Conferences

Sociologies in Dialogue

by invitations only

The Fourth ISA Conference of the Council of National Associations was held in Taipei, Taiwan, May 8-11, 2017. The theme was “Sociologies in Dialogue”. Each National Association that is a regular collective member of the ISA was expected to send a representative who is the author or co-author of a paper connected in some way to the theme.

Conference poster
Conference schedule
Conference abstracts                                                                                                                                       

The International Sociological Association has for long called for a global multicultural sociology. The thematic orientations of the previous ISA Conferences of the Council of National Associations were very interested to discuss respectively different traditions of sociology and challenges for sociology in an unequal world, and how to use comparative approaches in order to understand our world in times of turmoil. This fourth round built on the previous conferences and moved beyond the realm of ideas well into the realm of applications with a focus on how different national and regional sociologies can circulate, exchange, co-construct, and enter into dialogue and controversy.

It stressed the importance of locality, translatability and social embeddedness of knowledge production and had a more democratic global recognition beyond the dominant West. It tackled broad theoretical/methodological issues that delve through empirical case studies into local knowledge to identify novel strands in theory and methodology with their future epistemic prospects and/or limitations.

While this conference highlighted the power structure in knowledge production, it did not consider the relation between the centre and the periphery as one simply of one-way domination. We thus encouraged discussing of other approaches that may revolve around concepts such as multicultural sociology, postcolonial global sociology, cosmopolitanism, and multiple modernities.

The conference also included a focus on internationalization of social science vs its local relevance. With many problems becoming global, international collaborations become a very important activity in sociological production. Two processes apparently build local engines of globalization.

First is an institutionalization process where 'capacity building' becomes a reality. Through the 'national science' period, scientific research has been closely linked to universities, instead of national public research organizations.

The second process at work is the building of the national scientific community and this process which relies on whether the political system is willing to disburse for research. Very few of the social scientists are involved in any of the large international scientific debates.

Papers were to tackle the processes that will tremendously impact on how sociologies enter into global dialogue and mutual learning.

Each National Association that is a regular collective member of the ISA, was expected to send a representative who is the author or co-author of a paper connected in some way to the theme.

Local Organizing Committee

• Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica
• Taiwanese Sociological Association
• International Sociological Association

List of Participants

Margaret ABRAHAM (ISA President), USA
Sargiu BALTATESCU, Romania
Roberto BRICENO, Venezuela
Fernando CASTANEDA SABIDO, Mexico
Chih-Jou CHEN, Taiwan
Mikhail CHERNYSH, Russia
Mokhtar EL HARRAS, Morroco
Abaher EL SAKKA, Palestine
Dennis ERASGA, Philippines
Manuel FERNANDEZ ESQUINAS, Spain
Lucila FINKEL, Spain
Filomin GUTIERREZ (ISA Executive Commitee), Philippines
Sari HANAFI (ISA Vice-President), Lebanon
Lynn JAMIESON, USA
Tugrul KESKIN, UAE
Grace KHUNOU, South Africa
Olga KUTSENKO, UK
Tomasz MASLANKA, Poland
Konstantin MINOSKI, Macedonia
Bandana PURKAYASTHA, USA
Borut RONCEVIC, Slovenia
Rima SABBAN, Ukraine
Mounir SAIDANI, Tunisia
Markus S. SCHULZ (ISA Vice-President), USA
Saira SIDDIQUI, Pakistan
Aylin TOPAL, Turkey
Rafal WISNIEWSKI, Poland
Elena ZDRAVOMYSLOVA (ISA Executive Commitee), Russia