The XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology will start in a few days. The research committee 47 “Social classes and social movements” proposes a very timely program in a world increasingly shaped my reactionary movements and authoritarian regimes but where progressive movements remain also very lively and creative. With 31 panels and over 150 speakers, it will be the largest program ever run by our RC at an ISA event. Have a look at the program in this newsletter and join us in room 705 in Toronto!

Our experience in Yokohama and Vienna showed us how important it is to get to know each other before starting a very demanding week at the ISA congress. We have set up a convivial “Welcome session” that will take place on Sunday July 15th at 3 pm at the congress venue. It will be an opportunity to get to know each other, to share our recent research and publications as well as to present some recent projects by our research committee. Have a look at the program on page 2.

Among the highlights of the RC47 program in Toronto, the Opening session will gather leading scholars to reflect on the current state of social movements across the world (Monday 16, 15:30). RC47 has also organized two “ISA integrative sessions”. The first one will focus on social movements in the Global South (Wednesday 18, 12:30) and the second one on social movements and labour (Friday 20, 12:30).

The RC47 business meeting will take place on Thursday 19th of July at 19:00. It will be the opportunity to propose new projects and to take an active part in our RC. We will also process to our internal elections to designate our board members for the next 4 years. Join us and contribute to shape the future of our research committee!
As program organizers, we would like to thank all the session chairs and coordinators as well as the panellists who have chosen ISA47 to present their latest research results. Before arriving in Toronto, have a look at the short guidelines to present a paper below.

We are very pleased that one of our active member, Tommaso Gravante, from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, has received one of the ISA Awards for junior researchers for his article “Desaparición forzada y trauma cultural en México. Una nueva narrativa social a partir del Movimiento de Ayotzinapa”.
We look very much forward to seeing you on Sunday in Toronto!

Breno Bringel & Geoffrey Pleyers
RC47 Program coordinators at the 2018 World Congress of Sociology

To download the full newsletter, click here

See our program in this pdf document and join us, submitting your abstract! Have a look at the section “How to present a paper” (p. 13) and don’t hesitate to contact the panel coordinators for more information about their panel.

Membership of RC47 is not compulsory but will be taken into account in the abstract selection process. Please join us at http://www.isa-sociology.org/memb_i/index.htm

Our aim is to foster a global dialogue among sociologists of social movements. Therefore, all panels should include about half of the speakers from the Global South.

Program Coordinators:
Geoffrey PLEYERS, Belgium/France
Breno BRINGEL Brazil

The deadline for panel proposals at the next world congress of sociology is nearing. Please register your session proposals directly on the ISA website before March 15th (!!).

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/rc/cfs.cgi  (Then choose RC47).

Proposals should be thematic open call for abstracts (and not closed sessions with invited scholars).

These panel proposals will then go through a selection process, taking into account both thematic and geographical balances. The selected one will then be included in the ISA47 call for abstracts for the 2018 world congress of sociology.

The ISA47 board has suggested a few orientations for its program at the World Congress of Sociology. Please take them into account when preparing your proposal:

1. Each panel should include at least one and if possible half of the speakers coming from the Global South (and if possible not only the richest Latin American countries). We need to get our colleagues from Africa and Asia on board! There won’t be any session on a specific geographical area.
2. Some priority will be given to the topics we defined as our priority at our last board meeting: epistemologies of the South; trade unions and movements; conservative/extreme right movements.
3. Our overall call will include diverse topics and cover a range of movements. Among the other topics that should have some space in our program: online/offline activism; environmentalist movements; outcomes of the movements; epistemology and practices of social movement studies (including the relation between researchers and activists)… And the topics you consider as relevant in 2018.

Two years ago, we received 69 proposals for our 14 slots initially allocated to our RC at the ISA Forum in Vienna. We will have slightly more slots this time, but we won’t be able to select all the proposals. The call is widely open. Some priority may be given to ISA47 members who have been active in some of our initiatives.

Note that session organizers will have to be members in good standing of ISA47 before the general call for abstracts is published (April 7^th, 2017).

For questions or further information, please contact Geoffrey Pleyers, Breno Bringel, or any of the ISA47 board members.

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The ISA 47 Initiative against repression of academics strongly condemns the recent wave of purge and assault on Turkish academics and expresses solidarity with those affected by this brutality.

If you have firsthand information about the details of the recent attacks, please contact us and help us publicize different aspects of this outrageous violence.

The deadline for submitting proposals is 30 January 2017

Young people shape the futures of their society. They envision, plan, challenge practices and present new perspectives. Youth as actors face however many challenges. This international conference will explore how do youth and other actors enhance youth capabilities to pursue the change they envision within a context of social and political repression, sociopolitical instabilities. Further, it will look into ways in which youth emerge as actors and become more influential in policies, and shaping the current and future alternative of their societies; How do youth and other actors sustain their collective action and sense of agency with increase repression in societies; how would they move from the focus on the individual to a focus on a greater commitment despite all the challenges they face. Youth resiliency the experiences of youth and other actors with regards to enhancing youth engagement.

This Bethlehem University, ISA RC34, and ISA RC47 conference will be an opportunity to enhance a mutual learning between scholars in Palestine, Arab countries, and the international community.

We particularly welcome papers on the four axes of the conference:

The main themes to be discussed in the conference are:

• Youth as actors of change, transformation from the individual to the collective commitment
• Repression: How to create and sustain a commitment with a context of repression
  • A sub topic will be with regards to the development of tools and techniques by youth and other actors to face repressions and online repression.
• Youth resiliency and engagement: how to move forward in time of conflict and instability. Engagement as a tool for community rebuilding
• Youth in Palestine: collective action and change intersection of development and liberation

1. Youth as actors of change, transformation from the individual to the collective commitment

Since 2011, young people, participating in movements in the Arab world and USA and across Europe, have proven to be major actors of social and political change, as much the ones that strike mainstream media headlines as those that discreetly transform politics or daily life. They have developed specific forms of commitment and activism that connect individualization with strong social commitments, protests and alternative, online and offline activism. This conference will gather analyses of young people’s contributions to socio-political change in the Arab countries and around the world. We particularly welcome analyses of youth cultures of activism, and youth visions of social change.

Transformation from a focus on the individualized self to the common and public good is one of the aspects in which youth, organizations, political parties, and others have tried to develop. Various forms of social and political commitment were developed and promoted by different actors. This ranged from voluntary work to participating in online and offline activism.  Currently, in many parts of the world there are two competing spheres in which collective identity and commitment to the public good is emerging and evolving:  the formal and informal. In the informal sphere, initiatives are generally youth-led, with young people working on developing their own structures, groups, and cultures for social and political engagement. Within the formal sphere it is organizations, policy makers, and political parties that are constructing interventions concerned with creating opportunities for young people to demonstrate their social and political contribution as active citizens. Both spheres are increasingly affecting the current and future frameworks of young people’s lives as they shape youth identities, and cultures, styles and forms of engagement.

2. Repression

Repression is another factor that impact youth ability to form a collective action. Repression affects the willingness to participate in collective action, the forms of engagement. Repression affects the possible available actions to be taken by various actors, and the tools that these actors own and access. Youth and other actors try to manipulate a system of repression- political or social- to push for changes they envision. Yet the risk needed for engagement under repression is high and accordingly decreases the possibilities of engagement and sustaining it. For example, Restriction applied on online engagement is only one example of how surveillance limits the space of young activists; framing the actions to support the local community as civic while under colonization is another approach to avoid risks of being subjects to surveillance.  How to enhance Youth participation in collective action during such restrictions varies from one context to another, what are the factors that are encouraging youth to get engaged despite of the risk that they will face is one of the questions that will be tackled by this conference. Another will how do youth and other actors navigate the space available to achieve the change they envision. It will look into the techniques and strategies used by various actors to build a sense of agency and create a sustainable change in a society

3. Resiliency

Resiliency is another aspect that is vital for engagement, agency, and change especially in societies that lives in conflicts and wars. Social and political engagement is an indicator of resilient youth and their societies. Engaged youth prove to be more able to face pressures in their lives, and arguably possess or develop the social capital that helps them to navigate the personal and positional change they want. In a context like Palestine, engaged youth showed better signs of agency, and more capability to face the challenges resulting from a life under colonization, and within a society with high level of unemployment among youth, and political division that lasted around ten years. Youth resiliency is interlinked with the collective resiliency of their society. . Resilient young people are seen to be able to step forward to build the change they envision: they have access to resources provided by their social network, and they have a strong sense of agency. How do social networks and structures enhance youth resilience and prospectively shape and sustain youth engagement. How do programmes and policies directed towards youth affect youth inclusion within their communities and society, and push the boundaries and spaces available for youth as social actors.

4. Understanding youth in Palestine. Contributions for and from research in Palestine in a global context

In Palestine, where one third of the population is between the ages of 18 and 30 years old, young people’s ability to affect the change on policy levels, political parties, and organizations is limited. This is despite a nation’s history in which a strong youth movement shaped the resistance movement against the occupation, and formed the current political parties. The youth movement, similar to other collective actions efforts in Palestine, has dissipated as a result of socio-political changes that have shaped the Palestinian society since signing the Oslo Accord twenty years ago. Currently in Palestine young people are now shaping new spaces for their engagement, usually focused on their local community. Still young people participated in a smaller scale in national movements such as BDS,  stop the wall, and the teachers’ movement.. This situation, although in some respects distinct for Palestine, shares many similarities with other countries in the world.

Venue

The conference will take place in Bethlehem University, Bethlehem, Palestine from April 26^th to 28^th 2017. The conference will be followed with encounters with local actors on April 29^th in the cities of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Hebron. Interested participants will notably meet with organizations that support young people and foster their agency in the three cities. Program to visit organizations working with youth and collective action will be arranged during the conference.

For Information about how to get to Bethlehem, accommodation and life in Bethlehem please check the conference page https://bethlehem.edu/conferences/yc-conference-2016/home . Please note that Easter holiday is one week earlier than the conference, Easter celebration in Palestine is a unique cultural as well as religious experience for many.

Submission of proposals

Proposals should be submitted in English or Arabic; abstracts should not exceed 300 words and may be submitted by January 30^th 2017 either through the conference website or through the following email address youthandchange@bethlehem.edu. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact   Abeer Musleh Abeerm@bethlehem.edu,  Geoffrey Pleyers Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be ; and Ani Wierenga wierenga@unimelb.edu.au

Conference Time line:

Deadline for receiving proposals will be January 30^th.

People will be informed about being accepted in the conference by February 15^th

Final paper to be received for the conference is 20^th of April

Conference date is 26^th of April

This initiative has three main aims. First, as social movement scholars, reclaiming the justice for our colleagues is a duty. We will diffuse information about repressions and threats on social scientists and social movement scholars in particular and will issue calls and statements to denounce repression. Secondly, this initiative will promote research able to provide a better understanding of the local, national and international forces and mechanisms that have produced a world in which social scientists have become targets of repression. Finally, being aware of the importance of collective actions and mobilizations, we hope this initiative contributes to a more active, efficient and visible mobilization of the academic community.

For now, we have three concrete suggestions to move forward:

1. We would like to organize panels and sessions on this topic during the conferences organized/co-organized by RC 47 and for the XIXI ISA World Congress of Sociology in Toronto;
2. We will dedicate a specific section on our website and the newsletter to this initiative;
3. Depending on the urgency of the case and the potential efficacy of our act we would publish statements and sign petitions in support of our colleagues. We plan to do this in collaboration with ISA committee on Human Rights.

This initiative can only be successful as a collective project. Therefore, we would like to invite you to send us any proposals you have in mind with regard to organization of panels and sessions. Moreover, we need your collaboration to be able to receive timely news on multiple forms of repression on academics you witness or are aware of in your surrounding e.g. your universities, cities and countries. Only in this way we could publicize the news in an effective way. We also would like to invite you to write short pieces of about 300-400 words for the newsletter. Eventually these panels, sessions and short articles could come together and make an interesting series for Open Movements. Finally, if you have any suggestions which could contribute to this initiative in any way, please let us know.

Social Movements in the 2010s

ISA47/48 Preconference. Vienna, July 9th 2016

Location: Konferenzraum, Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstraße 7, Wien

(2 blocks behind University´s main buliding)

Anna Szolucha’s photo exhibition  “Through our eyes”  will be exposed in the conference room.

9:00-9:20am: Welcome words, Priska Daphi & Geoffrey Pleyers (RC47) & Tova Benski (RC48)

9:20-11:00am: Plenary panel: Social movements, refugees and borders

Chair: Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, RC47

Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna)

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore Florence)

Jeff Goodwin (New York University)

11:15-12.45: Plenary panel: Social movements and change.

Chair: Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, RC 47.

Markus Schulz (New School for Social Research, ISA)

Chris Rootes (University of Kent)

Colin Barker (University of Manchester)

James Jasper (City University New York)

12:45-2:30pm: Socializing session and lunch in thematic groups

• Refugees and movements
• Digital technology, media and social movements
• Continuities and outcomes of movements
• Environmentalist movements
• Movements for democracy
• Right wing and conservative movements
• Women and feminist movements
• Unions and movements around (precarious) work
• Social movements and repression

2:45-4:30pm: Plenary panel 3: Cultural Perspectives on Social Movements

Chair: Tova Benski, College of Management Studies, Israel, RC48

Breno Bringel (State University of Rio de Janeiro)

Priska Daphi (University of Frankfurt)

Paolo Gerbaudo (King’s College London)

Eiji Hamanishi (Notre Dame Seishin University)

Geoffrey Pleyers (Université de Louvain & Collège d’Etudes Mondiales)

Benjamin Tejerina (University of the Basque Country)

4:45-5:15 pm: ISA47&RC48: program in Vienna, forthcoming activities and publications

5:15-6pm: Second socializing session (thematic groups as above)

6-8pm: Special session:                  Location: NS II, Neues Institutsgebäude, Universitätsstraße 7

Sociologists under threats. Repression and violence against social movement scholars

Buket Turkmen (University of Galatasaray, Turkey) on the situation in Turkey

Shruti Tambe (University of Pune, India) on the situation in India

Margaret Abraham (Hofstra University, ISA President)

Sari Hanafi (American University of Beirut, ISA Human Rights Committee)

Pre-conference organizers: Priska Daphi, Geoffrey Pleyers, Tova Benski

ISA47 Program at the 3d ISA Forum, Vienna

July 10 – 15 2016

* The photovoice exhibition “Through our eyes” by Anna Szolucha will be exposed in the seminar room during the pre-conference and various ISA47 panels.

“Through our eyes” is a photovoice exhibition that shows what it means to live with the prospect of fracking. It captures residents’ individual perspectives in their own words and images. The exhibition comprises of 34 photographs taken by local residents who are concerned about the impacts of shale gas developments in Lancashire and the UK. The idea of the exhibition came from Anna Szolucha research project (repowerdemocracy.net) that explored the social impacts of shale gas development. One of the early findings of this study is that even before fracking starts, it has profound impacts on local communities.

ISA47 Program organizers: Priska Daphi, Paolo Gerbaudo, Geoffrey Pleyers

ISA47 Preconference. Vienna, July 9^th 2016

(download and share the program!)

Limited space – please register till 15 June 2016 by sending an e-mail at rc47.isa@gmail.com 

Free entrance for members of RC47.

9:00-9:20am: Welcome words, Priska Daphi & Geoffrey Pleyers (RC47) & Tova Benski (RC48)

9:20-11:00am: Plenary panel: Social movements, refugees and borders 

Chair: Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, RC47

Ulrich Brand (University of Vienna)

Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore Florence)

Shalini Randeria (Institute for Human Sciences Vienna)

Jeff Goodwin (New York University)

11:15-12.45: Plenary panel: Social movements and change. 

Chair: Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, RC 47.

Markus Schulz (New School for Social Research, ISA)

Chris Rootes (University of Kent)

Colin Barker (University of Manchester)

James Jasper (City University New York)

12:45-2:30pm: Socializing session and lunch in thematic groups 

 Refugees and movements

 Digital technology, media and social movements

 Continuities and outcomes of movements

 Environmentalist movements

 Movements for democracy



Contact/ISA47 Pre-conference organizers

Priska Daphi, University of Frankfurt, Daphi@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Geoffrey Pleyers, University of Louvain, Geoffrey.Pleyers@uclouvain.be