Conferences
IV ISA Forum of Sociology
Challenges of the 21st Century:
Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality
This IV ISA Forum of Sociology will be our first virtual Forum, with over 800 sessions, more than 3,000 papers and the participation of sociologists from 125 countries.
This Forum will be a unique opportunity to gather our research results and analyses of the extraordinary time we live and study, of its impact on individuals and societies and on four global challenges it has intensified: democracy, environment, inequalities and intersectionality.
During six days, hundreds of panels will explore the world in the pandemic and the world that may come out of it based on research grounded in the field and topics of the ISA Research Committees, Working and Thematic groups. Young researchers and experienced scholars from different regions of the world will expose their analyses of societies and sociology in the pandemic. Leading scholars from different continents will share their perspectives in the Forum’s Opening and Closing Plenaries: Michael Burawoy, Isabel Casimiro, Manuel Castells, Ashish Kothari, Rita Segato, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Maristella Svampa. This Forum will also be an opportunity for our global community to pay tribute to three of our most distinguished colleagues to which special panels are dedicated: Immanuel Wallerstein, Erik Olin Wright and Marielle Franco.
The pandemic has stressed how deeply interdependent we have become and accentuated the need of a more global sociology. Epistemologies of the South and intersectional perspectives on democracy, ecology and social justice are more than alternative options for sociology in the 21st century. There are at its core and have deeply transformed it. Opening more spaces for our colleagues from the Global South has been a central goal in this Forum. We are particularly pleased to host semi-plenary sessions set up by the Brazilian Sociological Society with the Porto Alegre Local Organizing Committee, by the Latin American Sociological Association and by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, and that the president of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa will join us in the closing session.
Sari Hanafi, President of the ISA
Geoffrey Pleyers, President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology