can be highly transitory.
The session invites papers bringing new empirical insight into our understanding of the processes of change before, during and after "booms."
Local resource is broadly conceived (mining, tourism, etc.). The notion of community is neither restricted to a physical nor geographic locale, but could be occupationally-defined, urban or activity-based. The notion of prosperity is also relative, and the session welcomes papers exploring small initiatives and examples of entrepreneurialism as well as globally-driven investment by established corporations and elites. Empirically, are there principles of best practices that can inform our approaches and what cumulative lessons might be learned? Theoretically, which models provide best insight across these micro, meso and macro events?
All papers engaging with one or more of these themes are welcome.
Challenges and Innovations in Contemporary Counter-Hegemonic Politics
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC07 Futures Research [host committee]Session Organizers
William K. CARROLL, University of Victoria, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Markus S. SCHULZ, University of Illinois, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
The crises of neoliberal capitalism pre-date the 2008 financial meltdown, as do the critiques of neoliberal globalization. 2014 will mark the 20th anniversary of the Zapatista uprising. How, in the ensuing two decades have transnationally linked civil society actors attempted to move beyond episodic protest, to advocate alternatives (economic, ecological, political and cultural) that open spaces for radical transformation? What are the theoretical and practical challenges in pressing for radical change in a world still dominated in many ways by the institutions and narratives of neoliberal capitalism? What alternative projects do collective actors in the Global South and the Global North articulate, and how effective have their efforts been? How can they overcome the linguistic and cultural barriers, and how do they manage to network across borders and vastly different local contexts? How do they interact with transnational elites, the mass media, and repressive forces? What can we learn by comparing experiences and aspirations?
This session welcomes scholars working on any of these aspects from a theoretical, empirical, and/or normative viewpoint.
Futures of Post-Neoliberalism in a Time of Global Crisis
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society , RC07 Futures Research and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development [host committee]Session Organizer
Ulrike M. M. SCHUERKENS, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Neoliberalism has become the focus of much public debate, as global financial crises continue under this economic order. For many observers, neoliberalism has exhausted its capacity as a hegemonic project. Yet alternatives are rather few. One may find them in the Occupy movement. This movement in its many forms all over the world has challenged the current neoliberal order, although its message defies codification. Another alternative that tries to reconstruct the global capitalist order takes the form of "Andean capitalism" in several Latin American countries. Countries, such as those that comprise the ALBA space, attempt to construct an alternative hegemonic discourse and practice. In North Africa, the Arab spring required a democratic change of postcolonial regimes narrowly linked to neoliberal states of the North.
In other countries, conflicts have turned around the cost of living and corruption, and not on the structural reform agenda tackled by the Occupy movement. Social protests are here likely to revolve around unmet expectations of populations who do not receive a sufficient socio-economic share from the prevailing political order. Questions to be addressed include: What is post-neoliberalism? Does the global financial crisis herald a new economic era? Which avenues for public policy are opened up by the global financial crisis? Which possibilities are given for democratic participations of populations in the governance of States? This session will provide a forum for the articulation of competing answers to these questions and arguments from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds.
Characteristics of Neoliberalism in a Time of Global Crisis
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society , RC07 Futures Research and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development [host committee]Session Organizer
Ulrike M. M. SCHUERKENS, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France, email@example.com
Session in English
The Culture and Currency of Money
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development [host committee]Session Organizer
Frederick F. WHERRY, Columbia University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Since Viviana Zelizer`s publication of The Social Meaning of Money (1994), there has been a growing recognition among social scientists that money, budgeting, and the creation of currencies have less to do with technical concerns and mathematical optimizations than with cultural codes and social relationships. Nonprofit organizations and government agencies have increasingly paid attention to how households categorize and prioritize their expenditures. Questions remain about how budget categories emerge and how priorities shift (or not) due to financial education. What exactly is culture and how does it mediate attempts to change budgeting practices?
At the macro-level struggles ensue over what currencies should look like, which countries should belong in a currency community and what the cultural characteristics are of those countries deemed most suitable for inclusion versus exclusion. These meaningful struggles at the household level and at the national and regional levels call for a culturally specific and socially situated analysis of money and social transformations. This session invites papers on the dynamics of money, currency, cultural characteristics, and social identities, broadly understood.
The Global Migration of Gendered Care Work
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society , RC19 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy [host committee] and RC44 Labor MovementsSession Organizers
Ito PENG, University of Toronto, Canada, email@example.com
Jennifer Jihye CHUN, University of Bristish Columbia, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Heidi GOTTFRIED, Wayne State University, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
Care work, a form of unpaid and paid labour performed primarily by women, is a major site of job growth across both the developing and developed world. The increasing demand for care workers in a variety of sectors – from private homes to long-term elder care facilities to public hospitals – has contributed to the global migration of care workers. Transnational flows of women workers, especially from poorer migrant-sending countries to wealthier migrant-receiving countries, raise critical questions about the dynamics of new forms of inequality, subordination and commodification associated with globalized care chains.
How do global hierarchies influence the patterns and characteristics of care migration? In what ways do changing demographics, institutional policies and cultural practices affect the supply and provision of care across national borders? What are the social costs and consequences of global care chains for care workers and their families? How are care workers attempting to challenge the precarious dimensions of care work? What are the means and modes of organizing among care workers?
Searching for Sustainable Alternative Economies in the 21st Century: Cases and Prospects
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society [host committee] and RC24 Environment and SocietySession Organizer
Michelle F. HSIEH, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, email@example.com
Session in English
This is a call for papers that study the kinds of initiatives for sustainable economic activities that attempt to remedy problems resulting from the endless-growth driven capitalist economies (e.g. increasing inequality, environmental degradation, over- concentration of corporate power etc.). Sustainable development is usually associated with envisioning viable post-globalization economic systems that emphasize sustainability and social equity and often involve multiple contestations and pluralist forms of institutional design.
Various terms have been applied to these alternative initiatives that differentiate them from profit- driven capitalist economies, such as social economies, social innovations, sustainable development or alternative globalization. Empirically, there have been a growing number of studies on these social experiments and alternative practices, with examples ranging from varieties of green economy initiatives and fair trade to co-operatives and various other socioeconomic practices. A common thrust among these alternatives is that they address collective human needs and are not subject to the endless-growth driven logic of market economies. But what are the trade-offs, possible tensions and contradictions of these alternatives vis-à-vis the current market economy?
This session aims to address the working mechanisms, governance structure and organizing principles of these on-going social experiments or initiatives, the social conditions for their success or failure and their limitations. The purpose is to identify mechanisms for change, viabilities for alternative economies, their relationship with the world economy and prospects for transforming global capitalism. It invites empirical works on these alternative economies at the local, regional or national levels that examine how they can be articulated in relation to market economies. It calls for case studies from both developed and developing countries, but special attention will be given to responses from non-core countries, especially cases from East Asia (though not limited to there).
Structural Mechanisms and Historical Contingencies: Global Stratification and its Discontents
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC28 Social Stratification [host committee]Session Organizers
Hiroko INOUE, University of California Riverside, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Haya STIER, Tel Aviv University, Israel, email@example.com
Session in English
As global sociology faces an unequal world, it seeks to understand the combinations of structural mechanisms and historical contingencies and rational choices that generate, reproduce, and challenge inequities. Global sociology has come to incorporate various sub-fields of traditional sociology at agent, distinct local and international levels and has also developed theoretical perspectives to explain inequality/stratification, integration, and disparity.
National stratification structures and processes have been altered by globalization, and global structures of power, prestige, wealth and income are also changing. Some have argued that a single global society with a global class structure is emerging. Such ongoing and novel reconfigurations of inequality/stratification at different levels, time and space have been a central question of global sociology.
This joint session seeks papers that are related to all the issues of stratification in the context of globalization as well as global stratification. The session is interested in wide range of topics that are relevant to stratification including income, class, migration, environment, education, family, gender, race, ethnicity, health, and the like. The session is open to various theoretical perspectives in sociology including, but not limited to, political economy and others.
Land and Labor in the Global Political Economy
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC44 Labor Movements [host committee]Session Organizer
Sarah SWIDER, Wayne State University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
What is the relation between accumulation by dispossession and the exploitation of labor? How do these two processes intersect to mobilize resistance? When do struggles over land create the most effective contestation of capitalist domination and when is the exploitation of labor a more powerful driver of resistance? Theorists from Marx to Polanyi to David Harvey have wrestled with these questions and they are central to the contemporary study of labor movements, especially in the global south. Land grabs are a central feature of development in Asia, Africa and Latin America. They take a variety of forms. Extractive investments by global corporations threaten rural communities and livelihoods. State sponsored industrial zones, business parks, and real estate development transform urban and peri-urban areas. Land grabs are intertwined with the creation of new forms of exploitation and marginalization of workers.
This panel will examine how specific socio-economic, political, and historical arrangements shape the articulation of exploitation and dispossession and how this articulation shapes in turn the form and content of counter movements.
Organizing the Production of Alternative Visions to Support Social and Eco-Justice
Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society [host committee] and RC44 Labor MovementsSession Organizers
William CARROLL, University of Victoria, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Peter EVANS, University of California-Berkeley, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Since the mid-1970s, but particularly since the 1990s, alternative think tanks, policy groups, popular institutes and other sites of counter-hegemonic knowledge production and mobilization have generated important ideas, both visionary and strategic, for a "globalization from below" in which transnational social movements have often been leading protagonists. Groups such as the Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), Instituto Paulo Freire and Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes (Sao Paulo), Focus on the Global South (Bangkok), Centre for Civil Society (Durban) and Asia Monitor Resource Centre (Hong Kong) have served as "collective intellectuals," critiquing corporate agendas and promoting democratic alternatives to neoliberal globalization in contestations that often transect national borders.
This panel session welcomes papers and presentations that explore the challenges and possibilities in organizing the production of alternative visions, strategies, critiques and modes of analysis to support social and eco-justice. How is counter-hegemonic knowledge produced, mobilized and articulated with on-the ground activism? What alternative projects and methodologies are emerging for strengthening anti-systemic forces? How does counter-hegemonic knowledge production contribute to a new left anti-capitalist politics and to the formation of new subjectivities from below? Papers that take up issues relating to labour movements and/or economy and society are particularly welcome, as are presentations from activist intellectuals directly engaged in the production of alternative visions and strategies.
The Problem of Social Justice and Social Conflict in China, Russia and Africa
Joint session of RC03 Community Research [host committee] and RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of DevelopmentSession Organizers
Nina BANDELJ, University of California-Irvine, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Cheris Shun-ching CHAN, University of Hong Kong, China, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
This session invites submissions that examine the intersection of globalization, economic development, and social outcomes in post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and China. Rather than limiting inequalities to economic terms, this session calls for works that study any forms of inequalities, such as unequal access to political power, healthcare, housing, education, cultural capital, and social capital, etc.
The former communist countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia were sharply buffeted by the global economic crisis and prolonged difficulties on the European continent. The way forward in this region seems complicated since the massive transformations of the prior two dozen of years had left more or less skeletons in post-socialist closets. It is easily forgotten that the institutionalization of democracy and the market took many decades, at a minimum, in other parts of the world. How has the global economic crisis intervened into these post-socialist developments?
In many countries, the crisis has brought a time of recession, high unemployment, and soaring sovereign debt, with governance marred by non-transparency and informality. In some cases, restive publics began to register support for populist and radical parties; in others, they staged protest against current governments. Scholars have even questioned the legitimacy of the economic and political models that East European countries had followed since 1989.
Some countries have shown more resistance and have weathered the crisis better than others. China is often cited as a case to illustrate a divergent path, and yet there are tremendous challenges and difficulties that China is experiencing. Social distrust is intensifying and social unrest is mounting under the surface of an ever stronger economy. Does the Chinese society experiencing something in common with the European and Eurasian societies? What are they and why is that so? We welcome papers that explore any of these topics, employing a cross-national framework to interrogate the divergences and similarities across the region, and between the post-socialist countries and the rest of the world. We welcome quantitative cross-national analyses, qualitative case study comparisons, or multi-method designs.
Future of Education: Innovation, Reform, Struggle, and Vision / Futuro de la educación: Innovación, reforma, lucha y visión
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education and RC07 Futures Research [host committee]Session Organizers
Sonsoles SAN ROMAN GAGO, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain, email@example.com
Gerardo DEL CERRO SANTAMARIA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Hiroyuki TOYOTA, Kansai Gaidai University, Osaka, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
The Future of Teaching and Research in Universities
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education , RC07 Futures Research and RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology [host committee]Session Organizers
Jaime JIMENEZ, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, firstname.lastname@example.com
A. Gary DWORKIN, University of Houston, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Gerardo DEL CERRO SANTAMARIA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, email@example.com
Ralph MATTHEWS, University of British Columbia, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Teaching and research in research universities have endured critical changes over the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Public universities confront the reduction of budgets and/or the "labeling" of funds. Authorities insist on the "return" of investment of universities, meaning to prepare professionals to meet the needs of service/production entities, and/or increase the university income via more applied science projects sponsored by external sources.
The very essence of universities seems to be threatened. To augment knowledge for the sake of increasing human knowledge seems to be diluted. What the future of man will be if the humanities are neglected? Can human kind do without the wisdom delivered by the social sciences and the humanities?
RC04RC13 Leisure and Education in an Unequal World
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education and RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee]Session Organizers
Karl SPRACKLEN, Leeds Metropolitan University, United Kingdom, email@example.com
A. Gary DWORKIN, University of Houston, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
The Comparative Sociology of Examinations. Part I
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education and RC20 Comparative Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Fumiya ONAKA, Japan Women`s University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Shinichi AIZAWA, Chukyo University, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
Examinations have been functioning as a crucial mechanism for producing, reproducing and legitimizing inequalities. From another viewpoint, however, they have also constituted a tool for social promotion. It is important to analyze carefully the way they work in order to understand inequalities in present-day societies. Obviously enough, modes of examination differ greatly from one society to the next (in Japan we used to talk of "examination hell"). What we would like to encourage is a "Comparative Sociology of examinations."
This, in some way, can equally be seen as a comparative analysis of our discipline because the topic can be treated in a very different way by various schools of thought (e.g. Marxian theories of inequality, Durkheimian theories of socialization, Weberian theories of modernization, and Eliasian theories of civilization). We welcome case studies that would contribute to the international comparison of examinations.
The Comparative Sociology of Examinations. Part II
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education and RC20 Comparative Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Fumiya ONAKA, Japan Women`s University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Shinichi AIZAWA, Chukyo University, Japan, email@example.com
New Topics in Interaction between University and Society
Joint session of RC04 Sociology of Education [host committee] and RC23 Sociology of Science and TechnologySession Organizers
Juha TUUNAINEN, University of Helsinki, Finland, firstname.lastname@example.com
Kari KANTASALMI, University of Helsinki, Finland, email@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
The 20th century witnessed a radical transformation in the ways of understanding the relationship between university and society. In science studies, the transformation of university research was discussed in terms of changing norms of science and altering contract between science and society. In research policy and higher education research, the societal role of university was redefined in terms of academic capitalism, entrepreneurial university and Mode-two knowledge production. In science communication, risks and ethical problems created by techno-scientific developments sprouted resulting in the transformation of public understanding of science into a more interactive construct of public engagement in science.
In this context, the present session will increase our knowledge about the societal impact of universities by addressing the diversity of forms of interaction between university and society. It strives for improving our understanding of the various ways in which epistemic and social motives are being intertwined in university activities, and promotes an in-depth analysis of the mutual influence between science, higher education and society. Finally, it seeks to contribute to the understanding of the democracy of science and education by scrutinizing the ways in which societal stakeholders influence, and are influenced by, university practices in different areas of society.
Note: Papers submitted to this session will be considered for publication in a special issue of the journal Science & Technology Studies (http://www.sciencetechnologystudies.org/). A more detailed call for papers concerning the special issue will be circulated later.
Contested Citizenship: Transnationalism, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality
Joint session of RC05 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations and RC32 Women in Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Patricia TOMIC, University of British Columbia Okanagan, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Lloyd L. WONG, University of Calgary, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Mobility is one of the most significant features of the present. Not only people, but ideas, discourses, human relations, commodities of every kind, capital, concepts, knowledge, and values, transfer from place to place, sometimes instantly, sometimes with great difficulty and under tremendous stress. However, in the global context, mobility comes together with borders and power. Indeed, while borders have become more flexible for goods, capital, and data, if people are involved, they open easily only for some; for others, borders have become increasingly rigid. Hence, both, mobilities and immobilities characterize contemporary societies. Gender is one of the key elements that decide mobilities and immobilities affecting women in particular and in significant ways. But gender cannot be considered independently from its intersection with class, race, sexuality and ability.
This session invites papers that deal with the ways in which societies of flow (Castells, 1996) intersect with gender; in particular, how societies of flow are being impacted by the diversity of women's agency. Topics may cover (but are not limited) to the following:
- Societies of flows, feminism and transnational solidarities.
- South-North women's migration, critical human rights theory, and contested citizenships.
- Global inequalities, women, technologies and the transnational.
- Transnational economies, labour, gender and human rights.
- Race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and migration.
- Discourses of family, human rights and transnational economies.
- Global Capitalism, transnational flows of ideas, communications and women in the global South.
- Gender, sexuality, the global South and cultural mobility.
- Methodological and theoretical contributions to study gender, sexuality, ethnicity and citizenship in the context of mobility and global inequalities.
RC05RC32 Roundtable I. Social Structure and Identities: National and/or Transnational Analyses of Racism or Ethnic relations
Joint session of RC05 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations [host committee] and RC32 Women in SocietySession Organizers
Vilna Bashi TREITLER, City University of New York, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Ann DENIS, University of Ottawa, Canada, email@example.com
Session in English
- R1. Social structure and (shifting/mixed) identities
Discussions of how ethnic identities are constructed and various types of ethnic boundaries may shift as a result of social structural constraints/processes. - R2. Discourses on peoples: in media, politics, the law and research instruments
Discussions of how media have contributed both to ethnic solidarity and to the promotion of discrimination and other forms of social exclusion. - R3. Nationalism/Multiculturalism
Discussions of how ethnic solidarities, identities and senses of belonging are differently articulated in states characterized by a variety of forms of ethnic diversity and in diverse policies related to multiculturalism. - R4. Inequalities of power: perceptions of self/other
Discussions about how groups perceive their own or others` power positions as they understand, interpret, or create social and economic boundaries in ethnically diverse situations. - R5. Women
Focussing on women's experiences, these papers provide various intersectional analyses of women's strategies for identity formation and implementation in various social structures. In some cases this involves transnational considerations.
Intersectionality and Intellectual Biographies
Joint session of RC05 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations [host committee] and RC38 Biography and SocietySession Organizers
Kathy DAVIS, Vrije University, Netherlands, email@example.com
Helma LUTZ, Frankfurt University, Germany, email@example.com
Session in English
This joint session explores the ways social location shapes, limits, and enables the development of critical social theory. This will be done by means of intellectual biographies of theorists, social histories of schools of thought and their travels, and transnational ethnographies of theoretical and methodological perspectives challenging racism, sexism, ethnocentrism and nationalism.
We invite contributions that focus specifically on the relationships between intersections of gender, class, race/ethnicity and national belonging and the development of critical sociological theory and practice.
Temporary and Precarious Migration and the Securitized State. Human Rights, Culture and Belonging in an Age of Economic and Moral Austerity
Joint session of RC05 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations [host committee] and TG03 Human Rights and Global JusticeSession Organizers
Claudia TAZREITER, University of New South Wales, Australia, email@example.com
Immanuel NESS, City University of New York, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Human mobility is a desired aspect of globalization and indeed a particularly desired phenomenon by the neoliberal marketization and financialization of everyday life. Yet growing global inequalities result in some individuals having a greater need to migrate than others while the state is increasingly preoccupied with border control, securitization and criminalization of the most vulnerable migrants.
Migrant workers, especially low-skilled workers and those with irregular migration status are vulnerable to various forms of abuse and exploitation in this context. The UN estimates that more than 214 million migrants, including migrant workers, refugees, asylum seekers as well as immigrants without residency rights, live and work in a country other than that of their birth or citizenship. Many of these individuals find themselves without adequate protections and subject to forms of exploitation, abuse and discrimination, including racialization.
Irregular status often renders migrants "invisible" to the services of the state as non-citizens, yet at the same time these groups are subject to increasingly harsh forms of securitization through state mechanisms of control and violence, both tangible and symbolic. A resurgence of nationalism and xenophobia has in many cases accompanied economic austerity after the "crisis" of markets and money. Irregular and temporary migrants are readily implicated in a politics of exclusion that the state wages in many parts of the world against the same individuals that transnational corporations readily exploit through precarious, casualized and often unregulated work.
This session seeks to address growing global inequalities and the effects of austerity, both economic and moral, through focusing on the experiences of temporary migrants.
We welcome papers that explore empirically or theoretically aspects of the dilemmas outlined above. We particularly welcome papers that address the global and local transformations that result in "precarious migration" and further entrench inequalities within and between regions of the world. We welcome papers that focus on state responses to the developments outlined as well as papers that focus on strategies of resistance by migrants through local or transnational networks.
Becoming a Racial Subject, Negotiating Power: Comparative Historical Contexts
Joint session of RC05 Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations [host committee] and WG02 Historical and Comparative SociologySession Organizers
Vilna Bashi TREITLER, City University of New York, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Manuela BOATCA, Free University of Berlin, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
This invited session brings together recent pieces of research on the creation of racial subjects in different historical settings and geopolitical contexts – from imperial and colonial rule in the Americas and Africa to the post-colonial present in Asia and Europe. Strategies employed in order to counteract, subvert and resist to processes of racialization and the resulting structural exclusions are discussed alongside shifts in the patterns and discourses of ethno-racial incorporation.
Family and Elder Care
Joint session of RC06 Family Research and RC11 Sociology of Aging [host committee]Session Organizers
Cynthia M. CREADY, University of North Texas, USA, email@example.com
Jacobus HOFFMAN, Oxford Institute of Ageing, United Kingdom, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Empirical and theoretical papers that address any aspect of family and elder care invited for this session. Possible topics include: becoming a caregiver; types and levels of elder care and support from family members; elder perceptions of family-produced care; the effects of caring for an elder family member on the health and well-being, relationships, work, and financial situation of the caregiver; consequences of changing family structure for elder care; racial/ethnic, gender, and/or social class differences in family-produced elder care; transitions from family-produced to non-family-produced elder care, and the impact of social policies on family-produced elder care.
Leisure and Family: A Mutually Supportive Relationship
Joint session of RC06 Family Research and RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee]Session Organizers
Rudolf RICHTER, University of Vienna, Austria, email@example.com
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
Session in English
The most important social unit the family can be both a highly constructive and supportive institution and also the most destructive one. Just as family nurtures its wards so too the family needs to be nurtured. Can leisure have a role in maintaining and supporting the family as a unit? Can it help promote more integrated and supportive family relationships? Families sharing leisure activities may have healthier social attitude as they may have a more egalitarian approach to human relationships. Just as leisure can support better family ties so too, some of the most fulfilling leisure activities may be found within the family set up.
Families' Resilience in Times of Economic Crisis and Mobility
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and RC31 Sociology of MigrationSession Organizers
Loretta BALDASSAR, University of Western Australia, Australia, email@example.com
Majella KILKEY, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Laura MERLA, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, email@example.com
Session in English
Little is known about the impact of the current economic crisis on families and on the strategies they adopt to deal with it. This session seeks to address that gap by examining the potential re-activation of transnational family ties and solidarities in times of crisis. Rather than seeing care exchange as a unidirectional, one way drain flow from poor migrants to wealthy elites, the session builds on a conceptualization of care flows as asymmetrical and circular. Potential sources of support and resilience opportunities can accommodate strains and stresses in one country through the resilience and strength of the family network spread across the globe. Specifically, migration is examined both as a strategy to cope with the crisis and as a resource underpinning transnational family and community relations, which is likely to vary across and within migration streams. Of particular importance here is an analysis of inequalities in what has been called `global householding` (Douglass 2006, Kofman 2012) in terms of gender, age, ethnicity, class, employment status and skill. The circular flows of care and resilience strategies within families occur with the poor and also with the middle classes and elites who utilise networks to facilitate mobility, opportunities for economic and career success, and care for dependent family members as parents age and for the very young. We invite contributions that analyse the strategies that "old" and "new" transnational families adopt to cope with the effects of the current economic crisis. We are particularly interested in: Transnational families' resilience strategies in a comparative perspective; Intergenerational and/or cross generational linkages within transnational families, as well as inequalities within and across transnational families, and the role that diasporas play in creating resilience for migrant families in times of economic crisis.
Women Negotiating Work and Family
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and RC32 Women in SocietySession Organizers
Maitreyee BARDHAN, Basanti Devi College, India, email@example.com
Anita DASH, Ravenshaw University, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
This session looks at the ways in which women juggle multiple roles in being an active citizen through their labour force participation and their roles in the family and household. Women`s roles within families can be diverse including women-headed single parent families, co-parents and women as carer of the elderly.
The papers in this session should consider how global trends and societal changes in relation to gender and work politics impact on women's familial roles in the Asian region. Themes included in this session are:
- women-headed single parent families and work politics
- women, elderly care and work politics
- working women and their dependence on domestic workers
Panel Data Analysis of Families Worldwide
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and RC33 Logic and Methodology in SociologySession Organizers
Junya TSUTSUI, Ritsumeikan University, Japan, email@example.com
Michiko NISHINO, Toyo University, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
In almost every discipline in social sciences, the power and effectiveness of panel (longitudinal) data has been recognized in the analysis of human behaviour. Panel analyses are able to achieve stricter estimations than ordinary cross-sectional analysis. Panel based family studies can provide a more accurate estimation of effects, such as the effect of family support programs on marriage formation or fertility, or the effect of shorter working hours on husband's contribution to housework, etc. The U.S. has a long history of panel data accumulation. Now panel data are ready to be analysed by researchers in Japan and other regions.
The session welcomes papers analysing family issues using panel data from every region of the world. The session will provide up to 5 presentations, followed by discussions where researchers are expected to exchange methods of analyses or contemporary conditions regarding the accumulation of panel data on family behaviour. In order to facilitate this purpose, session organizer will pursue the maximum diversity in regions represented by presenters.
Disasters and Families and Children: Coping Strategies and Recovering Efforts
Joint session of RC06 Family Research and RC39 Sociology of Disasters [host committee]Session Organizers
Noriko IWAI, Osaka University of Commerce, Japan, email@example.com
Alice FOTHERGILL, University of Vermont, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
In the past decade, many nations, such as Japan, Haiti, China, the United States, Indonesia, and others have experienced major disasters. This session will examine the impact of such large-scale events on families. We are especially interested in research on families in all stages of the disaster lifecycle, including: risk perception, preparedness, response to warnings, evacuation behavior, short- and long-term recovery, and reconstruction. We also hope that researchers will further understanding of how social vulnerability, poverty, the relocation of households, the scattering of family members, the loss of stable family income, and other factors influence the ability of families to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disaster. Moreover, we encourage authors to engage questions related to how families, as units, can better prepare for and become more resilient in the face of disaster.
Families Responses to Natural and Human-Made Disasters
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and RC39 Sociology of DisastersSession Organizers
DeMond S. MILLER, Rowan University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Mark HUTTER, Rowan University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
This session will seek papers that focus on how families deal with natural disasters. In recent years, in the United States, two hurricanes – Katrina and Sandy – impacted on people living in southern states and most notably New Orleans, Louisiana and on the Jersey Shore of New Jersey and coastal areas of New York City. Worldwide, natural disasters, such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Indonesia and human-made disasters such as the nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and in Japan affected the people who lived in their respective countries.
Papers should be directed at the ways that families have responded to such disasters. Coping patterns and resiliency patterns and the family as well as family disorganization effects as a resultant of disasters should be addressed in such papers. We welcome papers that specifically relate to disasters that occur in a given country. Papers can focus on marital disruption patterns, generational effects, etc. Papers of a more theoretical bent that discusses families in terms of crisis as a result of disasters are also of great interest.
Children`s Agency Through Daily Life Interactions
Joint session of RC06 Family Research and RC53 Sociology of Childhood [host committee]Session Organizer
Wen-Jui HAN, New York University, New York, email@example.com
Jianghong LI, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany, email@example.com
Session in English
Labor Market Trends and Family Well-Being
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and RC53 Sociology of ChildhoodSession Organizers
Jianghong LI, Social Science Research Center Berlin, Germany, email@example.com
Wen-Jui HAN, New York University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Many societies around the globe are witnessing a significant labor market transition from industrial and post-industrial economies to service economies, which Presser (2003) calls the "24/7 economy." A 24/7 economy demands services around the clock, and this has underpinned the rise in work schedules in evenings, nights, and weekends (so called "shift work"). Structural factors which have contributed to the emergence of the 24/7 economy are technological change, globalization, and the labor market deregulation. Research to date has documented a high prevalence of shift work in developed economies, particularly among parents, and adverse mental and physical health consequences for shift workers. This labor market trend has raised concerns about its possible impacts on families, particularly for disadvantaged families. Our comprehensive review to date shows that although research in this field is still limited, there is an emerging empirical literature that addresses such concerns.
The proposed session aims to contribute to the theme of "Facing Unequal World: Challenges for Global Sociology of the ISA World Congress of Sociology XVIII 2014, by examining a new dimension of social stratification and its impact on families: e.g., not the type of occupations and jobs parents engage themselves in, but when they work. The objectives of this session are to: 1) disseminate research findings on the impact of shift work on families; 2) promote scholarly exchanges on theoretical and methodological issues involved in this field of research; 3) stimulate further and more rigorous research in the future.
We look for both empirical and theoretical, and both quantitative and qualitative papers on the impact of shift work on families. Family outcomes may include, but are not limited to, marital relationship, stress, parenting, parent-child relationship, and home environment.
Human Rights, Family Roles and Social Justice
Joint session of RC06 Family Research [host committee] and TG03 Human Rights and Global JusticeSession Organizer
Tessa LE ROUX, Lasell College, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Motivation: Looking at family from a Social Justice and Human Rights perspective could provide a framework for discussion of family within the context of basic human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as understood in a contemporary world of global and local inequality. This session could solicit papers on issues related to human rights (and human rights abuses) as they pertain to family.
Families are vulnerable to social, economic, and political pressures. Human rights principles support the positive right of all people to marry and found a family, while recognizing diversity of marriage and family type. It upholds the ideal of equal and consenting marriage and tries to guard against abuses which undermine these principles.
This session, which might count towards the RC06 group, could solicit papers that deal with topics such as equal rights of men and women in the family, domestic violence, trafficking, treatment of widows, sex-selective abortions, maternal health care, issues related to free consent to marriage, right to family planning, rights of children to parental care provision of parental leave, standards for treatment of children who lack parental care, and right to family reunification.
Families, Structural Violence and Human Rights
Joint session of RC06 Family Research and TG03 Human Rights and Global Justice [host committee]Session Organizers
Tessa LE ROUX, Lasell College, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Ed SIEH, Lasell College, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Looking at family from a Social Justice and Human Rights perspective could provide a framework for discussion of family within the context of basic human rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and as understood in a contemporary world of global and local inequality.
This session will solicit papers on issues related to human rights (and human rights abuses) as they pertain to family. Families are vulnerable to social, economic, and political pressures. Human rights principles support the positive right of all people to marry and found a family, while recognizing diversity of marriage and family type. It upholds the ideal of equal and consenting marriage and tries to guard against abuses which undermine these principles.
This session will solicit papers that deal with topics such as migration and family reunification, impact of war, violence, displacement, incarceration, and political upheaval on families.
Future of Aging: Global and Comparative Perspectives on Trends, Implications, Policies, and Practices
Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC11 Sociology of AgingSession Organizer
Julia ROZANOVA, University of British Columbia, Canada, email@example.com
Session in English
Population aging is considered among the top three challenges of global development by the United Nations. By 2025 one in every seven Americans, one in six Canadians, one in five Japanese and Europeans (in some European regions such as Germany or Italy one in four) will be over the age of 65. This historically unique global transition towards ageing societies will affect almost all countries before the end of the century.
But what will this revolutionary change mean for sociology and for society? Will income security and healthcare be sustainable? How will differences in the age structure affect economic competitiveness in a world of competing nation-states? Will fears of gerontocracy exacerbate inter-generational conflicts? What is the future of the family when eldercare rather than childcare becomes a universal responsibility for adults, while the ages of life course transitions are further delayed? In cultural terms, will active aging become the mainstream worldwide lifestyle driven by the anti-aging industries? And what may be the theoretical and the policy implications of these trends and how can sociology address them and advise policy makers, other stakeholders in society as well as the older and the younger generations so that the future looks promising for people of all ages?
This session invites papers addressing these and related questions to foster debates with a global and comparative perspective.
Social Movements, Publics, and the Contentious Politics of the Future. Part I
Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social ChangeSession Organizers
Markus SCHULZ, University of Illinois, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Benjamín TEJERINA, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, email@example.com
Session in English
The ISA Research Committees on Future Research (RC07) and on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48) are planning one or more Joint Sessions on contentious politics and on how social movements shape futures.
Questions may include (but are not limited to):
- How do social movements create, articulate, disseminate, debate, and attempt to implement projects and visions of the future?
- Under what conditions do the horizons of imaginable futures expand or shrink?
- How do social movements invent new practices?
- How do social movements relate to old and new media?
- What factors influence the outcomes of social movement struggles?
Civil Society and Collective Actions. Part II
Joint session of RC07 Futures Research and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change [host committee]Session Organizers
Balan PP, Kerala Institute of Local Administration, India, email@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
Intellectual South-South and North-South Dialogues from Critical Thinking, Theory and Collective Praxis
Joint session of RC07 Futures Research and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change [host committee]Session Organizers
Alberto BIALAKOWSKY, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, firstname.lastname@example.com
Alicia PALERMO, Universidad Nacional de Luján, Argentina, email@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
Social changes from the perspective of critical, social and sociological thinking contain two essential components: a future project and collective action. While this notion is often appropriated for research and analysis of social movements opposed to neoliberal thinking, is not sufficiently developed in the reflection within the scientific community in a symmetric and associative intercontinentally way.
This is how this panel session is started to raise the debate on the challenges that a global sociology faces to social inequality and how to stand with a collective intellect to face the obstacle of the asymmetries of the north-south link and the fragility of south-south and multicentric dialogues.
As well, the necessary steps to compose a dialogue and a collective action to overcome methodological and epistemological individualism, according to the progress of critical, public and coproductive thinking. Encompassing the discussion contained, among others, the right to free access to information, the universalization of knowledge, scientific creation and higher education, as well as the social participation on the technological and cultural change.
Socio-Ecological Inequality: Water Futures
Joint session of RC07 Futures Research [host committee] and WG02 Historical and Comparative SociologySession Organizer
José Esteban CASTRO, Newcastle University, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
A major challenge facing human societies is posed by structural inequalities associated with water-related activities. These include the difficulties facing millions of humans to secure the daily access to a few liters of clean water for essential human consumption and the lack of enough water to cover basic hygienic needs, the displacement of local communities derived from the often authoritarian imposition of massive water infrastructures (i.e. dams, river diversions, etc.), the depletion and poisoning of freshwater sources through poorly (and often un-) regulated large scale agriculture, mining, etc., or the cancellation of social rights to essential basic services through the commodification and mercantilization of water and water-based goods and services, just to mention a few areas of concern worldwide. This session invites papers that focus on empirical cases of water-related inequality and injustice and offer a sociological examination of their implications for the future of democratization processes.
We will give priority to proposals that place emphasis on conceptualization, where empirical cases provide the ground for a theoretical discussion about socio-ecological inequality. The proposals should address the topics from a historical or comparative perspective, and should make an effort to cast light on likely future developments. The topics could include such issues as: continuities and ruptures observed in patterns of structural socio-ecological inequality (old and emergent inequalities), related social struggles and movements, the interplay between class, gender, ethnic or other social structures and the production and reproduction of these inequalities, the examination of experiences that seek to overcome such inequalities, etc.
The Emergence of Sociology in an Interdisciplinary Context – Nothing but Success?
Joint session of RC08 History of Sociology [host committee] and WG02 Historical and Comparative SociologySession Organizers
Wolfgang KNOEBL, University of Göttingen, Germany
Yutaka KOYAMA, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
Sociology as a discipline emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century when the so-called founding fathers of sociology such as Max Weber struggled with historical, economic, political and legal problems and in doing so nevertheless tried to establish sociology as an independent discipline. As we know, the institutionalization process of sociology turned out to be successful; sociology was able to emancipate itself from such disciplines as history, political economy, "Staatswissenschaft" or jurisprudence.
But this very success most probably had some costs as well which can be seen in the ongoing plea for more interdisciplinary cooperation: Thus, although it would be foolish to deny that historical sociology, economic sociology, political sociology or legal sociology as sociological sub-disciplines are still thriving today, the question should be allowed whether in the process of disciplinary institutionalization something has been lost as well.
In order to answer this question the organizers would like to ask members of the panel to look into the historical and national contexts of the emergence of sociology and how the interdisciplinary matrix at that time has shaped the (future) form of sociology. Questions as the following could be asked:
- Was it really the case that the sociological founding fathers were able to overcome the problems of historicism?
- Which problems and topics have been lost or have been forgotten when sociology in the end became firmly established within the (national) university system?
- Were there periods in the 20th century in which viable attempts can be detected to reintegrate the knowledge of neighbouring disciplines into sociology and – if so – who were the decisive actors and what were their motives in doing so?
Climate Change, Famines and Food Crises: Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management
Joint session of RC10 Participation, Organizational Democracy and Self-Management and WG05 Famine and Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Pradeep DADLANI, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Sunny GEORGE, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Participation, organisational democracy and self-management seem to be crucial for addressing issue of growing problems the world is facing today due to climate change, famines and food crises. The earth`s ability to produce food for the world population is limited and climate change seems to be affecting future prospects. Market forces are getting strong and creating hurdles for efficient management of existing resources. The chances of famines seem to be more in the areas facing water scarcity.
The session will address the theoretical and methodological challenges by exploring the emerging issues and options in the context of climate change, famines and food crises and how participation, organisational democracy and self management could help to tackle such emerging challenges.
Health and Social Care in the Context of Population Aging
Joint session of RC11 Sociology of Aging and RC15 Sociology of Health [host committee]Session Organizers
Anne MARTIN-MATTHEWS, University of British Columbia, Canada, email@example.com
Ivy BOURGEAULT, University of Ottawa, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
As populations age, there is, around the world, there is increasing interest in re-thinking the delivery of health care services. While much of the impetus relates to public expenditure constrainst and projections about doubling of care costs within the coming decades, there is also recognition of the desire of older people to "age in place", supported by home and community care services. At the same time, health and social care is challenged by issues of supply and demand in response to population aging. On the demand side, there be more elderly people (and more people living longer in old age) with a wide diversity of health issues, from long term disablility to frailty to healthy older people with periodic acute illness, to end of life care. The capacity to provide health and social care (the "supply" side) will be influenced by changing family structures and the availability of fewer care workers – both impacted by home and community care`s typically maginalized role in health care systems.
This session invites presentations on issues relevant to the delivery of health and social care in the context of population aging, with a particular interest in home and community care. Papers may address a range of issues, from state governance of home and community care, to the intersection of public and private service provision (including informal care and and "grey" home care labour), to strategies to enhance the labour force, to considerations of quality, equity and equality, for example, of access and quality of services, between younger disabled and older people, between people in different geographic regions, between different diagnostic groups (especially physical disability vs dementia) and in relation to class/socio-economic inequalities.
Environment, Ageing and Vulnerability
Joint session of RC11 Sociology of Aging and RC24 Environment and Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Anne MARTIN-MATTHEWS, University of British Columbia, email@example.com
Stewart LOCKIE, Australian National University, Australia, email@example.com
Session in English
This session considers the multiple relations between environment, aging and vulnerability. It pays particular attention to: (a) the ways in which the environment impacts aging and older populations; (b) the ways in which population aging impacts the environment; and (c) the interactions between aging and other indicators of vulnerability.
Environments differentially impact aging, elderly and other vulnerable populations both in terms of outdoor spaces and the built environment, and in terms of broad environmental impacts of climate change and environment-related disasters. For example, the effects of global warming on an aging population`s health condition have been observed in heat waves that pose risks older adults by environmental exposures. The rapid growth in the number of older people worldwide has many implications for public health, including the need to better understand the risks posed to older adults by environmental exposures.
In addition, environmental disasters often disproportionally impact elderly and vulnerable populations, and pose particular challenges of environmental emergency preparedness, response and communication strategies. At the same time, population aging may impact the environment through changes in consumption patterns for both private and public provided goods and services. It is also related to the development of the total population size. While there is some evidence that population aging in itself does not lead to significant environmental changes or pressures, there is evidence that consumption of heat, gas and other fuels per person is higher for elderly people than for the rest of the population.
This session invites papers that address this relationship between environment and aging.
Population Aging in South, East and Southeast Asia: Challenges and Opportunities
Joint session of RC11 Sociology of Aging and RC41 Sociology of Population [host committee]Session Organizers
Zachary ZIMMER, University of California San Francisco, USA, email@example.com
Susan MCDANIEL, University of Lethbridge, Canada, email@example.com
Session in English
Southeast and East Asia are the most rapidly aging regions of the world. In most countries in the region, the percent that are old is not yet as high as in European and North American countries, but the growth in the older population is unprecedented. Such change in population age structure clearly leads to challenges. These include issues such as how to reorganize health care systems and how to ensure that older persons continue to have adequate levels of support. But, there are also opportunities. For instance, older persons have been known to play vital roles within families, and older workers have been know to contribute to economic growth.
For this session we invite papers that highlight the challanges and/or opportunities brought about by an aging population. We are particularly interested in those that clearly lie at the crossroads of population and gerontological areas of study and those that have strong policy implications looking forward towards rapidly changing Asia.
Japan's Experience with Population Aging: Policy Challenges and Innovations
Joint session of RC11 Sociology of Aging [host committee] and RC41 Sociology of PopulationSession Organizers
Susan MCDANIEL, University of Lethbridge, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Zachary ZIMMER, University of California San Francisco, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Japan has, as most in sociology know, the demographically oldest population in the world. Low fertility societies that are rapidly aging are occurring in many regions of the world. Many policy questions and challenges are raised by population aging – about activation of older people, generational transfers and relations, health care, gender equality, immigration, the list is endless. Yet, from the experience of Japan in addressing policy issues, we find that innovation is possible and indeed desirable. In this session, some leading researchers who have focused on Japan, share their best research on Japan's aged population situation, to discern policy challenges and innovations from which the rest of the world might learn.
Visual Methods in Ageing Research: Methodological Issues
Joint session of RC11 Sociology of Aging and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Wendy MARTIN, Brunel University, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Elisabeth-Jane MILNE, University of Stirling, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Session in English
In recent years there have been significant developments in our understandings and explorations about age and ageing, with new theorising, new methodologies and new topics evident. One of these developments has been the use of visual methodologies to elicit insights into age and ageing. Exploring the visual is seen as a means to uncover significant insights into how micro processes of daily life are linked to wider socio-cultural discourses; performative aspects of culture often hidden within the everyday; to make visible the mundane and taken-for-granted; to stimulate debate; and to reveal meanings and understandings in context. Whilst the use of visual methods can be experienced as empowering and participatory by older people, the development of visual research has also presented researchers with new complexities and challenges in relation to ethical, theoretical, analytical and methodological issues.
The aim of this panel is to bring together researchers who are using a wide variety of different visual methods to study social aspects of age and ageing.
We welcome abstracts that explore and debate different theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and empirical findings when using visual methods in ageing research. In particular we plan to explore and debate the possibilities and difficulties when developing visual methodologies.
Presenters will be asked to send a draft of their full papers (of 6000 words, including references) to session organizers by 12 June 2014 (one month prior to the conference).
Facing the End of "Leisure Culture" in Today`s Unequal World
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure and RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture [host committee]Session Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
Christiana CONSTANTOPOULOU, Panteion University, Greece, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
During the past hundred years, leisure has taken on significance in the western industrial societies and become a mass phenomenon; J. Dumazedier argued that it is part of the contemporary civilization, deeply rooted in the conquests of the machine age, but at the same time opposed to all the physical and moral constraints born of this age.
Leisure activities are a privileged zone of accomplishment in the contemporary culture, and the values of leisure ("leisure culture" – or in the words of M. Wolfenstein "fun morality") are among its most widespread and attractive components (even though social inequalities in front of leisure activities have always existed).
Yet, after the "age of wealthiness" (roughly from 1950 to 1990), of the Western societies), new conditions (the economic crisis, the pauperisation of more and more categories of people) make the right to "leisure" less evident; on the other hand the new media give new possibilities (even to the disadvantaged categories), for a virtual access to leisure possibilities (such as movies or serial watching and game playing).
Under these circumstances, can we still refer to "leisure" as to the most widespread and attractive component of the contemporary (mass) culture?
Leisure and the Pursuit of Health and Happiness in an Unequal World
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC15 Sociology of HealthSession Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
Ivy BOURGEAULT, University of Ottawa, Canada, email@example.com
Jonathan GABE, University of London, United Kingdom, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" is one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence, also considered by some as one of the most influential sentences in the history of the English language. To what extent are these so called "inalienable rights" of man – in pursuit of happiness – actually realised in life as it is lived today? Which is the domain which would be most conducive to their realisation?
It is not only liberty but health too needs to be looked upon as a fundamental right of all human beings wherever or in whatever kind of society they may be living in. Without physical and mental health any talk of happiness would remain an empty slogan. The fundamental question now is as to how, in today's uneven and unequal world, can we secure health and ensure happiness? To what extent is leisure, another fundamental human requirement, is conducive to realization of good health? What are the forms of leisure that could be made available to people around the world by which they can access those forms without the need to expend too many resources on them?
Leisure and the Reproduction of Inequality
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure and RC28 Social Stratification [host committee]Session Organizers
Dan KRYMKOWSKI, University of Vermont, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Leisure pursuits are studied much less often in stratification research than "valued rewards" like education, occupational status, and income. However, there is some evidence that leisure plays a role in building portfolios of important assets, such as cultural and social capital. Rather than simply documenting inequality in the consumption of leisure, I shall look for papers that go beyond this and seek to demonstrate leisure`s wider importance in maintaining structures of inequality.
Women, Leisure and Gender Politics in Globalising Times
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC32 Women in SocietySession Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Cynthia JOSEPH, Monash University, Australia, email@example.com
Session in English
This session examines the ways in which women experience inequalities in gaining access to leisure activities in globalising times. Leisure activities amongst family and community members are gender-specific and age-specific realities. In a globalized world, information communication technology including commercial entertainment and electronic devices in domestic space has changed the patterns of leisure amongst women. The papers in this session examine how these new forms of technology are related to gender and cultural politics, and social inequalities in terms of women`s access to leisure activities.
Leisure as an Agency for Collective Mobilization of Youth and the Quest for Equality
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC34 Sociology of YouthSession Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
James COTE, University of Western Ontario, Canada, email@example.com
Session in English
The first decade of 21st century in the globalized world can be characterized by large scale social movements monopolized by younger generation of the respective nation-states. Educated as well as enlightened youth everywhere, after professional roles, is on street with a sense of collective solidarity and addressing publicly those social issues which challenge market fundamentalism. The active use of computer technology for fastest inter-communication, music, street play, literary expressions and innovative styles of display reveal that structural organs of leisure now act as agent for collective mobilization by youth in order to create that future where equality occurs as core value of social life.
Global Environmental Degradation: Leisure and Tourism Perspectives
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC50 International TourismSession Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
Margaret SWAIN, University of California Davis, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Tourism, an important leisure activity may both nourish and degrade the environment. Sensitive leisure and tourism practices invite participants to savour nature responsibly. The introduction of faith and eco-tourism is helping to make ordinary consumeristically oriented tourists to see nature differently. Today`s globalised environment calls for greater awareness and spreading and enabling of leisure and tourism practices that generate sensitivity to the environment. As such tourism, a leisure activity, may become a positive factor not only in sustaining environment but making future generations more sensitive to it. Social and economic inequalities that affect the environment differently could, perhaps, be reduced if diverse peoples came together through leisure tourism, which may take many forms.
Children and Leisure: Intersectional Inequalities
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure [host committee] and RC53 Sociology of ChildhoodSession Organizers
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, firstname.lastname@example.com
Loretta BASS, University of Oklahoma, United States, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Intersectionality theory grew out of a critique of models of inequality which framed social forces as operating in layered or additive ways and explores how different socio-cultural categories, such as gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, age/generation, nationality etc. … "intra-act", and mutually transform one other, while interplaying (Yuval-Davis, 2006, Lykke, 2005). But unfortunately, the current literature on leisure and children suffer from a serious lack of critical theoretical and empirical engagement from intersectional point of view. In spite of Beccy Watson`s (2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) pioneering works on identities, leisure, changing cities and intersectional approaches in the critical, social analysis of leisure and sport, both Childhood and Leisure Studies have been paying only paltry attention to the intersectional approach while analyzing the interrelationship between children and leisure. In the light of the theme of the Congress Facing an Unequal World ,this particular session will devote to address issues how diversified leisure activities of children can be analyzed from a complex models of inequality by applying intersectional approach at the levels of family, civil society organizations and especially state.
The session aims to highlight the viability of the application of intersectional perspective by focusing on multiple inequalities in accessing different forms of leisure by different groups of children from different social, national, ethnic, racial and other locations in a globalised world.
Reinstating the Body: Equal Footing for the Spiritual and the Physical, a Leisure Approach
Joint session of RC13 Sociology of Leisure and RC54 The Body in the Social Sciences [host committee]Session Organizers
Bianca Maria PIRANI, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy, email@example.com
Ishwar MODI, India International Institute of Social Sciences, India, email@example.com
Session in English
Many religions, in their quest for a spiritual salvation have tended to denigrate the body as not worthy of much attention as it is only matter. The person thus needs to rise "above the body" to be able to have access into the realm of the Divine. The quest on the 21st century is to bring the body and soul together and recognise both as Divine.
In the process the physical surroundings would also be recognised as a creation of the Divine and thus worthy of veneration and protection. The approach to one`s body would help to define the approach to the environment, thus helping to preserve the planet. Leisure practices and leisure time have a role to play in this understanding.
Surveillance, New Media and Digital Information
Joint session of RC14 Sociology of Communication, Knowledge and Culture [host committee] and RC23 Sociology of Science and TechnologySession Organizers
David LYON, Queen's University, Canada, email@example.com
Torin MONAHAN, University of North Carolina, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
This session explores the new ways that the manipulation of digital information for surveillance depends on new softwares and hardwares, seen for instance in relational databases of social media, smart phones or in the embedded sensors and computer surfaces of "ambient intelligence" or "ubiquitous computing." By using concepts such as Nigel Thrift`s "knowing capitalism" or Dodge and Kitchin`s "logjects" we explore the social consequences of digital information for surveillance. Papers are invited that explore examples of new digital media in this context.
Healthcare Systems and Health Inequalities
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health and RC19 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy [host committee]Session Organizers
Claus WENDT, University of Siegen, Germany, email@example.com
Ellen KUHLMANN, Institute for Economics, Labour and Culture, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Healthcare systems have been established worldwide to guarantee those in need with access to healthcare and care and reforms have been introduced to improve the organization and delivery of healthcare services. Despite common interests, researchers on both healthcare systems and health outcomes have rarely communicated directly. Due to the necessity of reorganizing our healthcare systems, which is partly related to the financial crisis and to ever-increasing healthcare costs, there is a great need to improve our knowledge about the link between healthcare and health inequalities.
In our joint session, we invite papers on and plan to provide a platform for discussing questions that are of similar importance for developed and developing countries: How is healthcare financed, provided, and regulated, and what are the outcomes of different national care arrangements? How should global challenges and local needs and demand be balanced? What can be learned from local solutions to global pressures? Until now, health policy papers have mainly focused on the institutional structure and not concentrated on outcomes such as health status and health inequalities.
However, if we want to learn more about improved practice in healthcare, studies need to delve deeper into potential outcome measures. We therefore invite papers focussing on the interrelation between research areas such as health policy, healthcare provision, access to healthcare, take-up of medical services, and health inequalities.
These papers may explore these issues either across nations and regions or within a single country.
Religion, Immigrants, and Health
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health , RC22 Sociology of Religion [host committee] and RC31 Sociology of MigrationSession Organizer
Ephraim SHAPIRO, Columbia University, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
A growing body of evidence suggests that religiosity is typically associated with better health. The potential impact of religious involvement on health may be especially great for immigrants ; faith institutions often play important integrative roles for them and religion and ethnic identities are often intertwined. Further, opportunities may exist to leverage widespread congregational attendance already taking place by immigrants to reduce inequalities through initiatives.
However, while there has been much attention in the popular as well as academic press about religion, immigrants and health individually, there has been a paucity of studies examining the intersection of all three areas: religious involvement, immigrants, and health outcomes.
We invite scholars with interest in these areas to submit presentation proposals highlighting any aspect of the relationship between religion, immigrants, and health, each broadly defined. In particular, we welcome proposals that tie in with the conference and section themes of addressing inequality and with ISA's focus on diverse cultures. Therefore, proposals including implications and importance of the research for social change are encouraged.
Governing the Health Professions: Bringing Equality into Health Human Resources Policy
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health and RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups [host committee]Session Organizers
Ivy BOURGEAULT, University of Ottawa, Canada, email@example.com
Ellen KUHLMANN, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English/French
Health professional governance has faced a number of new challenges over recent years, and an increasing scarcity of health human resources (HHR) is among the most urgent problems. This session aims to contribute to the debates by building bridges between two important, yet separated fields – professional governance and health human resources policy – and by reviewing the evidence through the lens of equality. This includes wide-ranging topics from governing professional performance and managing skills and tasks to HHR planning and policymaking. It furthermore expands the equality agenda towards integration of gender, age, geopolitical and cultural as well as professions-based dimensions.
We invite papers that address these issues in comparative perspective or in a single area.
Globalization and Human Resources for Health in Asian Countries
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health and RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups [host committee]Session Organizers
Yuko HIRANO, Nagasaki University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Yuka ISHII, Asia Pacific University, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
Since recently, a new trend of migration of healthcare workers has been observed in Asian countries under bilateral agreements between Japan and Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines and Japan and Vietnam. The inflow of health professionals, including nurses and certified care workers, creates new situations; for instance, it is the first time that Japanese society has had to accept the foreigners in the healthcare sectors. Due to this globalization and the cross-border movement of health professionals, many healthcare systems in Asia and beyond now face new challenges and new forms of managing human resources.
This session calls for papers that address these topics, such as cross-cultural concepts related to nursing and care, the professions and inequality of migrant nurses and certified care workers, hospital and long-term care facility management and international relations between the sending and receiving countries of health professionals.
Time on the Context of Health and Illness: The Medical Control of the Body
Joint session of RC15 Sociology of Health [host committee] and RC54 The Body in the Social SciencesSession Organizer
Bianca Maria PIRANI, University of Rome, Italy, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English/French
Health and disease are concepts that are associated with bodies in common sense as well as in an expert discourse; the literature in this field is enormous and enormously diverse. The suggested JS is designed to focus on the importance of body time in medical treatment. Extensive mapping of the time structure of humans is presently underway as a preliminary step for the detection of the earliest changes associated with health and disease. The importance of this time structure for normal functioning has been established in many branches of human physiology. A classic example is the dependence of a normal reproductive function on the pulsatile secretion of sexual hormones. Another is the rhythmic influence of sensory, motor, autonomic, and hormonal oscillations on normal sleep activity. More recent research has even begun to tell in detail how multiple oscillators work together to regulate blood pressure. In humans, as in less cognitively sophisticated organisms, many biological rhythms follow the frequencies of periodical environmental inputs, whereas others are determined by internal "timekeepers" independent of any known environmental counterparts. External influences are always present, but they are not simply superimposed on the endogenous rhythms generated by our biological "timekeepers." Instead, these influences are modulated by them. This is essential to the most sophisticated tasks the brain and body perform.
Organizations and Disasters
Joint session of RC17 Sociology of Organizations and RC39 Sociology of Disasters [host committee]Session Organizers
Dean PIERIDES, University of Melbourne, Australia, email@example.com
Joe DEVILLE, Goldsmiths University of London, United Kingdom, firstname.lastname@example.com
Avi KIRSCHENBAUM, Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Sociologists of disasters frame the organization and organizing as critical components in disaster management. Organization theorists have found disasters useful in making their case, particularly when disasters shed light on organizational failure or disintegration. Yet studies featuring both "organization" and "disaster" have produced very different kinds of accounts of the relationship between the two – sociologists of disaster and sociologists of organization only rarely confronting opportunities, and indeed tensions, that emerge from bringing these objects of exploration together.
We invite papers with an interest in both the sociology of disasters and the sociology of organization. What do these two fields and their objects have to say to each other? What might a more symmetrical understanding of disasters and organizations afford? How could links between studies of disaster and the sociology of organization be strengthened? What insights on organizational continuity, maintenance and basic economic infrastructure of the wider society, does a collaboration between these two research areas afford? Papers can be empirical or theoretical and should focus on issues relevant to both fields (e.g. uncertainty, preparedness, accountability, risk, communication, etc.).
Organizing Change – Changing Organization: Social Movements and the Innovation of Organizational Forms and Cultures. Part I
Joint session of RC17 Sociology of Organizations and RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements [host committee]Session Organizer
Christoph HAUG, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, email@example.com
Alan SCOTT, University of New England, Australia, firstname.lastname@example.com
Kyoko TOMINAGA, University of Tokyo, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
There is a tension in social movement studies between seeing organization(s) as a mere means for achieving a goal (social change) and seeing certain forms of organization and organizational culture as a goal in itself. This tension among scholars reflects a tension among activists regarding their strategy for making the world a better place for all. While some aim to organize the masses in order to force power holders to yield (some of) their power to them, others engage in prefigurative politics and cultural resistance, aiming to change the very way we organize. In this joint session, we want to explore this tension as it plays itself out both in social movement activism and in academic debates.
We are particularly interested in how processes of globalization affect these dynamics; after all, the Weberian/Leninist model of bureaucratic organization that many activists want to change or abandon is a Western invention provoking Western counter models. What happens where the dominant model is a different one? Or where alternative forms have failed? What happens when prefigurative activists aiming to create horizontal forms of organization among equals are faced with vast global inequalities? What do the organizers of the masses do when they find that their opponents have adopted organizational forms that diffuse power, making it difficult to identify the power holder that needs to be replaced? What is the role of indigenous movements in the innovation of organizational forms? Does the multiplication of organizational cultures and languages facilitate or hamper change in established ways of organizing? How do the global communication infrastructures affect organizing?
We welcome papers that address these questions as well as any other papers that speak to the overall topic of the session.
Organizing Change – Changing Organization: Social Movements and the Innovation of Organizational Forms and Cultures. Part II
Joint session of RC17 Sociology of Organizations [host committee] and RC47 Social Classes and Social MovementsSession Organizer
Christoph HAUG, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, email@example.com
Alan SCOTT, University of New England, Australia, firstname.lastname@example.com
Kyoko TOMINAGA, University of Tokyo, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
Rethinking Democracies: Social Movements and Democratic Processes
Joint session of RC18 Political Sociology , RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social ChangeSession Organizers
Paola REBUGHINI, University of Milan, Italy, firstname.lastname@example.com
Benjamín TEJERINA, Universidad del País Vasco, Spain, firstname.lastname@example.com
Piero IGNAZI, University of Bologna, Italy, email@example.com
Session in English/French
We have been the witnesses of important movements of democratization against authoritative regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Social movements have highlighted the plural notion of democracy, looking beyond its traditional liberal version. Searching for a new articulation of equality and freedom, social movements are involved in the transformations of democracy and they can contribute to reshape its relationship with the economic system.
In this session we would like to compare the analysis of scholars working on different national experiences around the process of democratization directly influenced by social movements.
Social Policies, Work and Gender: New Forms of Social Work
Joint session of RC19 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy [host committee] and RC30 Sociology of WorkSession Organizers
Yumi GARCIA DOS SANTOS, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, email@example.com
Isabel GEORGES, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, France, email@example.com
Session in English
If benevolent work and private charity is not new for the women of the upper classes in the USA (Kaplan Daniels, 1988) or elsewhere to find some personal and moral accomplishment, low income care giving occupations have always been the lot of the women of the working classes (Glenn, 2010). These women cross geographical and moral borders to look after vulnerable people (Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2004; Hirata e Guimarães, 2012). For example, these women are compelled to redefine frontiers between the public and the private sphere, doing emotional work (Hochschild, 1983).
More recently, with the "care-crisis" on the one hand related to the demographical transition, and the generalization of neoliberal workfare policies on the other, precarious carework payed or unpayed is expanding worldwide, especially for women. There are new forms of social work coming up, including a wide range from volunteer work to low payed social workers getting more professionalized. To mention some examples, in recent Japan, single mothers are target of labor activation programs, mostly limited to caregiving work. The country has opened its border to receive health workers, brides and entertainers from other Asian countries, who could be considered caregivers.
In several Latin-American countries (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, etc.) these forms of mobilization of the self took place in a post-dictatorship period. After the social movements against military dictatorship in the eighties, and neoliberal politics of reduction of "social costs" in the nineties, the last ten years have been characterized by social policies of poverty reduction, for example Brazilian CCT Bolsa Familia and other family oriented welfare programs. Some BRIC countries, like Brazil, are exporting these forms of public policies worldwide.
However, what is the social role of women in this context of internationalization of new needs of carework on one hand, and enrolling or even coercing poor women in social work to help other poor on the other? In this context, what is the importance of the dimension of gender in a global perspective? What is their place within the concretization of social politics, as "target", but also as actors?
The purpose of this joint session is to discuss social policies, social and care work and gender inequality as well as gender roles in its diverse forms and significance, worldwide.
Restructuring Care Policies and (Re-)Making Care Professions
Joint session of RC19 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy and RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups [host committee]Session Organizers
Hildegard THEOBALD, University of Vechta, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Ellen KUHLMANN, Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Demographic and social changes have put the issue of care in the focus of social policy development in a wide range of countries around the world, and this includes both long-term care and child care. Local/national care policies have been restructured and shaped by transnational ideas. The new emergent care policies are strongly interrelated with new forms of professional governance and changes in the care workforce, including gender arrangements that, in turn, may have complex and contradictory consequences for professional development.
This session aims to contribute to the debates by bridging research into changing national care policies and their international embeddedness with research into professional governance and development in the care sector. We invite papers that address these issues in both long-term care respectively child care.
Cities and the Global Environmental Change
Joint session of RC21 Regional and Urban Development and RC24 Environment and Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Louis GUAY, Université Laval, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Pierre HAMEL, Université de Montréal, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Cites and large cities in particular have always had their own environmental problems. For most of the last two centuries, they have faced them squarely and have been relatively successful in many cases. Urban environmental problems of the period were problems of a first modernity, to use Beck's expression. But new ecological and global problems, such as climate change, biodiversity, water regimes, continuing urban land encroachment on wetlands, have come close to many, if not all, cities of the world. Problems and responses to them are very different depending on the geographical location, the level of development, and local and national political culture and institutions.
This session is devoted to ecological challenges of the second modernity. It aims at some (unavoidably selective) representation of large cities' ecological problems and actions, collective, private or otherwise, and their ways and means to face them and devise socially constructed responses to them. Climate change, biodiversity decline, water regime change are targeted as relevant global ecological problems. Each global problem can be studied on its own, but presentations that analyse joint problems (for instance climate change and water regimes, or biodiversity and climate change) are much welcomed. Participants are asked to present case studies in which relevant actors and institutions are identified, problems are framed, and actions develop in a mesh of interactions and negotiations among a variety of social actors and institutions. Presentations are expected to provide some theoretical context or general lessons from the case(s) studied.
RC21RC43 Roundtable IIA. Unequal Cities and the Political Economy of Housing. Part I
Joint session of RC21 Regional and Urban Development and RC43 Housing and Built Environment [host committee]Session Organizers
Manuel B. AALBERS, University of Leuven, Belgium, firstname.lastname@example.com
Raquel ROLNIK, University of São Paulo, Brazil, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
RC21RC43 Roundtable IIB. Unequal Cities and the Political Economy of Housing. Part II
Joint session of RC21 Regional and Urban Development and RC43 Housing and Built Environment [host committee]Session Organizers
Manuel B. AALBERS, University of Leuven, Belgium, firstname.lastname@example.com
Raquel ROLNIK, University of São Paulo, Brazil, email@example.com
Session in English
Inequality in the housing market is not necessarily a result of inequality in other markets, e.g. the labour market, but forms of inequality are often related and have an important territorial expression. Inequality in cities is not only an expression of the socio-spatial patterns of housing markets, but is also, at least in part, a result of it. To understand unequal cities, one needs to understand the political economy of housing. The big question then is: How have state, market and civil society powers at different scales created nationally and locally variegated housing markets and how have the resulting structures contributed to in/equality? We also welcome papers that address the following related questions:
- How do housing policies, in their relationship with housing markets, contribute to or counter inequality in other markets?
- How do urban planning regulations and/or urban land management instruments have contributed to counter – or increase – inequality in housing markets?
- How has the financialization of housing (both owner-occupied and rental) restructured existing patterns of inequality?
- How is housing embedded in the wider political economy of a city?
- How do income inequality and housing inequality together re/produce different forms of segregation in the city?
- How do social movements respond to and contribute to the political economy of housing?
- How are 'crisis moments' used to further both neoliberal and counter-neoliberal agendas in housing?
Too Much and Too Little: Urban Landscapes of Homelessness and Gentrification
Joint session of RC21 Regional and Urban Development and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Lidia K. C. MANZO, University of Trento, Italy, email@example.com
Jerome KRASE, City University of New York, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
This session visually focuses on the intersections of inequalities in urban worlds where the competition for living space has had perverse visual effects.
Sociologists have long described how as a consequence of different life chances, groups are distributed differently in space such as in segregation and gentrification. Inequality and social justice are made visible by spatial processes of change. Whether luxurious or humble, dwellings serve important symbolic and practical functions for residents of all social classes and cultural backgrounds. In this regard Ernest Burgess's classical urban ecological paradigm of neighborhood invasion and succession has served almost a century (1925).
Contemporarily, for Sassen and many others it is contradictions of the globalization of capital that concentrate both the more and less disadvantaged in cities where even the marginalized make claims on "contested terrain" (2001). It is also ironic that the concentrations of mobile capital in global cities have simultaneously enhanced "the potential mobility of some, while detracting from the mobility potential of others" (Sheller 2011). In a way we can say the rich get not only richer but also more mobile as the poor get poorer and relatively less so.
This session seeks submissions that critically examine, through the use of innovative visual approaches, urban vernacular panoramas that range from homelessness to gentrification. Immediate contrasts, such as the displaced or the homeless in gentrified or upscale areas, the "slumming" or "poverty tourism" phenomena, and comparative analyses are especially welcome to critically dramatize issues of Social Justice and the City (Harvey 2010).
Presenters will be asked to send a draft of their full papers (of 6000 words, including references) to session organizers by 12 June 2014 (one month prior to the conference).
Right to Benefits of Scientific Progress and its Applications
Joint session of RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology and TG03 Human Rights and Global Justice [host committee]Session Organizers
Jaime JIMENEZ, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, firstname.lastname@example.com
Brian GRAN, Case Western Reserve University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
The right to enjoy benefits of scientific progress and its applications (REBSPA) is under debate. The efforts of a U.N. Expert, the U.N. CESCR, an AAAS coalition, and scholars have shed light on and raised awareness of this right. Adopted in 1966 as part of the International Bill of Human Rights, Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) calls for the rights to take part in cultural life, to benefit from one's artistic, scientific, and other kinds of work, and for the focus of this article, to enjoy benefits of scientific progress and scientific applications. While important research has been undertaken on REBSPA, some experts contend its conceptualization is underdeveloped.
This session will present conceptualizations of REBSPA, how the notions of progresive realization and minimum core apply to REBSPA, and other questions sociologists of science and technology and human rights can answer as REBSPA receives greater attention.
Globalization from Below: Institutional and Policy Changes in Developing Countries
Joint session of RC23 Sociology of Science and Technology and WG01 Sociology on Local-Global Relations [host committee]Session Organizer
Binay K. PATTNAIK, Indian Institute of Technology, India, email@example.com
Session in English
Alternative Lifestyles and Political Activism towards a New Environmentalism: Climate Summits, "Buen Vivir", Local Food and Voluntary Simplifiers
Joint session of RC24 Environment and Society and RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements [host committee]Session Organizers
Geoffrey PLEYERS, Université de Louvain, Belgium, email@example.com
Koichi HASEGAWA, Tohoku University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Across the world, social actors are showing growing concern about global warming and environmental damages. Grass-roots actors and activists' networks are mobilizing support for a global agreement aiming at environmental protection and are developing alternative practices and visions of the world. Activists are developing concept of "a good life" that differs from the one proposed by the consumption society.
This panel will gather empirical and analytical contributions that focus on citizens' initiatives and social movements dealing with environmental issues by implementing alternative lifestyles, developing advocacy or promoting active participation in public debates.
Perceiving, Understanding and Envisioning the Environment
Joint session of RC24 Environment and Society and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]Session Organizer
Valentina ANZOISE, European Center for Living Technology, Italy, email@example.com
Session in English
More than twenty years ago, Ulrich Beck wrote:
"the latency phase of risk threats is coming to an end. The invisible hazards are becoming visible. Damage to and destruction of nature no longer occur outside our personal experience in the sphere of chemical, physical or biological chains of effects; instead they strike more and more clearly our eyes, ears and noses (…). The end of latency has two sides, the risk itself and public perception of it. It is not clear whether it is the risks that have intensified, or our view of them. Both sides converge (…) and because risks are risks in knowledge, perceptions of risks and risks are not different things, but one and the same" (Risk Society, 1986).
This session intends to reflect on the augmented and diffused visibility of the environment and more specifically on how visual information contributes to the social construction of environment and environmental issues (not necessarily just those related to risks), to their perception and understanding and then to their representation and envisioning.
We welcome interdisciplinary contributions spreading from the analysis of contemporary global issues and dynamics, such as social and collective action (i.e. from policy making to active citizenship, including that of artists and intellectuals) confronting with the emergence of environmental risks and conflicts or the management of resources, as well as the attitudes towards the environment in different cultural and geographical contexts, or the challenges opened by the introduction of new categories of interpretations and paradigm (such as that of sustainability).
Therefore, we encourage submissions that: 1. address the specific function visual methods, techniques and tools can play, at almost any stage of the research process, to tackle, theoretically and methodologically the above issues, and 2. reflect on the kind of audiovisual data and sources (from photography to maps, videos, movies, ICT tools and online applications) which may, on the one hand, foster environmental awareness, knowledge and literacy and, on the other, support policy making as well as citizen engagement and participation.
Presenters will be asked to send a draft of their full papers (of 6000 words, including references) to session organizers by 12 June 2014 (one month prior to the conference).
Language, Work and Health
Joint session of RC25 Language and Society [host committee] and RC30 Sociology of WorkSession Organizers
Stéphanie CASSILDE, Centre d'Études en Habitat Durable, Belgium, firstname.lastname@example.com
Adeline GILSON, Laboratoire d'Économie et de Sociologie du Travail, France, email@example.com
Session in English/French
Since the end of the 1970s working and employment conditions are worsening because of various constraints: intensification of work, casualized labour of employment, domination of cost-effectiveness criteria, divorce between expected and concrete tasks, conflicts of values, geographical mobility, and mandatory distance between familial and work locations. These elements are even more salient in a context of crisis.
At the beginning of the 2000s agents of professional risks prevention labelled the negative effects of these constraints on psychosocial health at work "psycho-social risks" (PSR). To which extent this labelling cover the various representations systems of psychosocial health at work? Which are these various representations systems and which labelling are used in these systems? How this participate to create various classifications of psychosocial health phenomena at work? How these language elements give us information about the various ways of dealing with it?
The objective of this session is to give a central place to language in the analysis of representations of psychosocial health at work to advance sociological knowledge concerning language and work. It deals with the analysis of individuals discourses about their experiences (as workers, managers, social partners, etc.) to learn and understand the existing representations systems. It deals also with the various labelling used within these systems, and thus, finally, with classifications of psychosocial health. The aim of this joint session is to broaden the knowledge of performative power of language regarding attitudes and behaviours at work, i.e. how individuals might act/react/not act to ensure/defend their psychosocial health at work.
Contributions will shed light on the variability of representations/labelling/ classifications of psychosocial health at work. Notably, contributions will use spatial, time, sectorial, and/or intra-firm agents comparative perspective.
Depuis la fin des années 1970, les conditions de travail et d'emploi se dégradent sous l`effet de contraintes multiples : intensification du travail, précarisation de l'emploi, domination des critères de rentabilité, divorce entre travail prescrit et réel, conflits de valeurs, mobilités géographiques, et distance imposée entre habitat familial et de travail. Ces éléments sont encore plus saillants en contexte de crise.
Au début des années 2000, les acteurs de la prévention des risques professionnels qualifient les effets négatifs de ces contraintes sur la santé psychosociale au travail de « risques psycho-sociaux » (RPS). Dans quelle mesure cette qualification couvre-t-elle les divers systèmes de représentations de la santé psychosociale au travail ? Quels sont ces différents systèmes de représentations et quelles qualifications sont utilisées dans ces systèmes ? Comment cela participe-t-il à la création de classifications concernant la santé psychosociale au travail ? Comment ces éléments nous éclairent-ils sur les différentes manières d'y faire face ?
L`objectif de cette session est de donner une place centrale au langage dans l`analyse des représentations de la santé psychosociale au travail afin de fournir des avancées en termes de connaissance sociologique dans les domaines du langage et du travail. Il s`agit d`analyser les discours des individus sur leurs expériences (en tant que travailleurs, chefs d`équipe, partenaire social, etc.) pour prendre connaissance et comprendre les systèmes de représentations existants. Il s`agit également d`analyser les diverses qualifications utilisées dans ces systèmes, et donc, finalement, de mieux comprendre les classifications de la santé psychosociale au travail. Cette session conjointe vise à approfondir la connaissance du pouvoir performatif du langage eu égard aux attitudes et comportements au travail, autrement dit comment les individus pourraient agir/réagir/ne pas agir afin d`assurer/de défendre leur santé psychosociale au travail.
Les contributions chercheront à mettre en lumière la variabilité des représentations, des qualifications, des classifications de la santé psychosociale au travail, notamment dans une optique comparative spatiale, temporelle, sectorielle ou encore entre acteurs d'une même entreprise.
The Demographic Reproduction of Social Stratification
Joint session of RC28 Social Stratification and RC41 Sociology of Population [host committee]Session Organizers
Jeronimo O. MUNIZ, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, firstname.lastname@example.com
Carlos Costa RIBEIRO, State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
The size and dynamics and social classes – broadly defined by a set of characteristics such as income, wealth, education, occupation, race, gender, culture and prestige – are influenced not only by economic processes, but also by the current patterns of (inter)marriage, specific demographic rates, and sociological (re)classifications into racial, ethnic, religious and gender groups. The goal of this joint session is to discuss the role of demographic processes (fertility, mortality, migration, marriage) in the creation of social stratification in different parts of the world. We encourage the submission of empirical papers with strong theoretical motivations in which the demographic approach is employed to analyze sociological problems, including, but not limited to, processes of social mobility, inequality, and stratification.
Social Inequalities in International Skilled Labor Migration and Mobility in a Globalized World
Joint session of RC30 Sociology of Work and RC31 Sociology of Migration [host committee]Session Organizers
Kyoko SHINOZAKI, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, email@example.com
Martina MALETZKY, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Social inequalities in a globalized world have been one of the major subjects of inquiry within the sociology of migration and work. On the one hand, international migration scholarship has until recently tended to focus on labor mobility into less-skilled sectors of the economy. However, the issue of inequalities is far from being a sole terrain of less-skilled labor migrants. On the other hand, the sociology of work by and large neglects the phenomenon of international mobility: within the organizational context where transnational labor markets have emerged, inequalities are often reproduced around center-periphery relations. Nonetheless, internationally mobile, highly skilled employees such as expatriates have caught little attention in the sociology of work.
Taking this lacuna in two strands of scholarship as a point of departure, we argue that social inequalities constitute an integral part of international migratory movements and mobility of the skilled and the highly skilled although this may not be obvious at first sight. Some observers have commented that social inequalities exist along the intersecting axes of ethnicity, gender, life cycle, the type of hiring organizations, etc. It is a high time to more closely and systematically examine social inequalities among and within skilled and highly skilled migrants mainly for two reasons: firstly, it is because skills, particularly those needed in labor shortage sectors, have become the most important admission criteria for major receiving countries. Secondly, it owes to the current nature of labor markets that depend on a constant flow of people as well as goods, capital and services across borders. We aim at gaining a deeper understanding of the ways in which social inequalities permeate international 'elite' workers' flows and how these (highly) skilled migrants and internationally mobile professionals negotiate such inequalities.
We welcome conceptual and empirical papers that address topics pertaining to the nexus between skills and inequalities including, but not limited to, the definition of the (highly) skilled anchored in national immigration policies, the experience and patterns of inequality in the context of (highly) skilled labor migration and mobility, the emergence of transnational labor markets, the (re)production of inequality in hiring organizations.
Unionism and the Critique of the Work Organization. Syndicalisme et critique de l'organisation du travail. Part I
Joint session of RC30 Sociology of Work [host committee] and RC44 Labor MovementsSession Organizer
Sophie BEROUD, Université Lyon 2, France, email@example.com
Session in English/French
Much of the recent bibliography on unionism issues concerns the diffusion of the organizing model and the evaluation of the organizing campaigns for precarious workers. At the same side, the sociological literature about the change of work intends to inquiry about different dimensions of vulnerability and degradation of activity labor.
The goal of this session is to engage these different approaches by querying the real capacity of unions to intervene in the organization and division of labor in companies deeply transformed by the new management.
Several factors are usually put forward to explain the distance of unionism from a concrete knowledge work: the institutionalization process that contributes to professionalise the union representatives and isolate them from other employees; the growing interest of the union's direction for quantitative demands (protection of employment) and not qualitative. However, the trade union movement in its various components is far from reimaining quiet on these issues.
Recent topics on "suffering at work" prompted unions to intervene about these issues and to consider how to transform an expression of unease individual into collective claims. More broadly, by developing a rhetoric about the require of participation of employees in the company, the neo-managerial politics force that unions to take up these issues to remain engaged with the employees.
These are the different dimensions that we expect papers that result from an empirical research.
Une large part des travaux récents sur le syndicalisme porte sur les enjeux de redéploiement de celui-ci, sur la diffusion du modèle de l'organizing et sur le bilan des campagnes de syndicalisation de secteurs fortement précarisés. En parallèle, la littérature sociologique sur les transformations du travail a permis de réfléchir aux différentes dimensions de la précarité et au processus de dégradation du travail comme activité.
L'enjeu de cette session consiste à faire dialoguer ces différentes approches en interrogeant la capacité actuelle des organisations syndicales à intervenir sur l'organisation et la division du travail dans des entreprises profondément transformées par les nouveaux modes de management.
Plusieurs facteurs sont habituellement avancés pour expliquer l'éloignement du syndicalisme d'une connaissance concrète du travail : le processus d'institutionnalisation qui contribue à professionnaliser les représentants syndicaux et à les isoler des autres salariés ; un intérêt parfois plus marqué, du côté des directions syndicales, pour des revendications quantitatives (défense des emplois) et non qualitatives. Pourtant, le mouvement syndical, dans ses différentes composantes, est loin d'être silencieux sur ces questions.
Les thématiques relativement récentes sur la « souffrance au travail » ont notamment incité les syndicats à se prononcer sur ces enjeux et à réfléchir à la façon de passer d'une expression d'un malaise individuel à des revendications collectives. Plus largement, en développant toute une rhétorique sur la participation des salariés dans l'entreprise, les politiques néo-managériales obligent les syndicats, pour rester en prise avec la réalité que vivent les salariés, à se saisir de ces questions.
Ce sont ces différentes dimensions qu'il s'agira de questionner dans cette session, à partir de travaux de recherche fondés sur une démarche empirique.
Professional Labour in a Globalized World: The Cross-Bordering and Internationalization of Knowledge Workers
Joint session of RC30 Sociology of Work and RC52 Sociology of Professional Groups [host committee]Session Organizer
Javier Pablo HERMO, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English/Spanish
The globalization scenario is the framework to understand what is happening with internationalization of professional work as part of a new category raised in the last decades: the "knowledge workers". Many scientists and experts refer to this period as "knowledge society" or "knowledge economy" to indicate that knowledge is a critical issue of globalization.
This session seeks to contribute to the debates both theoretical and by empirically investigating the experiences of "knowledge workers", such as managers, consultants, advisors, professors and technicians, and the professional competencies required for the global economy in cross-border companies, international organizations, global corporations and universities. Furthermore, ongoing negotiation processes in regional integration frames as NAFTA, MERCOSUR or EU as well as international frames such as GATS will also be considered and issues of leadership and professional will be discussed.
Crossing Experiences: From Biographies of Migrants in and from Northeast Asia
Joint session of RC31 Sociology of Migration and RC38 Biography and Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Sara PARK, Kyoto University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Lilach LEV-ARI, Oranim College, Israel, email@example.com
Session in English
This session intends to contribute to the progression of migration studies through biographies and family histories in and from the northeast Asian region (Japan, two Koreas and Chinas). Historically, northeast Asian countries have sent and accepted migrants over centuries. Because of drastic transitions in labor markets and demographic compositions, societies in this region now face a new period of migration, both in sending and accepting. On the other hand, histories of migrants in and from this region (i.e. Chinese, Korean and Japanese migrants in Americas, Koreans in Japan, war-displaced Japanese in China, etc.) face difficulties in inheriting their past experiences.
Biography and/or family history provide effective means of investigation of reasons and processes of migration. Such "personal" histories enable researchers to understand each phenomenon that deeply influences migration such as state policies, economic situations, and transnational networks, through a historical perspective in keeping with the reality of each migrant. On these academic interests, this session particularly invites contributors who promote migration studies in the northeast Asian region from historical perspectives and empirical researches of migrant's experiences, as well as locate their findings in the previous discussions in sociology that deals with international migration.
Tourism and Migration
Joint session of RC31 Sociology of Migration [host committee] and RC50 International TourismSession Organizer
Ewa MORAWSKA, University of Essex, United Kingdom, email@example.com
Session in English
This session will be dedicated to an exchange of reflections about the shared and distinct concerns, issues, and approaches which inform the study of international migration and that of tourism, and about the implications thereof for possible venues of collaboration between the practitioners of these two fields. Paper proposals should reflect on research and/or theoretical agendas of studies of international migration and/or tourism with specific attention to the spaces/issues open to inter-field collaboration.
Constructing Gender within Youth Activism
Joint session of RC32 Women in Society and RC34 Sociology of Youth [host committee]Session Organizers
Anna-Britt COE, Umeå University, Sweden, firstname.lastname@example.com
Darcie VANDEGRIFT, Drake University, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
The papers in this session will address the construction of gender within young people's activism, including the intersection of gender with other social hierarchies (class, race/ethnicity/nationality, age). Youth civic engagement has occupied the attention of researchers and policymakers globally during recent decades. Today, young people practice and imagine civic engagement differently than in previous generations. They embrace activism through social movements, voluntary services, social media, identity organizations, cultural production, and even militant movements. They find less appeal in institutional or formal politics.
Activism appears to be among the key forms of political socialization, the process whereby young people learn political culture and develop ideas about political issues, including gender justice. Yet less attention has been paid to relationships between young people's activism and gender as a social hierarchy. Potential topics for exploration include how young people contest gender injustice or reproduce existing inequalities as they develop strategies, ideologies, identities, organizations and alliances. Youth activism involves gender performances and engagement with/in gendered social structures. And they will typically carry into adulthood values and ideas adopted during youth activism.
Papers that explore the session topic are welcome from a variety of research focuses, theoretical perspectives, conceptual tools and empirical cases.
Representation and Restoration of Women's Experiences: Navigating between Colonial History and Postcolonial Present in the Asian Context
Joint session of RC32 Women in Society and RC38 Biography and Society [host committee]Session Organizers
Hee-Young YI, Daegu University, Korea, email@example.com
Gabriele ROSENTHAL, Georg-August University of Göttingen, Germany, firstname.lastname@example.com
Bandana PURKAYASTHA, University of Connecticut, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
This session aims to explore and restore the multilayered aspects of women's experiences in postcolonial history in the Asian context. Based upon women's biographies and oral life histories, this session will analyze how women negotiate the boundaries between state, nation, class, and gender, and examine how researchers can historicize them. Not only feminist theoretical approaches to hidden personal life histories, but also critical methods to hear, understand, and speak to the 'historical other' will be considered throughout the whole session.
Since the 1990s when the testimonies of former comfort women drafted into the Japanese military forces during WWII garnered worldwide interests, there has been a great deal of research emerging in the field of women's oral life history, especially in the East Asian countries. Since then, biographies of women, social minorities, or ordinary people have enabled many social scientists to rethink the meaning of History, Science, Reality, and/or Truth and have led to a growing interest in the unwritten, silenced experiences of people.
Presenters in this session will pay attention to women who have experienced war, poverty, and gender violence; argue that women are not just powerless victims of history but active agents navigating the boundaries between structures and ideologies; and question our normative understanding of history, politics, and society. As such, this session will shed light on the theoretical and methodological implications of women's oral life history with regard to the representation and restoration of women's experiences in post-colonial Asia.
Gender, Violence, and Disaster: Research and Action
Joint session of RC32 Women in Society [host committee] and RC39 Sociology of DisastersSession Organizers
Mieko YOSHIHAMA, University of Michigan, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Azumi TSUGE, Meiji Gakuin University, Japan, email@example.com
Session in English
In this session, findings from a number of empirical investigations of women's experiences over the two years following the Great East Japan Disasters in March 2011, will be presented. These studies of varied methodologies, coupled with participant observations and community-based participatory workshops, will elucidate the extent to and the ways in which gender and various other sociocultural and structural forces interactively affect women's experiences in/after disaster at the individual, organizational/professional, community, and societal levels; how women, individually and collectively, respond to and make meaning of loss and destruction caused by disasters; and how they begin to take action to address them.
This session will examine the social processes of loss and dislocation, as well as rebuilding and co-construction in the lives of women in the dynamic interaction of social, cultural, and political environments in Japan and globally.
Intimate Labor in Asia
Joint session of RC32 Women in Society and RC44 Labor Movements [host committee]Session Organizers
Hae Yeon CHOO, University of Toronto Mississauga, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Pei-chia LAN, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
With the rise of the service industry and consumerism, and the shifting dynamics of global capitalism, multiple forms of intimate labor are emerging across Asia including domestic work, sex work, and carework. This panel explores the labor practice of the workers, institutions that organize intimate labor, new possibilities of labor organizing, intersecting forms of social inequality, and social relations that are formed at the site of the intimate labor.
We welcome case studies from Asia and papers that examine variations within Asia or locate Asia from a comparative perspective.
Feminist Movement and (Women's) Human Rights
Joint session of RC32 Women in Society [host committee] and RC47 Social Classes and Social MovementsSession Organizers
Angela MILES, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada, firstname.lastname@example.com
Dai NOMIYA, Sophia University, Japan, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
In the last few decades globally hegemonic neo-liberal fundamentalism has brought increasing inequality, social devastation and ecological destruction in both the economic north and south (Miles 2001, Harvey 2007). Currently, we are also seeing what has been variously called an evolving 'regime of international law' or evolving 'human rights regime' (Cmiel 2004, Ignatieff 2000, Iriye et al eds. 2012).
In this context, feminists at both local and global levels appear to be adopting 'women's human rights' framing across their broad spectrum of struggles around health, media, environment, energy, food security; democracy, indigenous rights, land rights, migrant and worker rights; poverty, structural adjustment, international debt, and international trade; violence, militarism, and peace.
This session will explore the context, substance, significance, challenges, potentials and pitfalls of this major strategic development in feminist movements. Papers with local, national or global focus are invited which throw light on any aspect of this large topic including:
- case studies of shifts to human rights/women's human rights framing of particular women's issues or in particular contexts of women's movement
- explorations of the factors influencing the increased movement adoption of human rights/women's human rights framing
- reflections on the political, practical, theoretical, philosophical consequences/contributions of feminist engagement with and re-conceptions of human rights/women's human rights for women's movement and/or human rights discourse more broadly.
Youth and Social Movements. Part I
Joint session of RC34 Sociology of Youth and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change [host committee]Session Organizer
Airi-Alina ALLASTE, Tallinn University, Estonia, email@example.com
Session in English
The economic crisis has restricted the younger generation`s opportunities in the labor market and its access to welfare, pushing many to a marginalized position in society. Participation in social movements has become one of the young people`s answers to the crisis; they offer possibilities for identification and belonging, and a prospect for change. As stated by Ulrich Beck more than a decade ago, social movements are taking the initiative in defining social risks and offering solutions to them. Today, technological developments also enable participation in international communities and movements. New (political) worldviews spread quickly to different locations. The aim of the joint session on Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change and Sociology of Youth is to bridge between different strands of research.
The session focuses broadly on social movements and young people as crucial agents of social change. Besides formal organizations, there is a growing body of decentralized movements that aim to change cultural codes, engage in lifestyle politics, and promote new forms of collective identity as means of fostering social change. Papers that explore any form of social movement and young people will be considered for the session.
Production, Circulation and Cossumption of Visual Conceptual Frames
Joint session of RC37 Sociology of Arts and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Regev NATHANSOHN, University of Michigan, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Paulo MENEZES, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Not open for submission of abstracts.
Hiroshima (1945) and Fukushima (2011). Two nuclear disasters; the former triggered by a uranium bomb. Little Boy, dropped by American pilots on 6 August 1945, the latter caused by the 9.0 earthquake and attendant tsunami on 11 March 2011 that destroyed a nuclear power plant, where inadequate safety features exacerbated the subsequent meltdown. Both events continue to inspire a visual culture of disaster, often, like mine, of a comparative nature. I will explore how artists, broadly interpreted to include both amateurs and professionals, have used a range of old and new media to express, describe, represent, and memorialize these two nuclear disasters. Much attention has already been paid to the documentary role and also therapeutic nature of disaster art, but I am especially interested here in whether and/or how human culpability is signified in works of art dealing with Hiroshima and Fukushima.
Using Visual Material for Knowledge Creation: The Process of Analysis and Interpretation
Joint session of RC37 Sociology of Arts and WG03 Visual Sociology [host committee]Session Organizers
Sarah FRANZEN, Emory University, USA, email@example.com
Paulo MENEZES, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Visual methods are becoming more common within scholarly research and provide a wide range of creative and innovative forms of data collection. But what happens after the visual material has been collected? This session seeks papers that outline the epistemological and analytical frameworks used to interpret visual material in the process of producing scholarship.
Particularly, this session looks for papers that detail the analytical process used to draw knowledge from visual material. This includes consideration of the theories that inform the analytical process, and the actual tools and techniques used to treat visual materials. Papers could address, but need not be limited to, the following questions: Do researchers use coding software, video editing techniques, or interpretive strategies? Are visual materials used to identify discrete behaviors by informants, to record sensory material, or are they considered cultural artifacts? Once researchers have analyzed the material, how do they present their findings? Are visual and textual materials integrated or are they presented separately and independently? This could also include considerations of addressing both academic and non-academic audiences.
Ultimately, this session seeks to consider the consequences of using different frameworks for analyzing visual material and how these produce different forms of knowledge. Therefore, this session invites papers from a broad range of approaches towards the analysis and presentation of visual materials in order to encourage discussion among presenters and audiences, and also to deeply explore our understanding of the role of visual material in scholarship.
Presenters will be asked to send a draft of their full papers (of 6000 words, including references) to session organizers by 12 June 2014 (one month prior to the conference).
Labor and Environmental Movements
Joint session of RC44 Labor Movements and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change [host committee]Session Organizers
Hwa-Jen LIU, National Taiwan University, Taiwan, email@example.com
Matthew Carl GARRETT, Wesleyan University, USA, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
In the last century, labor and environmental movements provided comprehensive visions on politics and economic life, and profoundly touched upon people`s daily practices. Between these two movements, there existed tension, competition, and cooperation. This panel seeks to explore the delicate love and hate between labor and environmental movements from different parts of the world, under siege of deepened commodification of labor force and Mother Nature in the twenty-first century.
Human Rights and Clinical Sociology
Joint session of RC46 Clinical Sociology and TG03 Human Rights and Global Justice [host committee]Session Organizers
Ed SIEH, Lasell College, USA, email@example.com
Tina UYS, University of Johannesburg, South Africa, firstname.lastname@example.com
Session in English
Human rights encompass political, economic, social, group, cultural, democratic and environmental rights. Clinical sociology, involving both analysis and intervention (at all levels from individual through global), is a rights-based, creative and multidisciplinary specialization that seeks to improve life situations for individuals and collectivities. A rights-based approach means that clinical analysis and intervention is expected to promote and maintain at least a minimum standard of well-being to which all people ideally possess a right. This session invites presentations regarding human rights principles and documents in relation to social intervention.
Presentations about human rights and social justice may focus on a variety of topics in terms of their history, policies, and/or practices.
Cultural Fields and Movement Trajectories: Comparing the Effect of Different Cultures upon Movements in the Political Process
Joint session of RC47 Social Classes and Social Movements [host committee] and RC48 Social Movements, Collective Action and Social ChangeSession Organizer
Jeffrey BROADBENT, University of Minnesota, USA, email@example.com
Session in English
Papers on how movements are shaped by their cultural context coming from different societies. How does the cultural context shape many factors: the movement and other actors as social organizations, the ideologies and goals of the movements and other actors, the networks of relations among many actors including social movements,the nature of power and resistance in different cultures, what counts as outcomes, and so forth.
My recent book, East Asian Social Movements, can be one basis of comparison and recruitment of authors, and we can invite any other interested authors as well.