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

It has been nearly half a century since the establishment of the Sociology of Agriculture and Food (SAF) as an Ad Hoc Group in 1978 at the 9th World Congress of Sociology of the ISA. Since then, bolstered by the proliferation of critical approaches within the broader social sciences and humanities, scholars of the SAF have made substantial contributions to the analysis of agrifood systems through the formulation of various frameworks, concepts, and methodologies.

The roundtable aims to revisit the classical themes of the SAF with a future-oriented perspective, addressing the pressing contemporary multifaceted crises of the capitalist-industrial agrifood system, manifested in, but not limited to, climate change, food insecurity, working conditions, biodiversity loss, erosion of ethnic-cultural diversity, the concentration and centralization of agrifood capital, the use of food as an instrument in armed conflicts and wars, and intensification through agritech and bio-industrial approaches.

We aim to bring insights from current and past RC40 members to identify the 21st-century challenges and research directions for the SAF and critical agrifood studies. We plan this event in two stages. Firstly, current and past RC40 Board Members will be asked to provide a reflection paper (maximum 500 words) on the historical and future trajectories of the SAF. Based on these reflection papers, three sets of questions will be prepared. During the session, participants will be asked to reflect upon these questions. The organizers will identify the final composition of the roundtable participants, ensuring regional and thematic diversity.