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

Global society is mired in a civilizational crisis that is both geopolitical-economic and ecological. As the structures of neoliberal globalization collapse while other alignments emerge, as the conditions for extractive accumulation on the treadmill of production are eroded, as climate crisis wreaks havoc on living systems that form the bases for human existence, great dangers present themselves, along with unprecedented openings. In a deep, organic crisis of this sort, as Gramsci noted, ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.’ Among the symptoms is what Naomi Klein termed ‘disaster capitalism’: the enabling of accumulation by dispossession as a response to disasters caused by climate breakdown. In this session, papers will explore the prospects for ‘disaster socialism’, which, if it is to emerge, will do so not on the basis of abundance but within a situation of ecological overshoot, requiring massive ecological restoration. Themes to be explored include: the social forces, political projects and organizational forms through which post-capitalist, ecologically sustainable economic democracy could develop/is developing, the political-economic and cultural-ideological forces arrayed against such initiatives and the socio-political forms within which initiatives to heal earth and humanity can take root.