plazo: 15 octubre 2009
cuando: del 11 al 17 de julio (2009)
donde: Gotemburgo

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
http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010/adh/index.htm

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.

Vía | lista Socine Brasil