Global: World Forum of Sociology - call for papers

RC32 WOMEN IN SOCIETY

First ISA World Forum of Sociology Barcelcona, Spain September 5-8, 2008

Conference Theme: Weaving Spheres of Knowledge and Action:

Sociological Research and Women in Society

CALL FOR PAPERS

One of the RC32 mission objectives is "to promote the development of theory, methods, and practice concerning women in society and the gendered nature of social institutions." The chosen theme for The First ISA World Forum, "Sociological Research and Public Debate" offers us a valuable opportunity to accomplish our mission objective by engaging in the production of transformative knowledge in sociological research and theoretical inquiry and by bringing scholarship to the public arena for dialogues, exchanges, debates, and practices.

More specifically, the RC32 program for the First ISA World Forum is dedicated to examine the intricately interwoven relationships between theory and methodology, between research and action, and between structure and agency, on issues relating to women/gender and society.
Various sessions have been organized to explore the ways in which scholarship and praxis are intersected, reflecting women's multiple realities and lived experiences; challenging inequality and injustice due to differences, exclusion, and discrimination; and transforming the society in which we live. The intersectionality of gender, race/ethnicity, class, age/generation, nationality, sexual orientation, and dis/ability is emphasized in these sessions.

RC32 has organized five independent sessions and collaborated with research committees (RC 04, RC 05, RC 10, RC 14, RC 23, RC 30, RC 38) in co-organizing five joint sessions. If you are interested in attending this ISA World Forum and in participating in these sessions, please submit your paper abstract (approximately five hundred words) by email to the organizer or the co-organizers of the respective sessions with a cc of your submission to the conference co-ordinators: Esther Ngan-ling Chow: [email protected] and Margaret Abraham: [email protected] .

The deadline for submitting your paper abstract is: December 1, 2007.

Limited travel grant awards from the ISA will be available. Individuals who are interested in these awards should apply directly to the ISATravel Grants Committee. The deadline for travel award application is: January 31, 2008. For more information contact Isabela Barlinska at ISA office: [email protected]

RC32 INDEPENDENT SESSIONS

Session 1.
Title: Talking the Talk, Walking the Walk: Feminist Research and Practice and Women and Society.
Co-Organizers: Margaret Abraham (USA): [email protected] Kalpana Kannabiran (India): [email protected] This session will focus on the role of Feminist sociological research in the production and consumption of knowledge and its transformative potential in challenging patriarchy and shaping social structures within which women are located. It will critically explore the ways in which scholarship and practice combine to address women's multiple social realities and inequities of power based on the intersections of race, class, gender and citizenship. Papers will address the ways in which feminist sociological research and practice have engaged with key issues such as health, education, violence, poverty, women's empowerment and agency in mainstream and marginalized communities. It will also address how feminist research has engaged publics beyond the academe, contested power structures, influenced communities, impacted on public policies, changed pedagogical approaches and shaped the world in which we live.

Has feminist sociological research talked the talk and walked the walk?
What are its pitfalls and possibilities in a globalizing world?

Session 2.
Title: Can the Academy be Feminist? Obstacles to and Strategies for Doing Sociology for Women.
Co-Organizers: Joey Sprague (USA): [email protected] Lin Tan (China): [email protected] Do the norms and practices in the academy constitute disincentives to creating knowledge that is activist-oriented? What are the experiences of people trying to be activist sociologists? What is the difference between the kinds of sociology that get rewarded and the kinds that serve social change? What changes in the way sociology is organized as a discipline and/or universities are organized as institutions would make it easier to produce knowledge useful for women's activism? How would we change graduate training if we wanted to create strong activist sociologists? Are there cross-national comparisons that can help us learn how to organize academies as places that foster good scholarship that serves the interests of women?

Session 3 Title: Researching Women in Africa and the African Diaspora: New Social Science Perspectives.
Co-Organizers: Josephine Beoku-Betts (USA): [email protected] Akosua Adomako Ampofo (Ghana): [email protected] Over the past two decades, feminist and gender studies scholarship on the status and roles of women in African and the African Diaspora has grown exponentially in theoretical and empirical contexts. While some of the broader issues in feminist and gender studies scholarship have been subjects of research in the Global North, such as family, work, social and political movements, transnational migration, health, sexuality, information technology, human rights and popular culture, these issues have been largely ignored or at least marginalized until recently. This panel will explore new theoretical and empirical discourses in feminist /gender studies and social science scholarship on African and African diasporic women and will work within the paradigms of feminism, intersectionality, and transnationalism.

Session 4 Title: Middle Eastern Women's Movements and Activism in the Globalized World: Research and Action.
Co-Organizers: Suaad Zayed Al-Oraimi (UAE): [email protected] )
Nazanin Shahrokni (Iran): ([email protected] )

The focus of this comparative session will be on women's movements and activism in the Middle East and the ways in which these are shaped by a myriad of local and global factors. The session aims at exploring recent local and global challenges encountered by women when they participate in social movements in the Middle East. We are interested in the interplay between state policies, women's activism, and everyday life and strategies of women in tackling these challenges.

Moreover the scholarship on women in the Middle East predominantly makes use of binaries such as tradition/modernity, fundamentalism/imperialism, religious/secular etc. The session especially welcomes papers that engage critically with these binaries and investigate their implications for women's movements and activism in the Middle East.

This session seeks to serve as a forum for sharing experiences, recognizing the common issues, and theorizing new strategies for dealing with these issues. Some of the topics of the papers may deal with but are not necessarily limited to: Women's movement, definition, challenges and strategies; Women at the intersection of Feminism, Islam, and the State; The interaction between State and women's movements; Feminism inside Academia and on the field; Public/Private reciprocity.

Session 5 Title: Women and Transnational Migration in Theory and Practice.
Co-organizers: Oluyemi Fayomi (Nigeria): [email protected] Lotsmart Fonjong (Cameroon): [email protected] Migration across national borders is increasingly being seen as a strategy to alleviate poverty, reduce vulnerability to crises, and support recovery once a disaster like famine, flood, drought, accident, business failure occurs. Conditions in which women are exposed to especially in developing countries are quite volatile. For example, the feminization of migration is a serious gender issue in Africa given that women suffer more. As women and as migrants, they have little access to land, which is the principal source of livelihood for most African poor.
And since traditional land tenure systems, colonial, and early post-colonial laws that regulate land rights neglected women; they thus tend to work on land without any secured rights. Consequently, they will not carry out any sound investments that can ensure sustainability on land they do not own. This situation has implications on their productivity and natural resource management. The session seeks papers on: Women and transnational migration; Women and resource sustainability; Women and dimensions of urbanization; Migrant women, land rights and land tenure system; Poverty and struggle for survival; Crises, resource conflict and resolution.

RC 32 JOINT SESSIONS Joint session 1: RC 05 and RC 32 Title: Women: Intersectionality and Diasporas Co-Organizers: Ann Denis (Canada): [email protected] and to be arranged.

Focusing on women living in a Diaspora, this session invites contributions which use intersectional analysis to examine the women's experiences. Without limiting the range of social positions which are incorporated into the intersectional analysis, gender, ethnicity and the fact of being part of a Diaspora will necessarily be included.
Comparative analyses are welcome. Papers may concentrate on theoretical or empirical analysis, or a combination of the two.

This joint session is dedicated to the late Helen Ralston, who was a long-time and active member of both RC05 and RC32. Its theme is informed by interests that she addressed in her own research in Canada on first and second generation immigrant women from India.

Joint Session 2: RC10 and RC32 Title: The Challenges of Women's Participation/Exclusion in Public and Private Contexts.
Co-Organizers: Esther Ngan-ling Chow (USA): [email protected] Michal Palgi (Israel): [email protected] This session examines the causes, the barriers, the challenges and the facilitating factors in women's participation and exclusion in public and private contexts at different life stages and in various societies.
An emphasis is given to how intersectionality of gender, age, race/ethnicity, and class (or other differences) matters in shaping or hindering various forms and outcomes of women's participation. Their activism and resistance against social exclusion in the public and private domains ranging from the family, organizational structure, and global governance will be explored.

Joint Session 3: RC 14, RC30, and RC32 Title: Transformation in Communication and Work: The Cultural Construction and Reconstruction of Gender.
Co-Organizers: Christiana Constantopoulou (Greece): [email protected] Diane Gabrielle Tremblay (Canada):
[email protected] Margaret Abraham (USA): [email protected] New communication technologies have led to several transformations in work (and "leisure") with implications on existing notions of the public and private space and changing notions of gender. Work at "home", until recently associated with women, often precludes "normal labor rules"
such as security, standard hours of paid work, syndicalism and conviviality at the work place. These issues related to work at home are becoming of increasing concern to more and more people, particularly women and youth.

The ongoing transformations in communication and work are reflected in the roles of institutions and the ideas disseminated by the press. For instance, in the absence and inefficacy of social services, the mass media has become an important vehicle whereby issues of poverty, employment opportunities and "special" appeals for help are addressed.
Today, TV acts as a "social mediator", both locally and globally in culturally constructing and reconstructing the way we communicate, our attitudes to work (both at home and the workplace), and in shaping our notions of gender.

Joint Session 4: RC32 and RC38 Title: Understanding Women: Lessons from the perspectives of Women and Society and Biography and Society.
Co-organizers: Marilyn Porter (Canada): [email protected] Kathy Davis (Netherlands): [email protected] In this session we will invite researchers from RC32 and RC38 to discuss the methodologies they use to understand women's experience; to reflect on how their methodology represents the perspectives of their RC; to explore the weaknesses and strengths of their methodology and to suggest ways of combining the specific methods of the 2 RCs to produce a stronger understanding of the experience of women.

Joint Session 5: RC04, RC 23, and RC32 Title: Gender, Science, Technology & Innovation, and the Future Co-Organizers: Markus Schulz (USA): [email protected] Solange Simoes (USA): [email protected]