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

Initiatives that promote climate change adaptation and mitigation, as well as sustainable development, are usually coordinated through the ruling relations of science-based and academic systems of knowledge. There has been an increased emphasis on developing assessment systems that use of generalised indicators of ‘success’ to draw comparisons and rate the performance of these projects across the globe.

Institutional ethnography is well positioned to explore the organising power of texts (i.e.: environmental regulations, international agreements, Sustainable Development Goals) and the language embedded in them, and how they coordinate practices and discourses in local contexts.

This session welcomes presentations exploring, through Institutional Ethnopraphy, how the activation of such programmes and projects are experienced by people (and their environments). Some of the topics this session welcomes are (but are not limited to):

• environmental activism and political engagement
• community-based environmental governance
• co-management arrengements for conservation
• social and environmental conflicts
• social and environmental impact assessment of development projects (mining, fisheries, coastal management, forestry, land planning, hydroelectricty, etc.)