Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg

Call for Papers

The International Sociological Association is organizing its XVII World
Congress of Sociology in Gothenburg, Sweden, July 11-17, 2010. The Research
Committee Futures Research (RC 07) invites proposals for papers and
sessions.



Future Moves
Markets, Politics, and Publics in Global and Comparative Perspectives

What are the pertinent future trends? What are the forces that shape
futures? What alternative visions are available? Which factors nourish the
social imagination, and which factors restrict it? What are, or should be,
sociology's own future moves to meet the challenges of our time?—A broad
array of sessions offers to engage with these and other questions by
focusing on specific themes such as globalization, environment, social
movements, state and insurgent terrorism, media and new technologies,
urbanism, work and leisure. Other sessions provide opportunity to
concentrate on conceptual issues or to discuss policy matters and the
experiences of practitioners. The program is meant to provide a platform
for a broad spectrum of methodological, theoretical, and practical
approaches, including interdisciplinary collaboration. We invite proposals
for papers, posters, and sessions on any of the topics indicated below or
other issues related to futures research.

Deadline: October 15, 2009


Program Coordinator
Markus S. Schulz, ISA-RC07, email: <isarc07@gmail.com>



Planned Sessions

(1) Globalization: Futures After the Crisis
Organizer: Jan Nederveen Pieterse (UC Santa Barbara, USA)
<jnp@global.ucsb.edu>

(2) Geopolitics, Smart Power, and Social Imagination for the 21st
Century
Organizer: Timothy W. Luke (Virginia Tech, USA) <twluke2@vt.edu>

(3) Environmental Futures
Organizer: John Urry (Lancaster University, UK) <j.urry@lancaster.ac.uk>

(4) Future of State and Insurgent Terrorism
Organizer: Jeff Goodwin (New York University, USA) <jeff.goodwin@nyu.edu>
Political violence against "innocent" civilians has generated a great deal
of discussion and debate in recent years. What explains past episodes of
state and/or insurgent terrorism? Are the two linked? How has the rhetoric
of "terrorism" been used by political actors? Will we see more or less--or
different kinds of--terrorism in the future? Papers on any of these concerns
are encouraged.

(5) Conceptualizing Future in Social Theory
Organizers: Elisa P. Reis (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
<epreis@alternex.com.br> and Markus S. Schulz (UIUC, USA)
<isarc07@gmail.com>
How does sociology move towards the future after the death of determinism?
How do different strands of social theory deal with the future? How do they
conceptualize its relation to notions of structure, agency, power,
experience, and imagination? How could theories that avoid the future be
modified? What are the consequences for theories when a future orientation
is brought in? This session is meant to provide an opportunity for dialogue
among scholars working in different modes of theorizing, including
empirical, normative, micro, macro etc.

(6) Social Movements and the Future
Joint Session of Research Committees on Future Research (RC07) and Social
Movements, Collective Action and Social Change (RC48)
Organizers: Markus S. Schulz (UIUC, USA) <isarc07@gmail.com> and Benjamin
Tejerina Montaña (Universidad del País Vasco, Spain) <cjptemob@lg.ehu.es>
The 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, debate, disseminate, and attempt to
implement projects and visions of the future?
- 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?

(7) Urban Futures
Organizer: Dieter Hassenpflug (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany)
<hassenpf@archit.uni-weimar.de>
Mega-urbanization and urban hyper-growth in industrializing countries;
progressing informal urbanization in low-growth countries, heterogeneous
spatial restructuring processes that differentiate between shrinkage and
growth and take place in advanced Western service societies; emergence of
Global Cities and globalized regions, of edge or outer cities, of airports
and shopping centers as attractive city-surrogates, etc.: How can these
spatial phenomena be sociologically evaluated? Which social and societal
demands towards space do they articulate? How do urbanized landscapes
influence human coexistence and how do they impact traditional social
practices? Will the habitats of the future consist of conglomerates of
ethnic enclaves, segregated sociotopes of social and cultural parallel
societies? Which scope of action for urban planning remains in the context
of financial crisis, climate change, and scarcity of resources? What do the
new urbanization tendencies imply for the theories of metropolitan life that
have developed in the course of the emergence of the metropolis in the 19th
and 20th century (Weber, Simmel, Chicago School, Lefébvre, etc.)? To which
degree can theories of urban life today still be assigned to a particular
discipline? In this regard, must we not consider operating from a
‘postdisciplinary’ situation?

(8) New Media Futures
Joint Session of Research Committees on Futures Research (RC07),
Communication, Knowledge, and Culture (RC14), and Sociology of Science and
Technology (RC23) are
Organizers: Christiana Constantopoulou (Panteion University, Greece)
<chconsta@panteion.gr> and Markus S. Schulz (UIUC, USA) <isarc07@gmail.com>
The Research Committees on Futures Research (RC07), Communication,
Knowledge, and Culture (RC14), and Sociology of Science and Technology
(RC23) are planning to convene one or more Joint Sessions on the general
theme "Future of New Media". Papers may explore from theoretical, empirical,
or normative perspectives critical issues such as
- technological development,
- digital inequality,
- intellectual property rights,
- surveillance,
- mobility,
- online activism,
- or virtual publics.
Papers may address current trends, alternative future scenarios, policy
implications, social consequences, or processes for imagining and shaping
media futures.

(9) Technological Futures
Joint Session of Research Committees on Futures Research (RC07) and
Sociology of Science and Technology (RC23)
Organizer: Gerardo del Cerro (Cooper Union, MIT) <gdelcerro@gmail.com>
Among the possible questions that may be addressed are: What are the future
visions regarding nanotechnologies, biomedicine, and genetics? Considering
the advances in robotics, informatics, and artificial intelligence, how will
we be impacted when more and more decisions are being made by nonhuman
entities? How does the current economic crisis affect technological
innovations and the relationships between energy, capital, and information?
What methodologies are best suited to approach the new technological
futures? What role can public sociology play in the shaping of visions about
new technologies, their regulation and utilization?

(10) Sociology and Simulation of Social Realities
Organizer: Hermilio Santos (PUCRS, Porto Alegre, Brazil) <hermilio@pucrs.br>
This session focuses on the contribution that sociology can make to the
simulation of realities. Simulation of future is a mechanism used by
organization's and individual's decision-making in everyday life to organize
interaction, since acting implies to consider not only the past and present
acts, but also the potential future acts of those (individuals and
organizations) involved in the interactive context. Special attention will
be given to theoretical discussion on this issue as well as current
interdisciplinary approximations exploring sociology's potential role in
simulation of social realities.

(11) Power, Politics, Publics: Sociological Experiences
Organizers: Raquel Sosa (UNAM, Mexico) <rsosa@servidor.unam.mx> and Markus
S. Schulz (UIUC, USA) <isarc07@gmail.com>
How does sociology relate to policy, power, and publics? How do
sociologists contribute to social projects and alternative views? What is
the experience of sociologists who engage in "critical" or "public" modes of
doing sociology, including collaboration with social movements or public
service? What can we learn from comparisons between different national
experiences and different disciplines? What lessons can be learned from
recent experiences in Latin America or other sites of the Global South?
What is to be done to make sociology and the sociological imagination more
relevant?

(12) Gender, Science, Technology, Innovation, and the Future
Joint Session of Research Committees on Futures Research (RC07), Sociology
of Science and Technology (RC23), and Women in Society (RC32)
Organizer: Solange Simões (Eastern Michigan University, USA)
<ssimoes@emich.edu> and Radhamany Sooryamoorthy, University of
KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, <sooryamoorthyr@ukzn.ac.za>
The presence and absence of information and technology (ICT), as it exists
today in different parts of the world, have opened up opportunities for
scholars, including sociologists, to examine the ways technology is
affecting society. As a fast developing realm of technology, ICT is
inventing new means of communication (mobile and wireless, for instance)
that make the study of science communication both challenging and
interesting. Although there is an overwhelming literature on science
communication, still there are areas to be explored, researched, and
understood. The divide--including region and gender--is apparent in science
as well. The ways the disparities in this divide of access to and
availability of ICT is affecting communication in science are not easy to
comprehend either. Many new areas of inquiry have sprung up, contributing to
the knowledge of science communication across the world. This joint session
is to bring together such theoretical, empirical, and methodological
knowledge about science communication including its varieties of patterns,
types and forms.

(13) Leisure: Future Perspectives
Joint Session Research Committees on Futures Research (RC07) and Sociology
of Leisure (RC13)
Organizer: Scott North (University of Osaka, Japan)
<north@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp>
Are we having fun yet? In some ways the future of leisure looks grim: peak
oil, warming climate, and economic instability threaten to transform life as
we've known it. Will our appreciation for leisure be transformed as well?
Amid these changing circumstances, what forms of leisure will be possible,
desirable, sustainable in the foreseeable future? How much of the leisure
past will societies carry forward and what will they be compelled to leave
behind? This session invites submissions that explore possible future
trajectories and definitions of leisure, and their social impact. Papers on
all geographic and cultural regions are welcome irrespective of
methodological approach.

(14) Open Themes
Organizer: tba (contact: <isarc07@gmail.com>)





Deadlines and Procedures

If you wish to present a paper, please email by October 15, 2009 your
proposal with a title and a concise description (150 to 200 words) to the
organizer(s) of your session and to the repository at
<isarc07gothenburg@gmail.com>. A submission form is available for download
at http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/rc/rc07.htm. Be sure to
include in your proposal your name and contact information. Paper proposals
that do not fit to the topic of any of the planned sessions may be submitted
to the RC07 Program Coordinator for integration in additional sessions or
alternative arrangements.

Some general hints: Please make your proposal as informative and specific
as possible. Check whether your abstract provides the reviewers with
answers to fundamental questions such as:

* What question or problem does your paper address?

* Why does this question or problem matter?

* How you do you approach this question or problem (theoretical
perspective, method, data set, body of literature, and the like)?

* What are your findings/research/arguments results?

* What are the implications of these findings/research
results/arguments?

Session proposals are welcome too and shall include a title, a brief
description of the topic, chair's name and contact information, and a list
of four to five speakers. Session proposals may be in any of the ISA's
official languages, English, Spanish, or French.

Notifications of papers accepted for presentation instructions will be sent
to participants by the end of January 2010 along with more detailed
instructions and practical tips on travel and logistics. It is anticipated
that online registration opens in early 2010. May 1, 2010 is the
anticipated deadline for pre-registration and submission of accepted
abstracts to Cambridge Sociological Abstracts (CSA) for inclusion in the
congress catalogue.





Please find attached PDFs of the Call for Papers and the Proposal Submission
Form.