5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Participants will explore the role of sociology in post-uprising (the Arab Spring) transformations in the Arab World. Cultural Political Economy (CPE) will be a starting point, with a view to focus on how sociologies (re)create social, political, and economic imaginaries and thus formulate a particular conception of society. As hypotheses we posit the importance of two factors: how much sociology is autonomous as field and the how robust the role played in each Arab Society. This approach was tested in the forthcoming edited book Sociologies in Post-Socialist Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe (Borut Rončević and Tamara Besednjak Valič; Springer 2024). In case studies the participants will deal with the impact of sociology on different levels, focusing on its emergent level, thereby understanding sociology as a science, profession, and specific expertise, or individual level, implying the impact of individual sociologists/anthropologists through their different roles as academics, educators, public intellectuals, experts, politicians, or civil society activists.