Latest news with #InternationalSociologicalAssociation
Morocco World
05-07-2025
- Politics
- Morocco World
ISA Queer Network in Rabat Sparks Backlash Over Cultural and Religious Values
Rabat — The International Sociological Association (ISA) has announced the creation of a new internal network, the Queer ISA Network (QISA), designed to support queer members within the association. The launch was announced during the ISA's Fifth Sociology Forum, which will take place from July 6 to 11 at Mohammed V University in Rabat. The initiative, initially publicized in a now-deleted post on ISA's official Facebook page, has sparked widespread criticism among Moroccans, many of whom argued that the move is at odds with the country's conservative and Islamic cultural values. The association said the QISA network 'is a new initiative aimed at connecting members with diverse sexual orientations within the International Sociological Association (ISA) across research committees, generations, and In its announcement, ISA described the network as 'a shared space for collaboration, mutual support, and academic inclusivity.' Participants at the forum were invited to attend the inaugural meeting of the network on Monday. ISA did not disclose the meeting's exact location in the public announcement, noting instead that details would be shared directly with those interested. The launch of QISA comes shortly after another high-profile ISA decision: the suspension of the Israeli Sociological Association's membership in response to its genocidal assault on Gaza. In a statement issued ahead of the Rabat forum, ISA condemned 'Israel's genocide in Gaza' and called for an end to the country's 'military occupation and all colonial practices in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria.' ISA also emphasized that it maintains no institutional ties with Israeli public bodies and reaffirmed its opposition to the ongoing violence in Gaza. The inclusion of Israeli representatives at previous ISA events had already provoked criticism in Morocco, with a group of Moroccan sociologists boycotting the Rabat forum in protest. In a joint statement, several Moroccan sociologists also denounced the participation of Israelis at the event, arguing that Morocco's role as host should reflect the nation's values and support for the Palestinian cause. The International Sociological Association (ISA) was founded in 1949 under the auspices of UNESCO. It is a member of the International Science Council and has NGO consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) .
Ya Biladi
30-06-2025
- Politics
- Ya Biladi
Moroccan sociologists push for unprecedented ban on Israeli delegation at world forum
Estimated read time: 3' Amid controversy over the announced participation of Israeli academics in the Fifth World Forum of Sociology, scheduled to take place from July 6 to 11 at Mohammed V University in Rabat, the International Sociological Association (ISA) has decided to suspend the membership of the Israeli Sociological Association, effectively excluding its representatives from the event. The forum is being organized in partnership with the Moroccan Sociological Association. The decision was confirmed by Driss Essanhaji, a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez and a board member of the Moroccan Sociological Association. «Two days ago, we discussed within the board of the Moroccan Sociological Association, host of the forum, a statement that was meant to express our rejection of the participation of Israeli academics», he said in a Facebook post on Sunday evening. «But the discussion was not concluded due to the lack of a clear position from the International Association. That led us to continue the dialogue and negotiations with its officials, resulting in an unprecedented decision to suspend the Israeli Sociological Association's membership», he added. Essanhaji noted that an official statement from the International Sociological Association is expected in the coming hours or days. In a prior official statement, the Moroccan Sociological Association emphasized that hosting the forum was conditional on upholding its values and principles, especially those concerning Morocco's core national causes, foremost among them the Palestinian question. «From the beginning of the preparations», the statement said, «the association, through its structures and its members, has made it clear that hosting the forum must be contingent upon respecting Moroccan values and the positions tied to them». The association also strongly condemned «Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and all aspects of their existence», describing it as «systematic genocide» aimed at denying Palestinians their right to an independent state, sovereignty, and dignity. It urged the international community to «assume its responsibility in halting these crimes and in securing the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people, in the interest of regional and global peace». It also stressed that respect for academic ethics, as set out in the statutes of the International Sociological Association, requires compliance with relevant international covenants, particularly regarding the Palestinian cause when organizing or programming conferences. The Moroccan Sociological Association further clarified that its engagement with the International Association, dating back to its bid to host the forum, «can in no way be interpreted as tacit approval of any narrative that undermines Palestinian rights». The association concluded by asserting that ongoing Israeli actions in Palestine «make it impossible to welcome any representative of this occupying entity, even in scientific or academic settings», citing Morocco's official stance, the sentiments of its people, and the deep historical and cultural bonds linking Morocco to the Arab and Islamic world. The Fifth World Forum of Sociology, held under the theme «Knowledge of Justice in the Anthropocene», is expected to draw over 4,500 researchers from nearly 100 countries to explore key global challenges. The opening ceremony is set to take place at the Mohammed V National Theatre, with academic sessions to be held at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and the Faculty of Economic, Legal, and Social Sciences in Al Irfane, Rabat. The closing ceremony will take place at the Mohammedia School of Engineering.
AllAfrica
17-02-2025
- Science
- AllAfrica
When political laboratory- like experiments produce disasters
John B. Calhoun's laboratory experiments, conducted at the National Institute of Mental Health and summarized in 1962 in the Scientific American , are a textbook example of how to induce disastrous behavior in a given population. Calhoun isolated rats in a closed place, protecting them from disease and predators, and fed them. The rats bred rapidly, but Calhoun did not increase the rats' living space. The rats became violent, committed cannibalism and infanticide. The males became either hypersexual, pansexual or homosexual. Fertility declined and the rat population tended toward extinction. When Calhoun introduced the few surviving rats into the 'wild,' they remained asexual, isolated – 'socially autistic' – and soon died out. The experiments were influential, but their lessons were applied only for cases of crowding, be it in chicken farms or, for humans, in prisons, and shedding light on urban violence, and impact on population growth and the environment. I did not find any follow-up research noting that the 'rat tribe' disappeared because it was being taken care of for generations, without having had to make the slightest efforts, just adjusting to the confined space as DNA dictated. All the commentaries and implications attributed rats' decline into oblivion to their inability to expand their living spaces – but none either to the fact that they got used to manna from scientific heavens (a case of an eternal-counting-on-Godot 'rat welfare state') or to the lethal combination of such a state with confinement. Does this experiment shed light on political laboratory-type experiments with people? The facts suggest that to be the case, in different societies, at different times – though people are very good at coming up with new jargons and rationalizations to shed light on the changed human behavior. After all, the ability to invent words, new vocabularies, languages is a main distinguishing features of humans. In a 2008 research work titled 'Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon as a Space of Exception,', Sari Hanafi, former president of the International Sociological Association, examined in minute detail how the combination of 'care' and restrictions on moving out turned the refugee camps into 'a space of radicalism and a space that contributes to perpetuating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict rather than resolving it.' He looked into why the violence erupted in the Lebanese camps, and concluded that for 60 years, 'the space of the refugee camps in Lebanon was treated as an experimental laboratory for control and surveillance.' He blamed the countries hosting these camps, UNRWA and Islamist groups for the dire circumstances in which they found themselves. The concluding section was titled 'Camps as Laboratories.' Indeed, the UN mandated the UNRWA camps-welfare-experiment in 1948 to last just two years and assist to resettle few hundred thousand people. The camps still exist, more than 70 years later, assisting millions of descendants, all having 'refugee status' and, rather than having been resettled, living in increasingly crowded camps permeated by violence and glorifying 'martyrdom' – a rationalized infanticide, subsidized in this case by a 'pay for kill' scheme for the surviving family. It appears that when humans are subjected to drastic 'laboratory experiments' confining them to 'care' and restricted places for generations, they display symptoms of mental illness not dissimilar to those of Calhoun's rats. Only humans rationalize with academic jargon. The solution President Trump has now floated of dispersing people and expecting them to have normal lives has precedents. Whereas Europe after WWII had 70 million refugees roaming the continent in 1945, they were all absorbed within a few years. Among them were some 12 million ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern and Central Europe where they lived for centuries, most settled between 1945-48 in what became West Germany. With then-German Finance Minister Ludwig Erhard radically lowering taxes, deregulating and carrying out a currency reform in 1948, these migrants 'disappeared' within the de-radicalized German miracle rather than being a burden – with the Marshall Plan playing only a minuscule role. Societies around the world made an observation: Whereas offering care for people finding themselves in unfortunate circumstances is a must (and not just because people may have a morals but because they know that desperate people can be dangerouss), offering too much care, with no obligations, leads to a dissolute lifestyle even when crowding is not an issue. Ancient sayings, confirmed now by evidence, such as 'Three generations from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves' have been common around the world. In Japan, the saying has been 'Rice paddies to rice paddies in three generations.' The Scottish said, 'The Father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells and his son begs.' And in China: 'Wealth never survives three generations.' A recent 20-year Williams Group study covering 3,200 families confirmed the sayings, finding that seven out of 10 families tend to lose their fortunes by the second generation and nine out 10 by the 3rd generation. The second generation's over-indulgence is the culprit – as Polybius observed already in his Histories about the Ancient World, when shedding light on how not just families, but normal, prosperous societies spiral into violence and wars and die out. Kingdoms become corrupt because the kings' offspring grow up in power and affluence and spend extravagantly. Democracy is not immune to such declines, unless disciplined by a maze of institutions based on moral and religious foundations drawing on the Ten Commandments. Otherwise, the new generation inherits the hard-working, disciplined ancestors' riches without effort and overlooks what brought about privileged lives. This generation weakens the disciplining institutions and creates instead not fully thought-through new ones, generations of heavily subsidized youth in academic 'laboratories' among them and, as Europe's main political debates reveal, granting generations of immigrants instant rights to welfare. In France, where this debate now dominates, the January 2025 Statista found the following: Among non-immigrants, the unemployment rate (as measured by people looking for jobs) has been in the 6.5% range since 2015; among immigrants, it has varied between 11 and 18 percent; among descendants of immigrants it has varied between 10 and 14 percent. In a decent approximation of a laboratory experiment, Dutch researchers found that when the Dutch government in 1993 reformed the Dutch Disability Insurance (DI), which tightened significantly DI eligibility for existing and future claimants, it induced recipients to work and learn As recipients in welfare experiment received less care, some abandoned the 'confined places' they lived in, and started normal lives. As to the US and Europe: Eric Hoffer observed in the 1970s that the hippie generation, increasingly being taken care of by the state, started to behave like 'the spoiled children of the rich,' living an easy life. Now, 50 years later, that's made even easier with student debts forgiven (even though the Supreme Court declared such forgiveness to be illegal). Hoffer attributed this to an 'ordeal of affluence,' which threatened social stability, transferring wealth without requiring discipline, 'creating a climate of disintegrating values with its fallout of anarchy,' as he put it. Perhaps not 'anarchy', but spiraling into weakness when perceived from an even broader perspective has been the 'care' the US has given to Europe, as David Goldman and Uwe Parpart note in a recent piece: The Europeans' 'sense of entitlement derives from their status as clients of the Washington foreign and security policy establishment, which paid billions of dollars a year through USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and prominent private foundations to keep complaisant Europeans on the payroll.' Europe's younger generation took their freedoms and well-being for granted: 'No one will fight and die for 'Europe.' The amorphous supranational bureaucracy sitting in Brussels has dispsersed the various European tribes' tax money with questionable accountability. Whereas in the US the threats Hoffer alluded appear to having been contained, and the pendulum toward common sense is swinging back, elsewhere the political experiments of being 'taking care' of at various levels continue, potentially turning into a lethal combination. The article draws on Brenner's books, History – the Human Gamble and Force of Finance , and series of articles in American Affairs and Law & Liberty.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Yahoo
Sociology Professor's Death Shocks UC Berkeley Campus
A renowned professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, was killed in a hit-and-run accident in Oakland, police confirmed Wednesday. Michael Burawoy, 77, died while crossing a street near Oakland's Lake Merritt shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, police said. The driver of the SUV that struck him fled the scene and has yet to be found. Tributes to Burawoy poured in Wednesday, with colleagues and friends recalling him fondly as a groundbreaking sociologist and tireless advocate for his students. Raka Ray, the dean of social sciences at Berkeley, said in a statement to HuffPost that she was 'reeling' from the news about Burawoy, who mentored her when she arrived at the university as an assistant professor. She called his death an 'unimaginable loss.' 'Michael dedicated 47 years of his life to Berkeley, contributing immeasurably to the discipline, transforming the fields of labor, ethnography and theory. He was past president of the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association,' she said. 'His greatest legacy, though, went far beyond the many books and articles he published or prestigious awards he received ― it was in the people whose lives he changed. He was an extraordinary teacher, who mentored and inspired thousands of students, changing their lives with his fierce intellect and kindness.' The European Sociological Association memorialized Burawoy as 'the father of Public Sociology and a sociologist of immense integrity, passion, kindness, and intellectual rigor.' The American Sociological Association, which he once led, said its membership 'mourns the sudden loss.' The International Sociological Association, another group he once led, called his loss 'immeasurable.' 'His boundless energy, commitment to justice, and unwavering belief in sociology's power to transform the world will continue to inspire us,' the organization wrote in a social media post. 'His leadership and passion shaped ISA and left a lasting impact on the global sociological community.' As a prominent sociologist, Burawoy wrote or co-authored a dozen books, including 'Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism' in 1979. He studied industrial workplaces in Zambia, Russia, Hungary and Chicago early in his career before pivoting to observe the academic workplace. He was a vocal advocate of Palestinian freedom and said he'd observed a 'growing erosion of academic freedom in Israel,' where 'universities are weaponized by the state.' Berkeley made him a professor emeritus upon his retirement in 2023 and established an endowment In his name. Traffic deaths, like that of Burawoy, are not uncommon in the area. Last year, the city of Oakland agreed to pay out $3 million in settlements to the families of three people killed in traffic accidents. Among the fatalities was 41-year-old Dmitry Putilov, who was biking with his two young children when a driver that had run a red light slammed into him, killing him, and then fled. Putilov's family filed a lawsuit against the city claiming that dangerous road conditions ― including a lack of speed bumps, poor lighting and other preventable hazards ― contributed to his death. The family is set to receive $2.4 million from the city. In neighboring San Francisco, at least 24 pedestrians were killed last year, up from 18 in 2023, the advocacy group Walk SF reported. 'This is the highest number of pedestrian deaths in a decade in San Francisco, surpassing 2014,' the group said. 'There have now been 24 traffic-related pedestrian deaths in San Francisco in 2024, approximately 70% of total traffic-related fatalities are pedestrians. Citywide, an average of 30 people are killed and more than 500 severely injured each year on San Francisco streets.' Among the San Francisco deaths last year were a 3-month-old and 2-year-old killed alongside their parents in March. 22-Year-Old With Chronic Asthma Died After Inhaler Price Went From $66 to $539: Lawsuit Around 10 Dead In Shooting At Adult Education Center In Sweden I Was Devastated When The Love Of My Life Died. Then I Started Seeing Signs I Couldn't Explain.
