RC02 ECONOMY AND SOCIETY IV ISA FORUM OF SOCIOLOGY, February 23-28, 2021

February 23-28, 2021 online in Porto Alegre, Brazil

The Fourth ISA Forum of Sociology will have over 800 sessions, more than 3,000 papers, and colleagues participating from roughly 125 countries. Sessions are organized by 53 Research Committees, 4 Working Groups, and 3 Thematic Groups. Below are sessions that the Economy and Society Research Committee (RC02) and its Board members have organized, jointly-organized, or sponsored.

With the exception of our RC02 Plenary (which is listed first below), the below schedule is chronological. Our kick-off session begins on Tuesday, February 23 at 10:45 am BST.

All times are listed in BST (Porto Alegre, Brazilian time zone), UTC/GMT -3 hours.

If you are interested in attending as a non-presenter, View-Only Registration can be purchased to attend all events at the conference for US $50 ($25 for students) on the ISA website.

We look forward to seeing you at the conference!

Aaron Pitluck, RC02 President, ISA Forum Program Coordinator

Nadya Araujo Guimaraes, RC02 Board Member, ISA Forum Program Coordinator

RC02 Plenary: Cultural Analyses of the Economy

Session Organizers:

Nadya GUIMARAES, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Friday, February 26, 2021. 2:15 PM - 3:45 PM BST

Prior to the postponement of the ISA Forum, RC02 had organised a full-day pre-conference titled Cultural Analyses of the Economy. Due to the pandemic, we were forced to cancel the pre-conference. Fortunately, our two plenary speakers have kindly agreed to share a plenary session in the ISA Forum. 30 minutes is reserved at the end for discussion of Steiner’s and Wherry’s research agendas, as well as the broad topic of cultural analyses of the economy.

Philippe STEINER, Sorbonne Université, France

Culture and the Economy: From Horkheimer to Bourdieu and Beyond

The critical theory of Adorno and Horkheimer, but also of Benjamin, faced the question of the relationship between economy and culture to point out a “cultural industries” that downgrade culture, as opposed to high culture and the unique oeuvre that requires effort, that preserves aura. Later on, Bourdieu accommodated the relationship between culture and economy according to the nature of the capital involved, and relegating the relationship of the "economic" economy to mass culture, while Zelizer proposes to multiply the "trade circuits" channeling economic and cultural transactions. Beyond this reminder of the canonical forms with which social sciences take into account the relationship between culture and economy, my presentation seeks to enrich our understanding of popular culture in its close association with the economy. Accordingly, I rely on the Polanyian tripartition of the economy (market, reciprocity and redistribution) in order to avoid believing that the economy is reduced to the market alone. On the other hand, I use an ongoing inquiry of popular street festivals in the south of France to show the complexity of the mutual relations between these economies and popular culture.

Frederick WHERRY, Princeton University, USA

The Weight of Debt, the Dignity of Debtors

Household debt is heavy, not only in its quantity but also in its relational qualities. These relational weights along with ensuing relational damages impugn the dignity of debtors, generating costs that are material but that also lie beyond materiality. In this talk, I will draw on collaborative work with Parijat Chakrabarti, Isabel Jijon, and Katie Donnelly as well as work with Robin Lee, Dalié Jiménez, Lois Lupica, and Jeff Reichman to demonstrate the range of damages wrought by debt collection practices and the distribution of damaging debt collection actions on racialized communities. I will then turn to the lack of infrastructure for justice and describe how my new Debt Collection Lab is beginning to build data and artistic infrastructures to track, analyze, and depict the weight of debt collection.

Latin American Structuralism, CEPAL, and Economic Sociology in Historical and Contemporary Perspective

Nadya GUIMARAES, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

This invited session is an early excavation to begin to better understand the influence of Dependency Theory and Latin American Structuralism on contemporary Economic Sociology. Specifically, this invited session explores the influence of ECLA/CEPAL (the Economic Commission for Latin America / La Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL). Torres from CEPAL begins the conversation by looking backward and looking forward. He proposes three broad historical structural methods that CEPAL has contributed to Latin American (if not world) sociology and contemplates how neo-structuralism can understand the hyperglobalization of the 21st century. Kluger, Wanderley and Barbosa continues the conversation by investigating how CEPAL was forced to create comparative national frameworks for analysis in its short-lived partnership with the Brazilian National Bank for Economic Development. We conclude with Almeida reflecting on the intellectual contributions of CEPAL, based in part on her own experiences with CEPAL as a young researcher.

Authors Meet Critics: Samuel Cohn and Rae Blumberg (eds.): Gender and Development: The Economic Basis of Women's Power

Paddy DOLAN, Technological University Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Ignazia BARTHOLINI, University of Palermo, Italy

Dilek CINDOGLU, Izmir Institute of Technology, Turkey

Manisha DESAI, University of Connecticut, USA

Gertrude FRASER, University of Virginia, USA

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

The session subjects the edited collection "Gender and Development: The Economic Basis of Women's Power" by award-winning scholars Samuel Cohn and Rae Lesser Blumberg to a historical sociological scrutiny by inviting selected critics to discuss how the volume thinks critically about the economic power (or lack thereof) of women, and how it applies key concepts and theory related to gender and current development issues.

ISA Opening Plenary Session: Global Challenges during and after the Pandemic: Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality

Session Organizers:

Geoffrey PLEYERS, FNRS/UC Louvain & Coll.Etudes Mondiales, Belgium

Rita SEGATO, University of Brasilia, Brazil

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

12:30 PM - 3:45 PM BST

Towards an Economic Sociology of the Environment

Session Organizers:

Ian CARRILLO, University of California Santa Barbara, USA

Silvio Eduardo CANDIDO, Federal University of São Carlos - UFSCar, Brazil

Tuesday, February 23, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

Despite increased scholarly attention to local and planetary environmental crises, economic sociologists have focused little attention on the relations between society, economy and nature. While economic sociologists often concur with Karl Polanyi's foundational insight that the economy is embedded in society, they tend to neglect his related claim that the separation of society from nature is a key aspect of market fundamentalism. Polanyi's assertion that there exists a dialectical relation between the material aspects of nature and its social representation presents promising research avenues for economic sociologists. Researchers can interrogate not only how nature is a contested terrain that shapes the institutional foundations of markets, but also how to build more sustainable markets that balance the interests of society and nature. In addressing the social and environmental embeddedness of markets, economic sociologists can utilize a rich set of frameworks including, but not limited to, path dependence, institutional inter-locks, network analysis, actor-networks and cultural-political approaches, varieties of capitalism, and financialization. In seeking to develop an Economic Sociology of the Environment, and thus cross-fertilizing two vibrant areas of the discipline, we welcome theoretical and empirical papers that use a wide range of conceptual and methodological approaches.

Varieties of Care Work Under Persistent Gender Inequalities: Exploring National Differences

Session Organizer:

Heidi GOTTFRIED, Wayne State University, USA

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM BST

Care work, a form of unpaid and paid labor performed primarily by women, is a major site of job growth across both the developing and developed world. The study of care has moved to the center of contemporary debates about the stakes of social, political, and economic transformations taking place in the world today. New research on care work reveals the centrality of the phenomenon and the international diversity of its forms. This session explores convergences and diversities observed between countries in the global North and South, to highlight the dynamic processes that influence the social organization of care and new forms of care work. Delineating different types of care and its institutional and geographic location matters in explaining the current complexities of care.

Migration, Mobility and Labour Markets

Session Organizer:

Nadya GUIMARAES, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

This session brings together three papers that describe migration and mobility in labour markets through space and position. The first and second paper examine the subjective experiences of workers. Zani’s research examines the social and emotional lives that Chinese migrants in Taiwan create together online. Campos Bicudo examines the subjective experiences of employers, immigrant prospective employees, and hired immigrants in a socially embedded labour institution in São Paulo that promotes Decent Work, called Missão Paz. The third paper, by Silva and Martins, examines the social forces pushing youth into peripheral Brazilian universities and the labor market, but rather than focusing on these students’ subjective experiences, it uses multiple correspondence analysis (ACM) to infer the social resources and economic, symbolic, moral, and political dilemmas that shape their mobility trajectories.

Entrepreneurship and Its Challenges to Sociology: Accounting for Failure, Achieving Success

Session Organizers:

Jessica SANTANA, Stanford University, USA

Lúcia MÜLLER, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul - PUCRS, Brazil

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

2:15 PM – 3:45 PM BST

Studies of entrepreneurs inform us of their challenges in launching, achieving success and even their revival from failure. Comparisons among Latin American countries find that entrepreneurs work the market, playing one lender off against another to obtain optimal loans with few encumbrances. Research in poorer communities (favelas) in Brazil indicates that while entrepreneurs receive support from government and NGOs such as foreign and religious organizations and political parties, alliances also occur with informal investors and non-law groups such as gangs. Yet at the end of the day if entrepreneurs are not successful, if they tumble do they resurrect? Does entrepreneurial spirit endure? A recent study finds that it does. Via the internet a researcher learned how entrepreneurs accounted for their failure and what they did to restore their initiative. Information technology, by sourcing the internet, offers new methods to study entrepreneurship and to what extent it contributes to the wealth and welfare of nations.

Corporate Power, Fossil Capital, Climate Crisis

Session Organizer:

William CARROLL, University of Victoria, Canada

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

This session explores the intersections between (a) networks, structures and practices of capitalist class power (and resistance to it), as centred in large corporations; (b) the political economy of fossil capital as a way of life that has reached global scale; and (c) the accelerating climate crisis, whose urgency seems to be matched by its intractability at least within the strictures of capitalism itself. Papers should address all three of these concerns, but can focus on any of a range of power modalities, including the following: corporate networks and elites, corporate ownership and control, the financing of fossil capital, corporate social responsibility discourses, think tanks and corporate advocacy, business activism and lobbying, soft denialism and green capitalism, carbon energy commodity chains, flashpoints of resistance.

The Life and Work of Erik Olin Wright

This session will be livestreamed on the ISA Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/

Session Organizer:

Michael BURAWOY, University of California, Berkeley

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

5:45 PM - 8:00 PM BST

Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Impact on Corporate Governance: Achievements and Limits

Session Organizer:

Arnaud SALES, University of Montreal, Canada

Chair: Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Thursday, February 25, 2021

9:00 AM - 10:30 AM BST

Corporate Social Responsibility is a dynamic movement spearheading a transformation project challenging traditional and outmoded forms of corporate governance that frequently pose troublesome ethical issues. Since the mid-1990s, this movement has developed into a strong and rich institutional domain through at least 4 main sources: academic research; civil society movements; non-governmental standardization organizations and business corporations assisted by a large constellation of accreditation, auditing and control consulting firms. Many people and organizations are now involved in a vast loosely integrated network of human and corporate actors that elaborate, promote defend and implement the different versions of the CSR regulatory model in a framework of power relations. This session explores empirical and theoretical work in this area.

Class Analysis: In Honor of Erik Olin Wright

Session Organizer:

Gay SEIDMAN, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Thursday, February 25, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

Papers will discuss empirical work on workers, labor struggles, and community alliances around the world, drawing on Erik Olin Wright's class-analytic tradition, and using their research to interrogate and expand some of his core concepts.

Elite Perceptions of Inequality Compared I: Policy, Institutions and the State

Session Organizers:

Alice KROZER, Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Katharina HECHT, London School of Economics, United Kingdom

Thursday, February 25, 2021

2:15 PM - 3:45 PM BST

These two sessions aim to bring together researchers of ‘elite’ perceptions of economic inequality. We are particularly interested in exploring and comparing the context-specific, spatially and historically embedded elements of wealthy environments, and how these are considered in elites’ accounts of their own privileges. For instance, while elites in Brazil or Mexico utilise historic events particular to their national context, like colonialism, to explain and possibly legitimise their privileges, their peers in the UK rely predominantly on market-based explanations.

Previous work on elite perceptions has highlighted the importance of meritocratic ideas and of considering views towards inequalities of gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity. We aim to understand how these different dimensions of inequality influence elite perceptions, moving beyond a one-dimensional idea of privilege to understand how a ‘web of privileges’ is experienced. To that end, it is important to relate current perceptions to the history of place in which ‘elites’ find themselves in. Moreover, with few notable exceptions (e.g. Reis and Moore 2005), the growing body of literature on elite perceptions towards inequality has not yet focused on international or inter- place comparisons. However, to implement successful poverty and inequality reduction policies, it is crucial to understand contextually embedded elite perceptions. Therefore, we aim to scrutinize the role of context through a comparative lens to understand local particularities. Not all contributions will be comparative, but we are particularly inviting scholars keen to relate their own work on ‘elite’ perceptions of inequality to those of other scholars in different parts of the world.

Elite Perceptions of Inequality Compared II: Identity, Practices and the Legitimation of Wealth

Session Organizers:

Alice KROZER, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Katharina HECHT, London School of Economics, United Kingdom

Thursday, February 25, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

These two sessions aim to bring together researchers of ‘elite’ perceptions of economic inequality. We are particularly interested in exploring and comparing the context-specific, spatially and historically embedded elements of wealthy environments, and how these are considered in elites’ accounts of their own privileges. For instance, while elites in Brazil or Mexico utilise historic events particular to their national context, like colonialism, to explain and possibly legitimise their privileges, their peers in the UK rely predominantly on market-based explanations.

Previous work on elite perceptions has highlighted the importance of meritocratic ideas and of considering views towards inequalities of gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity. We aim to understand how these different dimensions of inequality influence elite perceptions, moving beyond a one-dimensional idea of privilege to understand how a ‘web of privileges’ is experienced. To that end, it is important to relate current perceptions to the history of place in which ‘elites’ find themselves in. Moreover, with few notable exceptions (e.g. Reis and Moore 2005), the growing body of literature on elite perceptions towards inequality has not yet focused on international or inter-place comparisons. However, to implement successful poverty and inequality reduction policies, it is crucial to understand contextually embedded elite perceptions. Therefore, we aim to scrutinize the role of context through a comparative lens to understand local particularities. Not all contributions will be comparative, but we are particularly inviting scholars keen to relate their own work on ‘elite’ perceptions of inequality to those of other scholars in different parts of the world.

Democracy, Inequalities, Intersectionality: A Tribute to Marielle Franco

Session Organizers:

Lucia Rabello De Castro

Geoffrey Pleyers

Thursday, February 25, 2021

5:45 PM - 8:00 PM BST

This session will be livestreamed on the ISA Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/

Marielle Franco was a 38-year old Brazilian sociologist, a single mother, a defender of human rights and a local councillor of the city of Rio de Janeiro. She was murdered on March 14th 2018. Ever since, she has become a global symbol of a struggle against racist, colonial, hetero-patriarchal domination and police violence and for social justice, human rights and democracy.

Her life as a black woman from the favelas shows that intersectionality is not only a theoretical concept. It is a daily life experience for millions of women living in slums all over the world, suffering from racism, patriarchal and economic discriminations. As a single-mother, black, homosexual and politically active woman that lived in a favela, she also shows how paths of personal and collective emancipation find their roots in daily life experience, communities, feminist conviction as well as in social policy and in the right to higher education. Her life also exemplifies the importance of opening careers of sociology beyond the middle and higher class. Sociology played indeed a major role in this path towards emancipation, as she attended classes in her favela and then graduated at the university. She kept acting as a sociologist, a social activist and a political actor until the end, as she was in charge of a report on military violence in Rio’s favelas, which is the most probable reason of her assassination. 

Presentations:

Lia de Mattos Rocha, Universidade Estadal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Monica Francisco, Universidade Estadal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

The Politics of the Population Census: Key Indicators for Sustainable Development?

Session organizers:

Walter BARTL, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Germany

Christian SUTER, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Thursday, February 25, 2021

5:45 PM - 8:00 PM BST

Trends and Counter-trends in the Fight for a More Egalitarian Society in Latin America

Session organizers:

Alejandra SALAS-PORRAS, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, FCPyS, Mexico

Guillermo FARFAN, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico

Pedro MENDES LOUREIRO, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Aiko IKEMURA AMARAL, King's College London, United Kingdom

Friday, February 26, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

Poverty and inequality declined substantially in Latin America between 2000 and 2015, particularly under certain left-wing governments. Although neoliberal strategies were not completely abandoned, social and economic policies were introduced to reconstruct welfare and developmental institutions. Foreign relations were diversified away from the United States and organizations were created to advance cooperation among South American countries, leading to broadly acknowledged democratic achievements. Recently, however, Latin American transnational elites have organized a counter-movement, often with certain popular support. Strategies were implemented to undercut the legitimacy of left-wing regimes, including an ideological attack on the so-called populist and charismatic political elites. As a result, they have been brought down by right-wing forces entrenched not only in political parties, but also in organizations encompassing key sectors of the population and civil society. Poverty and inequality trends have thus stagnated or reversed, retrenching racialised, gendered, and class-inflected patterns of privilege and exclusion.

The present session aims at understanding the origins and scope of the democratic accomplishments progressive forces in South America achieved, the limitations and failures they could not overcome, and the reaction they elicited from right-wing forces, both inside and outside the countries. We particularly invite contributions that explore the fall and the recent rise in Latin America’s social and economic inequalities, in which race, class, and gender emerge as mutually-enforcing, structuring factors. While we encourage the use of intersectionality as an analytical tool, we are open to other approaches to these problems.

Tribute to Immanuel Wallerstein

This session will be livestreamed on the ISA Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/InternationalSociologicalAssociation/live/

Christopher CHASE-DUNN, University of California-Riverside, USA

Esther CECEÑA, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico, Mexico

Carlos Eduardo MARTINS, Rio de Janeiro Federal University, Brazil

Friday, February 26, 2021

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM BST

RC02 Plenary: Philippe Steiner and Frederick Wherry on Cultural Analyses of the Economy

Session organizers:

Nadya GUIMARAES, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Friday, February 26, 2021

2:15 PM - 3:45 PM BST

Global Inequality: Emerging Dynamics in a Deglobalizing World

Session Organizers:

Christopher CHASE-DUNN, University of California-Riverside, USA

Yoshimichi SATO, Tohoku University, Japan

Hiroko INOUE, University of California, Riverside, USA

Friday, February 26, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

The session discusses new forms and dynamics that are exacerbating global inequalities. The session is interested in examining the issues of global inequality under deglobalizing trends from historical, comparatives and structural approaches. Papers may provide theoretical, empirical, historical, or methodological discussions centered around the theme.

Global Management Practices in Emergent Economies. Part I

Session Organizers:

Habibul KHONDKER, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

Arnaud SALES, University of Montreal, Canada

Friday, February 26, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

In this session, we want to explore the type of management approaches that are practiced in selected emerging countries. Papers presented in this session will explore how companies, subsidiaries, and enterprises become profitable and grow in emerging countries by incorporating globalized norms and standards of management with the local ways of doing business. These processes of adaption are considered as glocalization or hybridization. We want to demonstrate how hybrid and innovative forms of private companies' management can be shaped by the mobility of people, capital, goods and knowledge. We also want to demonstrate that local business practices (traditions, social networks, so called "poor" governance, and "insufficient" managerial skills) are not obstacles to development but may create economic opportunities. Understanding of this new approach to management can be achieved through the following strategies:

• Collaborative empirical research across cultures by applying similar research approaches;

• By examining the background, the education and the career of business leaders and managers of industrial and commercial enterprises of selected countries;

• By collecting ethnographic data and producing business related and organization-based case studies from which it will be possible to develop a theoretical framework on how business is conducted, and organizations are managed in emergent economies.

This will allow advancing a cutting-edge, empirically grounded theoretical framework on business and management practices in emergent countries. We will accept papers that present research on the above described topics.

Solidarity Economy Projects in Diverse Social Contexts

Session Organizers:

Melanie E BUSH, Adelphi University, United States

Withney SABINO, Associação Sócio Cultural Horizonte Azul, Mozambique

David EMBRICK, University of Connecticut, USA

Saturday, February 27, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

In this Invited Session presenters examine solidarity economy projects in diverse social contexts and through different lenses. Our papers explore the impact of involvement in these initiatives for youth development; the perspectives of young Mozambican feminists about what types of structures of solidarity are most aligned with deep resistance and transformative practices; the shaping of collective and personal narratives and the articulation of the kind(s) of society(ies) that members envision in the long run.

Presenters originate in Mozambique, Angola, Mexico and the United States, residing in Canada and Portugal, Mozambique and the United States. We bring intergenerational (ages 23-63) feminist, scholar-activist, critical race and decolonial perspectives about contemporary initiatives and the possibilities they represent. We are interdisciplinary with academic roots in sociology, political science, critical youth studies, anthropology, business, and community economic development. All presenters are involved in scholarly as well as community projects.

Through discussion of multiple settings, we collectively consider the question of how we “be the change” in relationships and structures and pursue an understanding of what principles and practices most firmly embed solidarity and the common good in contemporary efforts aimed at radical social transformation. This session engages participants and attendees in thinking about Challenges of the 21st Century: Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality through a discussion of ideas and energies in action.

Global Management Practices in Emergent Economies. Part II

Session Organizers:

Habibul KHONDKER, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zayed University, United Arab Emirates

Arnaud SALES, University of Montreal, Canada

Saturday, February 27, 2021

10:45 AM – 12:15 PM BST

In this session, we want to explore the type of management approaches that are practiced in selected emerging countries. Papers presented in this session will explore how companies, subsidiaries, and enterprises become profitable and grow in emerging countries by incorporating globalized norms and standards of management with the local ways of doing business. These processes of adaption are considered as glocalization or hybridization. We want to demonstrate how hybrid and innovative forms of private companies' management can be shaped by the mobility of people, capital, goods and knowledge. We also want to demonstrate that local business practices (traditions, social networks, so called "poor" governance, and "insufficient" managerial skills) are not obstacles to development but may create economic opportunities. Understanding of this new approach to management can be achieved through the following strategies:

• Collaborative empirical research across cultures by applying similar research approaches;

• By examining the background, the education and the career of business leaders and managers of industrial and commercial enterprises of selected countries;

• By collecting ethnographic data and producing business related and organization-based case studies from which it will be possible to develop a theoretical framework on how business is conducted, and organizations are managed in emergent economies.

This will allow advancing a cutting-edge, empirically grounded theoretical framework on business and management practices in emergent countries. We will accept papers that present research on the above described topics.

Economic Protectionist Impulses and Divergent Politics in Late Neoliberalism

Session Organizer:

Cory BLAD, Manhattan College, USA

Saturday, February 27, 2021

2:15 PM - 3:45 PM BST

The expansive growth of far-right nationalist politics, a resurgent interest in socialist and communist political mobilization, scrambling efforts to revitalize centrist politics, and apathetic or quiescent withdrawal are defining features of political environments in the contemporary era. This panel looks to shed light on the various ways (left, right, centrist, other) in which national populations have sought political mitigation (or given up on such mitigation) of economic hardships and adversities and how efforts to maintain neoliberal conditions have contributed to, and perhaps relied on, this political fragmentation and withdrawal.

Cultural Analyses of the Economy

Session Organizers:

Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Nadya GUIMARAES, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Saturday, February 27, 2021

4:00 PM - 5:30 PM BST

This session draws on cultural analyses to examine diverse socio-economic phenomena. The first two papers focus on Brazil. Guimaraes & Lima argue that employers and job candidates are matched by a job intermediation system with distinctive actors, devices and regulations. They document how this job intermediation chain has changed over time since the 1960s. Duarte & Candido use Boltanski & Chiapello’s framework to theorize the dominant business model in Brazil by researching content created by Brazilian digital influencers on LinkedIn. The third paper investigates the twin cities located on the borderland between Germany and Poland. Rogowski & Frąckowiak’s paper explores how border closures caused by government responses to COVID-19 have impacted economic practices, identities and the borderscape.

ISA Closing Plenary Session. Challenges of the 21st Century: Democracy, Environment, Inequalities, Intersectionality

Session Organizers:

Sari HANAFI, American University of Beirut, Lebanon

Geoffrey PLEYERS, FNRS/UC Louvain & Coll. Etudes Mondiales, Belgium

Saturday, February 27, 2021

5:45 PM - 7:45 PM BST

Care Policies and Gender Equality

Session Organizers:

Bila SORJ, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Karina BATTHYANY, FCS UDELAR, Uruguay

Sunday, February 28, 2021

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM BST

Care has become a focus of increased public concern, political debate and academic research. The aging process and the increasing women labor market participation are bringing about new demands affecting traditional care models. A wide array of care policies are being implemented worldwide. Shifting the provision of care to the market, ensuring the provision of care by the state, through public policies, implementing flexible work, expanding maternity, paternity and parental leave and informal care work are some of the policies we seek to discuss. This session aims at bringing together papers from different parts of the world, South and North, that analyze institutions, organizations and policies, their material and symbolic impact, on reducing or exacerbating class, gender, race/ethnicity and nationality based inequalities.

RC02 Business Meeting

Chair:

Aaron PITLUCK, Illinois State University, USA

Sunday, February 28, 2021

2:15 PM - 3:45 PM BST

The RC02 business meeting will be held via a Zoom session hosted outside the conference website.

All RC02 members are welcome to attend (regardless of whether they are attending the conference) and all ISA Forum participants are welcome to attend (regardless of whether they are currently RC02 members).

The zoom link will be sent to members via email and will be posted on the conference website in the session description.