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

180

Social Justice in a Turbulent World: South Asia in Focus

RC09 Social Transformations and Sociology of Development (host committee)

Language: English

This session will examine social transformation under conditions of lop-sided economic growth in South Asia which is generating a variety of grievances and potential threats to ecological systems and social orders. Social justice has become a major concern for the ordinary people who are losing their rights to land, livelihood and are threatened by a variety of looming ecological crises. Social movements of various sorts have appeared to champion the agenda of social justice. Issue sof social justice in the conditions of rapid unequal social transformation has taken many forms ranging from right to safe, clean water to health rights apart from broader civil rights and political rights. The political regimes, nominally democratic, are not advancing the causes of democracy by recognizing the democratic rights of the working class, poor and the marginal groups. The space of civil society activism has also shrunk. It is only the vocies of people and the progressive groups articulating the theme of social justice who are pitched against the massive forces of social transformation. The session aims to understand this dynamics so as to heighten the level of understanding and consciousness about the central issues of social justice in South Asia.