Dear RC02 Members,
The year 2023 was a World Congress year for the ISA, this time in Melbourne Australia. For the first time since the pandemic, we were able to meet in person, with most participants (about 3.000 of the 4.700 registered participants) in person. Sociologists from 106 countries and all world regions participated in the Congress. The on-line option opened participation to persons unable to come to Melbourne. Volunteers from across the sociological community in Australia were on site in every room to facilitate the hybrid format. The Australian Sociological Association hosts and ISA outgoing President Sari Hanafi created an outstanding program and series of presidential, plenary and spotlight sessions addressing major challenges in theory building and research in a global world. The spotlight session Whither the Arab-Israel Conflict? remains clearly in my mind, for how it brought together leading Israeli and Palestinian scholars in the region and from throughout the diaspora, but also for remembering the hopes this collection of real utopian scholars displayed for a one-state solution. This and other sessions can be viewed online by going to the conference app online, navigating to the session, and following the prompts for logging into the video repository (last name and ISA member number). See: https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2023/meetingapp.cgi
The World Congress presented an opportunity for the RC02 to establish a new institution, the Early Career Researchers Workshop, organized by Michelle Hsieh. A full report of this session will be included in the Spring/Summer 2024 RC02 newsletter.
The RC02 program included 33 sessions covering socio-economic theories, climate change, care work, international migration, digital platforms, finance, labor protest, precarious work, racial capitalisms, corporate concentration, value chains, tax policy, women’s entrepreneurship, debt, the political economy of violence and a session focused on postcolonial ethnographies of racial capitalism from the perspective of Africa. This brief survey highlights the pluralist and critical approach of RC02 in addressing the economy and society from global, regional, and transnational perspectives. This approach continues to enable us to disregard the boundaries set around societal domains, which are often observed in specialized sociological fields. Disregarding intra- and cross-disciplinary boundaries empowers us to ask the big questions necessary for generating knowledge that is relevant for tackling significant global challenges. Also reflected in the topics of our congress is the insistence on intersectional approaches that give equal weight to capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy as structures of domination relevant for understanding the constitution of political and social economies, and to identifying the transformative politics that can address the complex inequalities that perpetuate these structures of domination. One of the last sessions in the program, the keynote address by Sylvia Walby organized with Heidi Gottfried, both past ISA presidents, with Bill Carroll, also former RC02 president, and Margaret Abraham, former ISA president, exemplified the intellectual commitments and spirited debates that have come to characterize RC02 (see article in this newsletter).
The year 2023 was also an election year for RC02, with many past presidents returning to the board, and new members recruited to the ISA leadership, who are expanding our representation of world regions and generations of scholars. Aaron Pitluck stepped down from the presidency to run for the ISA Executive Board as candidate for the research committees. We congratulate Aaron on his election, thank him for his many innovative contributions to RC02, and for remaining a regular board member. We will depend on Aaron in his new role to advocate for the RCs in the ISA executive. As incoming President and being based in Germany in the European Union, I am delighted to have two excellent Vice-Presidents, Nadya Araujo Guimares, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil and Michelle Fei-yu Hsieh, Academia Sinica, Taiwan at my sides.
Ece Kocabıçak, Lecturer at the Open University UK agreed to take on the demanding task of Secretary and Newsletter Editor. Ece is a scholar of international development focusing on intersecting systems of gender, class, race-based oppression and exploitation in the Middle East and North Africa (Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco) and South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh).
In 2023 the ISA created a new position of Online Communication Manager, to oversee the weekly the Friday announcements and social media presence of RC02. We are delighted that we could recruit an early career scholar, Sandhya AS, a recent graduate of the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy and post-doc at the University Duisburg-Essen. Sandhya’s research is on migration markets and economic sociological theories with a focus on Nepal, India, Malaysia and Japan.
Both the newsletter and announcements were strongly developed by outgoing RC02 secretary Dustin Scholz, who has already supported the initiation of Ece and Sandhya to these roles, and who continues to contribute to the leadership of RC02 as reelected board members.
Past President Heidi Gottfried has taken over the task of treasurer as reelected board member. Already Heidi has achieved the transfer of our accounts to the ISA central office.
Newly elected to the board is Alice Kroyer, El Colegio de México, Mexico, Rebecca Pearse, Australian National University, Australia and June Wang, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Returning to the board are also past presidents Chris Chase-Dunn, University of California-Riverside, USA and William K. Carroll, University of Victoria, Canada.
I wish to thank outgoing board members Cory Blad, Manhattan College, USA, Georgina Murray, Griffith University, Australia, Alejandra Salas/Porras, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, and Christian Suter, Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland for their many years of service and for leaving the new board with a strong research committee to carry forth into the future.
Elections also took place at the executive level of the ISA. For the research committees the most important post is Vice President Research, and we are delighted to have Allison Loconto, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France as Vice President Research. She will be leading us through the creation of a program for the upcoming ISA Forum in Rabat, Morocco scheduled for July 7- 11, 2025.
Since taking office immediately following the World Congress this year, RC02 has sponsored several events. In December 2023 we co-sponsored the East Asian Regional Conference in Alternative Geography on the theme of “The Global East as Borderlands” at the City University of Hong Kong organized by RC02 Executive Board Member June Wang. In 2023 the RC-02 co-sponsored the launch of a Special Issue of the Women’s Studies International Forum on the Future of Gender Regions (see article in this newsletter). Upcoming in 2004, we are sponsoring a conference on the International Political Economy of Labor Migration, co-organized by myself, Heidi Gottfried and Sandhya AS at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Generous funding from the World Society Foundation allows the conference to include many scholars from low- and medium-income countries who could not otherwise afford to attend an international event.
In closing allow me to encourage all members to publicize their upcoming events, open positions, call for papers, publications, and other academic news over our weekly announcements by simply sending these to Sandya AS at sandhya.as@uni-due.de with the subject “RC02 contributions”.
Soon, the RC02 board will become the program committee for the upcoming Forum in 2025, and we welcome all members to already consider ideas for panels and to plan to contribute their scholarship for a next meeting in-presence in Rabat, Morocco. Details will follow via the ISA Executive in the early part of 2024.
For the new year I wish for those of us who are living in situations of extreme economic and physical insecurity the courage to find peaceful solutions to the injustices caused by capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the nationalisms that uphold these, and for those of us in richer regions or positions, to invest the resources at our disposal for creating a more equal and just global society, and to speak out loudly and act visibly against the injustices that divide us.
