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

The main aim of the session is to reconstruct and compare different forms of institutionalization of sociology, analyzing experiences drawn from cultural and academic contexts of different Countries. We can imagine sociologists embedded in two different types of "field": 1. a more academic/scientific one, set, in particular, by the sociologists' relations with researchers from "nearby" disciplines (economics, political science, social psychology, communication, etc.), and by the forms of collaboration/competition with these disciplines; 2. another field determined by the exchanges and mutual development with extra-academic actors, that is social and political stakeholders.How do sociologists in search of institutionalization act and react in these two "fields"? Answering this question also means taking into account that the two fields outlined above are conceptually distinguishable, but concretely merged in the social and cultural milieus in which sociology develops. The panel includes empirical and theoretical contributions to these kinds of questions, focused on institutions (Departments, units, schools, research centers, etc.) as objects of reflection and/or analysis. This means that we are not primary interested in institutions as sets of arrangements that affect individual strategies, rather as “nodes” of academic and/or extra-academic networks.