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

In recent years, the world has seen the concurrence of violent conflicts, the consequences of climate change, and the variations of a novel virus, aggravating existent economic, political and ecological crises. While this has exposed the vulnerabilities of global governance, it has also demonstrated how civil societies have instead responded with resilience and solidarity, challenging dominant and conventional approaches, echoing the quest for new utopias.

Along with the discontent over modernity that has been riddled with destructive mechanisms, we are invited to reimagine the place of love in establishing new forms of conviviality, highlighting the potential for utopian models banking on emotions that promote other emancipatory forces rather than hegemonic (MARTINS, 2022). In this way, post-Enlightenment, post-patriarchalist, and post-colonial social love also requires the review of humanity’s relationship with nature towards ecological reasoning that goes beyond anthropocentric narratives.

We thus call for submissions for a paper presentation session that reflect on the continuing impact and consequent problematization of how humanity relates to Nature as well as how contemporary social experiences, especially in response to global crises, demonstrate, even necessitate acts and processes of solidarity, revealing the importance of the understanding and practice of unconditional love in times of great suffering to provide more meaning in our lives as individuals and as a society.

On the subject of utopian love, see Martins, P. H. (2022). In Cataldi, S., & Iorio, G. (Eds.). (2022). Social Love and the Critical Potential of People: When the Social Reality Challenges the Sociological Imagination. Taylor & Francis.