[WSMDiscuss] Fwd: The ISA Forum of Sociology starts on Tuesday

Mon Feb 22 20:07:53 CET 2021

This may be of interest, esp. the plenaries that will be freely 
available to watch.

ashish

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	The ISA Forum of Sociology starts on Tuesday
Date: 	Mon, 22 Feb 2021 16:46:01 +0100
From: 	Geoffrey PLEYERS <Geoffrey.Pleyers at uclouvain.be>

*For information & diffusion. Please join us at the World Forum of 
Sociology!
*

*
*

*The 2021 ISA Forum of Sociology*

*23-28 February *

The Fourth ISA Forum of Sociology will open on February 23^rd . 58 ISA 
Research committees, working groups and thematic groups have organized 
over 800 panels where over 3.300 researchers from 125 countries will 
present their latest research during 6 days. The full program, starting 
on February 23rd at 12noon GMT, is available at
https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/porto-alegre-2021 
<https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/porto-alegre-2021>

Our *opening plenary on Tuesday 23 February at 12:30 (time of Brazil) / 
15:30 GMT* will host four extraordinary sociologists who have built 
global analyses rooted in a dialogue with actors, movements and 
researchers in the global south: *Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Portugal), 
Rita Segato (Brazil), Ashish Kothari (India) and Jean-Louis Laville 
(France).*The Forum opening sessions, as well as 6 plenary panels and 
the ISA editors sessions will be livestreamed on the ISA Facebook page 
and thus made available for a wide audience. Please join us on the ISA 
Forum Zoom platform or on the ISA Facebook page 
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/ 
<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/>

For those of you who won’t present a paper, the ISA has set up an 
*/“attendies” registration that will allow you to access any of these 
800+ panels/* for a reduced cost of 25 USD (students) / 50 USD (full 
rate). 
https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/registration/call.cgi 
<https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/forum2020/registration/call.cgi>

This IV ISA Forum will also be the opportunity for our community to pay 
tribute to three of our most distinguished colleagues in three special 
panels. */I/**/mmanuel Wallerstein/*was not only a major global social 
scientist and a global citizen committed to social justice. He presided 
over the ISA between 1992 and 1996, leaving a considerable 
legacy*/./**/Erik Olin Wright/*will notably be remembered for shedding 
light on “real utopias” that embody the hope of fairer and more human 
times. */Marielle Franco/*, a Brazilian sociologist who was murdered on 
March 14th 2018, has become a global symbol of a struggle against 
racist, colonial, hetero-patriarchal domination and police violence and 
for social justice, human rights and democracy. Her life as a black 
woman from the favelas shows that intersectionality is not only a 
theoretical concept.She also exemplifies the importance of enlarging the 
access to studies in sociology to women and men from less privileged 
backgrounds, beyond the gender, race and social barriers.

These sessions in tribute to Erik Olin Wright (24 February 2021, 17:45 
time of Brazil), Immanuel Wallerstein (25 Feb. 12:30 in Brazil) and 
Marielle Franco (25 Feb. 17:45 in Brazil) */will be livestreamed/* on 
the ISA Facebook page: 
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/ 
<https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/>

The Forum will also be the opportunity to attend “professional 
development sessions” and learn how to write article and meet editorial 
standards with our Vice-President for Publication Eloisa Martin and the 
editors of the ISA journals in sessions that will be available on Zoom 
and livestreamed on the ISA Facebook page.

In addition, ISA Vice-President Filomin Guttierrez and her team 
dedicated to promote early career sociologists have prepared videos of 
inspiring senior scholars in a dialogue with young researchers and 
Hermilio Santos and the Porto Alegre Local Organizing Committee a series 
of videos on the Challenges of Brazil. All these videos will be 
available be available on the ISA Forum website.

https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/porto-alegre-2021 
<https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/porto-alegre-2021>

*/We made it! The first ISA virtual Forum/*

This fourth ISA Forum takes place amid a global pandemic that has shaken 
our lives and our societies. Organizing a Forum in the pandemic and 
moving it online has */been a historical challenge for our 
association/*. I would like to thank each of you for preparing 
presentations under such difficult circumstances and every session 
organizers for setting up the hundreds of panels. Our efficient ISA 
secretariat, our ISA president Sari Hanafi, the ISA Vice President for 
finance Sawako Shirahase and the members of its Executive Committee, the 
Local Organizing Committee and its chair Hermilio Santos, have all 
worked hard to prepare the encounter. This Forum would not exist without 
the dedication and largely invisible organizing work of the presidents 
and program coordinators of the 52 research committees, working groups 
and thematic groups that participate in this Forum and are the vibrant 
heart of our International Sociological Association. My deepest 
gratitude to each and every one of them.

This Forum was going to take place in Porto Alegre, Brazil, aiming at 
strengthening the global dialogue with our Latin American colleagues, 
whose theoretical, epistemological and analytical contributions are 
indispensable tools to understand the global challenges of our times. In 
this process, we have strengthened our partnership with the Brazilian 
Sociological Society (SBS), the Latin American Sociological Association 
(ALAS) and with the Latin American Social Science Council (CLACSO), that 
have organized plenary sessions at this Forum. We have extended this 
partnership to other regional associations, starting with the Council 
for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa and the Arab 
Council for Social Sciences whose presidents will join us in the closing 
session.

*/Global Sociology in the Pandemic/**//*

The global pandemic gives even more importance to the ISA primary 
mission*/: gathering social scientists from all over the world to share 
their research and analyses./* Over the past year, sociologists have 
played an essential role in dealing with the pandemic and analyzing its 
impacts, notably around four areas to which a significant part of this 
Forum will be dedicated. Sociologists have demonstrated that the 
COVID-19 pandemic is not only a sanitary crisis. It is also a social, 
ecological, and political crisis. While the virus may infect each human 
being, the pandemic affects us differently and exacerbated social 
inequalities, notably in terms of class, race, and gender. An 
intersectional approach is crucial to understand how the crisis is 
experienced and why the way we face it is profoundly unequal and unfair.

We also have explored the way actors experience and live the pandemic. 
The COVID-19 has reminded us of our vulnerability as biological, human, 
social and spiritual beings. The pandemic, the confinement and the fear 
of contagion have had a profound impact on the live and subjectivity of 
individuals, and on their relationship with the others. 
Intergenerational relations have taken new shapes and meanings. Social 
distancing measures have put solidarity at risk and often shrunk the 
limits of the community within which it takes place. Digital 
technologies have reshaped many realms of our lives, from work to 
family, as well as our way of teaching, researching and meeting in 
congresses and forums.

Another stream of research has analyzed the way policymakers and 
political regimes deal with the outbreak. The pandemic has revealed the 
strengths and weaknesses of governments, public policies and political 
regimes. It has transformed the relationship between citizens and their 
government and shown the importance of public healthcare.

We have also analyzed and debated the longer-term impacts of the 
pandemic. Many of us have stressed the need for a world more sensitive 
to human beings, care, and social inequalities, and with stronger 
welfare states. However, increased competition between states and the 
power of transnational corporations have often prevailed in the 
management of the pandemic. The crisis management also may pave the way 
for a new authoritarian era, with biopolitics grounded in new 
technologies. The way humanity will get out of the COVID-19 pandemic 
will rely on how policymakers, economic actors, citizens and social 
movements deal with this multidimensional crisis and defend their 
visions of the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic has stressed how deeply interdependent we have 
become. Fostering a global dialogue among social scientists from all 
continent is the core mission of the ISA. Opening more spaces for our 
colleagues from the Global South and for their concepts, research and 
action is fundamental to our work. In the North and in the South of the 
planet, women, indigenous people, minorities have helped us to reach a 
better understanding of our world and the global challenges of our times 
in a different way. Hence, */the epistemologies of the South and 
feminist and intersectional perspectives on democracy, ecology and 
social justice are more than alternative options for sociology in the 
21^st century. There are at its core and have deeply transformed it./*

Geoffrey Pleyers
President of the IV ISA Forum

-- 

*/Geoffrey Pleyers/*

FNRS, Professor of Sociology at UCLouvain, Belgium
President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology 
<https://www.isa-sociology.org/en/conferences/forum/porto-alegre-2021> - 
23-28 February 2021.

Vice-President for Research, International Sociological Association