The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology | Date: 28 April 2011, 08:13
|
The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology (SAGE Studies in International Sociology)
By Ann B. Denis, Professor Devorah Kalekin-Fishman
* Publisher: Sage Publications Ltd
* Number Of Pages: 504
* Publication Date: 2009-07-01
* ISBN-10 / ASIN: 141293463X
* ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781412934633
Product Description:
This International Sociological Association Handbook presents and tracks the transformation of the societies and social relations that characterize the twenty-first century. The volume is organized around a conceptualization of three processes that are fundamental to the analyses of micro, meso and macro social relations: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation. Case studies discuss and contextualize debates within an international overview of relevant literature incorporating material about North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
Preface
Michel Wieviorka,
President,
International Sociological Association
In our era, which is apparently dominated on
the one hand, by violence, communally based
divisions of all kinds, and war, and, on the
other, by phenomena of exclusion and social
vulnerability, and the intensification of individualism
connected with economic globalization;
how refreshing it is to encounter
discussions of competition, or at least of conflict
– that is, of conflictual relations and not
of impasses – and of cooperation!
In the period from the end of World War II
to the mid-1970s, there were two great conflicts
which constituted a double principle
structuring the world, at least for a number of
societies, especially in the West. The Cold
War, in which the threat of nuclear attack
played a major role as a deterrent, regulated
the opposition between two blocs, except for
an exceptional moment of crisis which was
quickly resolved (the affair of the Cuban missiles).
This made it possible for the planet to
avoid violence between the two superpowers.
Ultimately, they never made war
directly and never went too far locally,
because a local war always carried the risk of
expanding into a confrontation at the
summit, which neither the West nor the East
wanted.
And in the industrialized countries, at any
rate in the West, social relations took the form
of a central oppositional conflict, in the factory
and in the workshop, between the workers’
movement and the masters of their work
(the employers). This conflict structured collective
life well beyond the places where it
was initiated. Politics, notably the left/right
cleavage, was informed by this, as were many
other social or cultural movements, including
those of students, grass roots associations,
peasants, consumers, families, movements
for children’s education, and so on.
But we are no longer concerned with those
conflicts. The Cold War is behind us, and by
and large, the workers’ struggles have lost
their centrality, their ability to make the proletariat
the main actor in collective life, the
one who is called upon to lead.
The post-War years were also those of decolonization,
and today we often have the feeling
of living in societies where the debates and the
problems owe a good deal to the impact of the
end of the colonial era. This is true both in the
formerly colonized as well as in the formerly
colonizing societies which, in fact, now often
receive fairly large-scale migrations from their
former colonies. In some ways, we may say
that we are orphans of two great conflicts
which were the Cold War and the struggles of
the workers’ movements. Moreover, from the
logic of the shattering of colonialism, we see
the growth of new highly charged conflicts
based on cultural and historical factors as well
as on collective memories. These conflicts are
sometimes described as ‘post-colonial’.
These new conflicts are certainly not the
only ones, and they do not preclude diverse
forms of cooperation. In my view, they are
the opposite of a crisis, and are best thought
of as opposed to, rather than as complementary
to the idea of violence. To my mind, there
is conflict when actors oppose one another for
control of the same stakes, when they
acknowledge that they are in a relationship,
that they are adversaries; at the same time this
does not entail their being transformed into
enemies who make war against each other,
and, in extreme cases, destroy one another.
Conflict is a relation, while crisis is a breakdown
or a dysfunction of a system of action.
Violence is the indicator of an extreme crisis –
complete disintegration, the absence of any
relation.
The book edited by Ann Denis and
Devorah Kalekin-Fishman invites us therefore
to give the attention they deserve to the
concepts of conflict, cooperation, and competition.
Even if most of the authors do not
take the same approach as I do to these questions,
examining them is, in my opinion,
decisive: it is important, in effect, to give
voice to those who are studying the world as
it is, without reducing it to worst dramas of
violence, mass crime, fundamentalisms of all
sorts, nor to the effects of globalization
alone. In conflict, cooperation, and competition,
there are actors, social relations, and
intercultural relations, all at various levels,
and not only victims, criminals, armies,
remote economic forces, or communities
which have withdrawn into themselves. By
examining the available paradigms and
approaches, by reflecting on the possible
articulations of these concepts, in attempting
to apply them in diverse fields of social science,
including in the framework of monographs
dedicated to case studies, the authors
recruited by Ann Denis and Devorah
Kalekin-Fishman perform the service of
returning a set of concepts, approaches, or
paradigms to their legitimate place.
Furthermore, they provide us as well with an
original instrument, a Handbook, which is all
the more useful because it was conceived and
carried out from a comparative (or transversal)
perspective.
I would also like to add a more institutional
statement to this preface. This
Handbook is the first published by the ISA in
this millennium, and it is clear that this publication
will be followed by further editorial
initiatives. There are certainly a number of
edited works in sociology which deal with
major themes in the discipline. Their quality
depends, in large part, on their contributors,
but also on the way in which the authors were
solicited, on the preparatory work by the editors,
on the guidelines given to the authors,
and on all the work invested in editing the
contributions. Here, the volume was preceded
by an important conference, which
attests to the vitality of the Research
Committees (RCs) of the International
Association of Sociology (ISA). The ISA has
more than 50 of them, not to mention the
Thematic Groups and the Working Groups
which pave the way for tomorrow’s Research
Committees. Each RC has its own intellectual
life, its agenda, its own, often highly
impressive, dynamism. For instance, I am
writing these lines after having participated
in a conference of RC 04, ‘Sociology of
Education’, which took place in Brazil (Joao
Pessoa, February 19–22, 2008) with almost
1500 participants who came from all over the
world. The RCs are a resource of the ISA,
perhaps even its principal resource; they
make our association a unique locus of intellectual
life, and not merely an incorporated
organization. The ISA not only encourages
its RCs to be as active as possible, to be open
to researchers from every part of the globe, to
function in the three official languages, to
give opportunities for presentations by
‘junior sociologists’ alongside those of recognized
researchers; it also creates the conditions
which allow for their meetings and for
discovering their complementarity. This
Handbook is the fruit of in-depth dynamics,
and the conference which preceded it was
|
DISCLAIMER:
This site does not store The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology on its server. We only index and link to The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
|
 |
|
Comments (0)
All
