Category Archives: ISA-RC22

Postponement of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology to February 2021

As you have been informed recently, the Executive Committee of the ISA decided to postpone the IV ISA Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to February 23-27, 2021

We are aware that this postponement may be problematic for many of you. The size and speed of the Covid-19 outbreak gave us no other solution. We will redouble our energy and motivation to use these seven months delay to make this Forum a major and insightful meeting of the global sociological community in extraordinary times.

All the activities that have been prepared for the Forum will be maintained. This includes the regular session as much as the plenaries and the common sessions. We will however provide some flexibility to the RC that would like to adapt their program and, if they decide so, to allow their participants to update the title and abstracts of their contribution to the Forum. The abstract selected for the Forum in July 2020 remain thus valid for the Forum in February 2021.

Together with a new “early registration deadline”, we have set a new calendar that allows some flexibility to RCs that wish to update and re-open some of their panels to new participants to replace the colleagues who will not be able to join us in February and to take into account the questions and challenges raised by the Covid-19 outbreak, its social impact and the world that will come out of it.

15 September – 15 October 2020

  • The authors of abstracts selected for the ISA Forum will be invited to confirm their participation to the Forum before October 15th, 2020. They may update their abstract and title, in consultation with their session organizers or RC program coordinators.

15 October 2020 Final day to confirm participation by authors of the already accepted abstracts.

  • The abstracts that have not been not confirmed will be automatically removed from the program

16 – 25 October 2020 Publication of the calls for new abstracts proposals by the RC/WG/TG

26 October – 12 November 2020 Submission of new abstracts proposals via online platform

12 November 2020 Deadline for new abstract submissions

24 November 2020 Authors are notified about the acceptance or rejection of their abstracts
15 December2020 Presenters final registration deadline (early registration fees apply).

We are aware that postposing the Forum will require additional work for our RC program coordinators, presidents and boards, for the Local Organizing Committee and in particular for its president Hermilio Santos, and for the ISA Secretariat. We would like to thank each of them and ensure them we will be there to support them. On our side, have no doubt that we will use this delay to make this Forum an insightful space, to reinforce the existing panels and projects and to set up new ones, such as the “Sociological Movies section” for which a call will soon be published.

The CoVid outbreak is shaking our world in a way that no one expected and will have deep consequences on our world and the way we see it. The 2021 ISA Forum of Sociology will be a unique opportunity to learning from colleagues from all continents and sharing analyses of the crisis, its social impacts and the world that will emerge out of it with. We look very much forward to seeing all of you.

Sari Hanafi, President of the International Sociological Association

Geoffrey Pleyers, ISA Vice President for Research and President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology

Postponement of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology to February 2021

As you have been informed recently, the Executive Committee of the ISA decided to postpone the IV ISA Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre, Brazil, to February 23-27, 2021

We are aware that this postponement may be problematic for many of you. The size and speed of the Covid-19 outbreak gave us no other solution. We will redouble our energy and motivation to use these seven months delay to make this Forum a major and insightful meeting of the global sociological community in extraordinary times.

All the activities that have been prepared for the Forum will be maintained. This includes the regular session as much as the plenaries and the common sessions. We will however provide some flexibility to the RC that would like to adapt their program and, if they decide so, to allow their participants to update the title and abstracts of their contribution to the Forum. The abstract selected for the Forum in July 2020 remain thus valid for the Forum in February 2021.

Together with a new “early registration deadline”, we have set a new calendar that allows some flexibility to RCs that wish to update and re-open some of their panels to new participants to replace the colleagues who will not be able to join us in February and to take into account the questions and challenges raised by the Covid-19 outbreak, its social impact and the world that will come out of it.

15 September – 15 October 2020

  • The authors of abstracts selected for the ISA Forum will be invited to confirm their participation to the Forum before October 15th, 2020. They may update their abstract and title, in consultation with their session organizers or RC program coordinators.

15 October 2020 Final day to confirm participation by authors of the already accepted abstracts.

  • The abstracts that have not been not confirmed will be automatically removed from the program

16 – 25 October 2020 Publication of the calls for new abstracts proposals by the RC/WG/TG

26 October – 12 November 2020 Submission of new abstracts proposals via online platform

12 November 2020 Deadline for new abstract submissions

24 November 2020 Authors are notified about the acceptance or rejection of their abstracts

15 December2020 Presenters final registration deadline (early registration fees apply).

We are aware that postposing the Forum will require additional work for our RC program coordinators, presidents and boards, for the Local Organizing Committee and in particular for its president Hermilio Santos, and for the ISA Secretariat. We would like to thank each of them and ensure them we will be there to support them. On our side, have no doubt that we will use this delay to make this Forum an insightful space, to reinforce the existing panels and projects and to set up new ones, such as the “Sociological Movies section” for which a call will soon be published.

The CoVid outbreak is shaking our world in a way that no one expected and will have deep consequences on our world and the way we see it. The 2021 ISA Forum of Sociology will be a unique opportunity to learning from colleagues from all continents and sharing analyses of the crisis, its social impacts and the world that will emerge out of it with. We look very much forward to seeing all of you.

Sari Hanafi, President of the International Sociological Association

Geoffrey Pleyers, ISA Vice President for Research and President of the IV ISA Forum of Sociology

RC22 Newsletter #21 posted on the Research Committee website

The ISA’s Research Committee on the Sociology of Religion has posted its latest newsletter on the RC website.  It contains a report and photos from the RC22 Mid-Term Conference in Accra, Ghana, a report from the pre-conference workshop on research design, notice about the deadlines for the July 2020 ISA Forum of Sociology in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and other news.

image

Download it at http://www.isa-rc22.org/Newsletters/RC22_Newsletter_21_Dec_19.pdf

ISA RC-22 Newsletter #16: Call for Paper Proposals for the 2018 Toronto World Congress

Dear Colleagues,

I have attached a copy of the latest RC-22 newsletter.  It is short, focused on the Call for Paper Proposals for the 2018 ISA World Congress in Toronto, Canada.

As usual, the deadline for proposals is early: September 30, 2017, at 24:00 GMT.  The ISA uses a computer-based system for accepting papers, so I urge you to submit your proposals early.  Computers always seem to fail at the last minute, and I cannot guarantee to fix technical problems for you.

The newsletter also contains information about the Varga Prize — an award for the best new paper by a young scholar.  That award provides money plus funding to present the paper at the World Congress. 

Please circulate this newsletter widely.

Best wishes,

Jim Spickard
RC-22 President

(If you have trouble viewing the newsletter, there is a copy online at http://isa-rc22.org/newsletters/

Call for Papers: ISA Research Committee on the Sociology of Religion (RC22)

XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology

Power, Violence, and Justice: Reflections, Responses, and Responsibilities

Toronto, Canada, July 15-21, 2018

RESEARCH COMMITTEE 22: SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

Religion, Power, and Resistance: New Ideas for a Divided World

Program Coordinators:

Anna Halafoff, Deakin University, Australia

Sam Han, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Caroline Starkey, University of Leeds, UK

Current environmental, economic, social, and political challenges indicate that people are losing faith in existing power structures and mechanisms for coping with crises. This creates increasingly divided societies, riven by ideological battles for the future of the human and the more than human world. Religion has a place in this picture. Not only is it often a source of divisions; it can also be a source for alternative means of addressing them.

These divisions take new and as yet unclear shapes, which sociologists are only now beginning to comprehend. It is not enough to refer to the struggle between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, terms that dominated sociology through the 1970s. Nor do the tropes ‘colonialism vs. anti-colonialism’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’ adequately explain what is going on. Nor, arguably, does ‘populism vs neo-liberalism’ fully capture such things as the recent clashes between cosmopolitan and anticosmopolitan actors in the major Western democracies. Each of these has a piece of the picture; none of them captures it all.

What is religion’s role in this situation: as a creator of divisions, as a locus of power, and as a ground of resistance?  How does religion influence our divided societies? How is religion influenced in turn?

We invite paper abstract submissions for the following RC22 sessions:

 Religion and National Identity

Religion and Secularity

Religion and Non-Violent Social Movements

Religion, Gender and Family Violence

Religion in the East Asian Public Sphere

Religion in the Public Square

Social Theory and Religion

Religion and Migration: Contrasting First and Second Generations

Dynamics of Gender, Religion, and Intersectionality

Prejudice, Exclusion, and Violence in a Transnational World

Media and Religious Radicalization: Gatekeeping and the Construction of Extremism

Gender, Feminism, and Islam and the West

Candlelight Revolution and Religion in South Korea

Religious Texts of Diversity Vs Exclusion

We will also be including the following invited sessions in our RC22 program:

Presidential Address: Whither the Sociology of Religion? (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: James SPICKARD, University of Redlands, USA

Religion and Diversity: An International Study (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Lori BEAMAN, University of Ottawa, Canada

Diffused Religion. Beyond Secularization – Author Meets Critic Session (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Roberto CIPRIANI, University Roma Tre, Italy

The Case for an Indeterminate Sociological Theory of Religion (Invited Session)

Session Organizer: Tak-ling WOO, York University, Canada

The ISA CONFEX website site is now accepting paper abstracts between 25 April and 30 September 2017 24:00 GMT.

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Symposium459.html

Please address any questions to the Program Coordinators:

     Anna Halafoff: anna.halafoff@deakin.edu.au

     Sam Han: HanSam@ntu.edu.sg

     Caroline Starkey: C.Starkey@leeds.ac.uk

Call for Comments: IPSP report on "Rethinking Society for the 21st Century"

The International Panel on Social Progress invites comments on its first draft until the end of Dec. 2016

Browse the report on https://comment.ipsp.org/

The first draft of the report of the International Panel of Social Progress (IPSP), “Rethinking Society for the 21st Century”, is out now! We welcome comments on the online platform  https://comment.ipsp.org/

This report is a product of a global initiative. It is the first comprehensive synthesis of state-of-the-art social sciences knowledge about key issues facing humankind today, and the first collaborative and participatory initiative of its kind. 

Key features include:

  • Written by more than 250 leading academics from all around the world 
  • Takes a holistic approach to social progress: not only the economy, but health, education, gender relations, political participation
  • Focuses on the consequences of globalization and inequality, with a normative focus on the pursuit of justice broadly understood
  • Identifies scholarly consensus as well as disagreements
  • Each chapter concludes with advice to change-makers

The first international collaborative document of its kind, the report highlights the direct relevance of scholarly knowledge to social and political change, and is eventually to be published by Cambridge University Press.

In the meantime, it is open to wide public discussion. We invite comments from all concerned citizens – including, but not exclusively, NGOs, think tanks, and social entrepreneurs. Comments entered on the online platform before the end of 2016 will feed the final version of the report. Please comment, circulate and advertise widely!

ISA-RC22 Newsletter #14–September, 2016

The ISA’s Research Committee 22 (Sociology of Religion) has just issued its 14th newsletter.  It is available on the RC22 website at: http://isa-rc22.org/newsletters/  It contains a report from the recent ISA 3rd Forum of Sociology (in Vienna), news about the next ISA World Congress, a guide to how to publish in ISA journals (by one of the journal editors), a report on the state of sociology of religion in Latin America, and a discussion-starter about the current state of theory in the sociology of religion.

Click the picture to download a copy.

Issue 14

(For those who don’t know, RC22 hosts this news and events blog.)

Jim Spickard
RC22 President
University of Redlands
president@isa-rc22.org

RC-22 Reminder: Propose papers for next July’s 3rd Forum of Sociology in Vienna!

Dear Colleagues,

I’m writing to remind you to propose papers for next July’s 3rd Forum of Sociology in Vienna.  RC-22 will have at least 15 open sessions, which I’ve listed below.  Please go to  http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/rc/rc.php?n=RC22 for detailed descriptions and a link to the CONFEX online submission systems.  

The deadline is September 30th — just 6 weeks away.  All submissions have to go through CONFEX, so I suggest that you get yours in early.  The last minute rush for the Yokohama conference created a major traffic jam.  Don’t get caught in that!  Put your proposal in now!

Vienna is a great place.  I was there for a few days this July and enjoyed it tremendously.  Program coordinator Vineeta Sinha, her co-coordinator Olga Breskaya, and I have some special things planned around the conference theme: “Religion, Secularity and Post-Secularity: Crafting Meaningful Futures”​.  We’d love to have you there.

Here are the session topics, with their organizers:

  1. The Categories of Religion and the Secular in the Post-Secular Discourse (Mitsutoshi Horii)
  2. Negotiating Religion and Citizenship in Global Context (Olga Breskaya)
  3. Religion in the Public Sphere (Enzo Pace and Orivaldo Lopes)
  4. Welfare and Civil Society: The Role of Religion (Per Pettersson)
  5. The Politics of Religious Heritage: Memory, Identity and Place (Mar Griera)
  6. From New Age and Spiritualities to Different World Views: Individualized Religious Beliefs, Autonomy Values and Individualized Morality (Tilo Beckers and Pascal Siegers)
  7. Religion, Gender, and the Internet (Anna Halafoff and Emma Tomalin)
  8. Topics and Forms of Religious Mobilization in Europe (Sinisa Zrinscak)
  9. Religious Trends Among Second Generations in Europe​ (Roberta Ricucci)
  10. Religious Radicalization (Inger Furseth)
  11. Religious Engagement and Spiritual Empowerment in Asian Countries: Quest for Human Security and Self-Fulfilment (Yoshihide Sakurai)
  12. Studying the African Diaspora Significance for Struggles Toward a Better World(Jualynne Dodson)
  13. World Religions and Axial Civilizations (Steven Kalberg & Said Arjomand)
  14. Religion, Plus and Minus: Human Rights; Inter-Religious Understanding; Peace and Violence.  (NOTE: this will be three sessions, but the CONFEX computer system forces us to treat them as one session for now.  Please specify the session in which you wish your paper to appear.)
    • ​Religion and Human Rights (no organizer as yet)
    • How to Build Better Understanding among Religions (Miroljub Jevtik)​
    • Religion, Peace, and Violence (Mohammad Ashphaq)
  15. A session co-sponsored with RC54: The Body in the Social Sciences: Rhythms and Rituals (Bianca Maria Pirani)

Please pass the word to others who would like to join us.

Best,

Jim

——————————————————————

James V. Spickard, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
University of Redlands
Redlands, California 92373
jim_spickard@redlands.edu

— President of Research Committee 22 (Sociology of Religion) of the International Sociological Association

RC-22 Call for Papers: 3rd Forum of Sociology, Vienna 10-14 July, 2016

RC–22 Call for Papers: “Religion, Secularity and Post-Secularity: Crafting Meaningful Futures”

The Third ISA Forum of Sociology “The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World’’ to be held in Vienna, 10-14 July, 2016.

Programme Co-ordinator: Vineeta Sinha (University of Singapore: socvs@nus.edu.sg) Assisted by Olga Breskaya (European Humanities University, Luthuania: olga.breskaya@ehu.lt)

PROGRAM THEME: The world’s current socio-economic and political turmoil has a profound impact on religious expressions, sensibilities and worldviews. Religious expressions and worldviews also affect the surrounding socio-economic and political spheres. Such dramatic changes produce disquiet, tumult and agitation but also open opportunities to question the status and create novel social possibilities.
Sociologists of religion face a number of challenges in understanding these interactions. Among these is the need to develop new theoretical and empirical approaches to our subject. Sociologists have long argued about the continuing place and value of religions in a secularizing and globalizing world . Although the notion of ‘post-secularity’ is hardly new, it has recently emerged forcefully (and somewhat fashionably) in attempts to theorise the visibility and relevance of religiosity in the world today.

CALL FOR PAPERS:  We are seeking papers for the following sessions (listed with the organizer’s name(s)):

  1. The Categories of Religion and the Secular in the Post-Secular Discourse (Mitsutoshi Horii)
  2. Negotiating Religion and Citizenship in Global Context (Olga Breskaya)
  3. Religion in the Public Sphere (Enzo Pace and Orivaldo Lopes)
  4. Welfare and Civil Society: The Role of Religion (Per Pettersson)
  5. The Politics of Religious Heritage: Memory, Identity and Place (Mar Griera)
  6. From New Age and Spiritualities to Different World Views: Individualized Religious Beliefs, Autonomy Values and Individualized Morality (Tilo Beckers and Pascal Siegers)
  7. Religion, Gender, and the Internet (Anna Halafoff and Emma Tomalin)
  8. Topics and Forms of Religious Mobilization in Europe (Sinisa Zrinscak)
  9. Religious Trends Among Second Generations in Europe​ (Roberta Ricucci)
  10. Religious Radicalization (Inger Furseth)
  11. Religious Engagement and Spiritual Empowerment in Asian Countries: Quest for Human Security and Self-Fulfilment (Yoshihide Sakurai)
  12. Studying the African Diaspora Significance for Struggles Toward a Better World(Jualynne Dodson)
  13. World Religions and Axial Civilizations (Steven Kalberg & Said Arjomand)
  14. Religion, Plus and Minus: Human Rights; Inter-Religious Understanding; Peace and Violence.  (NOTE: this will be three sessions, but the CONFEX computer system forces us to treat them as one session for now.  Please specify the session in which you wish your paper to appear.)
    • ​Religion and Human Rights (no organizer as yet)
    • How to Build Better Understanding among Religions (Miroljub Jevtik)​
    • Religion, Peace, and Violence (Mohammad Ashphaq)
  15. Two sessions co-sponsored by with RC54: The Body in the Social Sciences (organized by Bianca Maria Pirani):
    • Rhythms and Ritual
    • Body and Synchrony in the Storytelling Era

HOW TO PROPOSE A PAPER: Starting 14 April, 2015, you can submit your proposals online at the International Sociological Association’s website.  Paper submissions close on 30 September.

  • A link will appear at http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/
  • Paper proposals must be in English, French, or Spanish.
  • Please also note that you must become an RC22 member to have your paper proposal accepted; you can join the Research Committee through the ISA website at http://www.isa-sociology.org/memb_i/index.htm
  • In order to be included in the programme, all participants (presenters, chairs, discussants, etc.) must join the ISA and register for the Forum by the early registration deadline of 1 April, 2016. Without early registration and membership, presenters, chairs, etc. will not appear in the Programme Book or in the Abstracts Book.

IN ADDITION we will have:

  • A Distinguished Lecture
  • A Presidential Session on the topic: “Where Do We Go from Here? an Agenda for the Sociology of Religion”
  • A Business Meeting / Reception / Party for RC-22 members and friends.
    (Who says sociologists can’t have fun?)