[Bilimsel Haber] International Institute of Sociology World Congress Budapest 2008

[Gonul Pultar]

*The 38th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology *
*Budapest, Hungary *
*JUNE 26-30, 2008 *
*www.iisoc.org/iis2008* <http://www.iisoc.org/iis2008>* *
NEW: Call for abstracts >>

To all members of the IIS and all interested scholars

The 38th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology will 
take place, as announced, at Central European University in Budapest, 
Thursday evening, June 26 - Monday noon, June 30, 2008.

The theme of the Congress is:

“Sociology Looks at the Twenty-first Century: ‘From Local Universalism 
to Global Contextualism’“

The four previous World Congresses of the IIS have highlighted dilemmas 
of human existence and societal institutions in the contemporary world. 
They have examined problems of social existence amidst processes of 
globalization, cooperation and violent conflict. They have been 
conducted in the spirit which guided the formation of the IIS, namely 
that of an engagement and encounter between a variety of theoretical 
positions among members of a truly international community of scholars.

The 38th World Congress will reaffirm that spirit. It will address some 
of the most fundamental issues of sociological inquiry in the light of 
global processes and the development of a range of other fields of 
knowledge: What does it mean to be human? What is the nature of social 
as opposed to natural processes? How do different efforts to map the 
social and political world interact with that world and with traditional 
sociological practices? What can we now say about relationships between 
scientific, political and religious beliefs? These are just some of the 
questions that will be raised at a congress that has the ambition to set 
the stage for a sustained look at what sociology may or may not have to 
say about the twenty-first century.

The structure of the Congress is straightforward. Each morning there 
will be two plenary sessions. Each afternoon will be devoted to sessions 
proposed and organized by participants themselves. Enclosed is a call 
for proposals for regular sessions to be submitted no later than October 
9. The sessions selected will be announced by mid-October. Participants 
who want to present a paper in any of these sessions can then propose 
such a paper from mid-October 2007 until mid-January 2008.

The Congress is hosted by Central European University (CEU). It is 
jointly sponsored by CEU and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study 
(SCAS) and organized by Yehuda Elkana, President and Rector of CEU, and 
Björn Wittrock, Principal of SCAS and President of the IIS, together 
with Prem Kumar Rajaran (CEU), Shalini Randeria (Zürich and Berlin), Don 
Kalb (CEU), and Ivan Szelenyi (Yale University and CEU). Katalin Lassu 
(lassuk at ceu.hu), Senior Administrative Officer of CEU, is Executive 
Assistant for the Congress and responsible for its administration.

Among the speakers in the plenary sessions are

Arjun Appadurai, Rajeev Barghava, Robert Bellah, Eliezer Ben-Rafael,Neil 
Brenner, Rogers Brubaker, Ayse Caglar, Craig Calhoun, Thomas Carothers, 
Tony Cowling, S.N. Eisenstadt, Raghavendra Gadagkar, Peter Gärdenfors, 
John Hall, Peter Hedström, Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Hans Joas, Sudipta 
Kaviraj ,Ivan Krastev, Steven Lukes,Walter D. Mignolo, Helga Nowotny, 
Sheldon Pollock, Shalini Randeria, Alan Ryan, Gesine Schwan, Seteney 
Shami , Göran Therborn, Hent de Vries, Ivan Szelenyi, Piotr Sztompka, 
Pal Tamas, Yogendra Yadar

All scholars are kindly invited to submit proposals for sessions at the 
Congress. Please send proposals no later than October 9 to 
iis2008 at iisoc.org. Proposals should contain an abstract describing the 
theme of the session. It should not list contributors. Papers for 
presentation will be selected by session conveners no later than January 
31. If at all possible, we intend to accommodate excellent proposals for 
sessions submitted also after the deadline of October 9, but there can 
be no guarantee of available space.

The programme of the Congress and all other information concerning the 
event will be continuously updated on this homepage.

We greatly look forward to seeing you at a Congress that promises to set 
landmarks for the further development of sociology and the social 
sciences at large.

You are warmly welcome to Budapest in 2008,

Yehuda Elkana and Björn Wittrock