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

How can social science rethink the prospects for human health today, when millions of people across world regions struggle for survival amidst intersecting crises? How can it with the intense turbulences of what some call the Anthropocene? Is humans’ health going to be increasingly fragile and vulnerable to risks of climate change, war, and physical and mental diseases? How will the distribution of risks to health within and between societies evolve in the future? While mitigating wars and other crises requires ever increasing funds, can basic public health initiatives be sustainable in the future, including but not limited to, HIV and Tuberculosis programs, and WHO initiatives to bridge the Mental Health Gap? Will healthcare workforce collapse under the enormous strain increasingly placed on them, or will there be solutions that may allow strengthening healthcare systems and ensuring the continuity of healthcare? Is there reason to hope for big technological, therapeutic, and socio-political breakthroughs thereby humanity may respond to all these challenges in a meaningful way? Will the development of Artificial Intelligence offer exciting possible solutions, or become the worst risk of them all within Anthropocene? One or more session(s) are planned to welcome papers that address these and related questions from different angles and using various methods: conceptually and empirically, using qualitative data that prioritizes local knowledge or drawing on large (longitudinal) datasets, referring to national or international case studies. Papers that bridge to other fields like data science, psychiatry, public health, bioethics, are highly encouraged.