Third ISA Forum of Sociology (July 10-14, 2016)

398

The Futures We Want, the Pasts Left behind

RC34 Sociology of Youth (host committee)

Language: English

ISA RC34 is currently being dramatically, and sadly, reminded that a first, long generational chapter in its history is coming to a close. The Research Committee was formed at a time when there was still an “Iron Curtain” in Europe, the atrocities of the “killing fields” in Cambodia had only recently ended, the global “Cold War” had still not reached its zenith (or nadir, depending on which way you look at it), and Spain was (just) still under the dictatorship of General Franco. 
Until recently, all but the first of our Presidents was still with us and many were still active, in one role or another, in our mission and our work. But the past two years have been a time of bereavement, with the passing of three former Presidents and a former editor of our International Bulletin of Youth Research. 
All of those departed had contributed, at the start, to the opening up of European borders and the promotion of scholarship in the youth field between East and West. Contacts were then extended to Australia and Asia (China in particular), to the north Americas, and then to Africa and Latin America. By the Millennium, the membership of RC34 spanned all continents, over 50 countries and myriad youth research issues.  
The lifetime of RC34 has witnessed the demise of communism, apartheid, dictatorship in Latin America… but it has seen the rise of neoliberalism, inequality, and the increasing social exclusion of significant populations of young people. 
The Presidential session will pay formal tribute to some of our late members who played a significant part in shaping the pasts that we have now left behind (or have we?), but it also invites contributions from current members about how those legacies (and the ideas and writing of those who contributed to them) may play their part in imagining the futures that live onwards in the principles, philosophy and values of RC34 – developing a public sociology and a scholarly world of mutual understanding and support. Posters: