XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

336

Political Sociology: Modes of Violence, Power and Injustices through the Eyes of Non-State Actors

RC18 Political Sociology (host committee)

Language: English

The field Political Sociology has traditionally been observed through behaviouralist eyes being then revisited through structuralist perspectives on what constitutes the relationship between the society and state. Moving beyond the structuralist outlook, the post-colonial era and studies developed over the past decades until the present date conveyed that subaltern voices, voices from below, and institutional as well as un-institutionalised groups are in constant construction of waves and moves of resistances. These modes of resistances can be well understood as discourses countering the already persisting power constellations by state apparatuses, through which violence mechanisms and discourses are either reinvented or developed. Such counter-narratives are received with either cooperative or negating sentiments, discourses and approaches through state policies. In light of this general theme, this session focuses on two specific questions: in which forms can violence and injustice reshape, fragment or generally affect a respective societal structure? Through the different societal and political experiences and contexts, are violence, power and injustices in their conceptual settings being re-interpreted giving spaces for redefining them or are these notions still associated to their ´orthodox´modes of understanding them in the respective social settings? These questions, without exclusion, tease out debates on the following sub-themes: reinterpreting political sociology as a tool and cognitive mechanism, narratives on experiences of violence and injustices, the gender question in face of injustices and violence, and spaces of confrontations and reconcilliations between social actors and states.