XVIII ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 13-19, 2014)

July 13 - 19, 2014

144

Sociology and the Knowledge Society

RC07 Futures Research (host committee)

Language: English, French and Spanish

Societies are experiencing substantive changes: a number of breakthroughs in social, economic, political and cultural dimensions (globalization and the scientific and technological advances, represented by digitalization, biotechnology, nanotechnology and neuroscience) are challenging present ways of being social. The nature of those shifts has profound implications for societies, not only in social, economic and political terms, but also, in terms of altering the conceptions on “the way we are born, we live, we learn, we work, we consume, we dream, we fight or we die.” (Castells, 1997, p.33). The revolutionary character of the changes will become stronger, as the digitalization of manufacturing (completely new processes such as 3D printing) is already a reality. Economies are going from mass manufacturing towards much more individualized and flexible production, what will empower micro, small and medium-sized firms and individual entrepreneurs. In the same way, Neurosciences are transforming the ways we "know ourselves" as human beings. Yet, despite the importance of the changes, they are under-described and under-theorized in today’s Sociology. Therefore, several questions remain to be raised by future research, motivated by the challenges of the new paradigm, that is, among many others, “how the phenomena mentioned above affect”: the way to organize schools, teaching and communication; the relationship between production of knowledge, the quality of the workplaces; the configuration of the political arena? Who are likely to be the beneficiaries and who are likely to be hurt by the changes? What are the implications of the knowledge discovered by Neurosciences in the organization of societies? Is there a trend of a new engagement between the social and brain sciences?