Re-Thinking the Role of Sociology of Education in Tackling the Global Rise of Authoritarianism, Populism, Xenophobia, and Racism.

This session aims to examine educational problems that connect with the key topics of the 2022 World Congress of Sociology: the resurgent authoritarianism, populism, xenophobia, and racism. In this session, we will ask how education and sociology of education have been meeting these global challenges and how they have been transformed by them. Moreover, we will aspire to give a wide range of sociologists of education, academics, practitioners and fellow travelers, an opportunity to present and engage with research and scholarship that focus on how sociology of education engages in the dangerous social movements we are witnessing today in different parts of the world.This is an opportunity for sociologists of education to direct themselves towards re-imagining their role and to consider ways to reconstruct a better educational system by acting as catalysts and creating spaces of possibility. The global rise of authoritarianism, as well as populism, xenophobia, and racism, make the task of sociology of education more crucial than ever. Sociology of education can unravel and comprehend the relationship between schooling, the wider capitalist social relations that inform it, and the historically constructed needs and competencies that students bring to school. It can challenge long-held assumptions, ask new questions, and identify future possibilities to remedy social wrongs, overcome obstacles and struggle towards building a new society. Our challenge in this era is to re-imagine the role of sociology of education and find ways to create opportunities for students to build meaningful understandings of the world.