Seminar on Social Movements

Jointly Present

Social Movements, Conflict and Change

Professor Partha Nath Mukherji

Chair: A/P Syed Farid Alatas (Sociology)

 All are Welcome

Date: Thursday, 25 November 2010
Time: 3:30pm – 5pm
Venue: Sociology Seminar Room (AS1 #02-12)

Abstract:
Like many major sociological/social science concepts, social movement suffers from a high degree of Eurocentrism. Conceptualised around the elements of a new political form that emerged in the late eighteenth century Europe, it is claimed, its like did not exist in any part of the world earlier. Until around 1970 social movements had been associated with the socialist party and trade union movements which sought to further class struggle within each state against the bourgeoisie. National movements were differentiated from social movements as struggles for the creation of national states. ‘New’ social movements surfaced as social cleavages of the post-industrial society addressing other problems of identity and environment. The paper argues for a more encompassing theoretical orientation that is unencumbered by Eurocentric historicity. Social movements, it is argued, must be related with social conflict and change within an integrated theoretical framework such that its applicability to different contexts with their historical specificities is possible.

About the Speaker:
Professor Partha Nath Mukherji, is former Ford Professor S.K Dey Chair, ISS, New Delhi and held many other positions including Director (Vice Chancellor) of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai; Director, Council for Social Development, New Delhi; Senior Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; and President of the Indian Sociological Society. Professor Mukherji has taught sociology at Patna University, the Delhi School of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Indian Statistical Institute (Kolkata and Delhi). His main areas of interest are social movements and social change, research methodology, democratic decentralisation, and the nation-state. Among his publications are Indigeneity and Universality in Social Science: a South Asian Response (ed., with Chandan Sengupta) (Sage, 2004); People’s Rights: Social Movements and the State in the Third World (with Manoranjan Mohanty and Olle Törnquist) (Sage, 1998). He lives in Gurgaon, Haryana, India.

 Convenors:
A/P Rahul Mukherji   (South Asian Studies)    6516-8582
Dr Daniel Goh (Sociology)                                  6516-5080

 

Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia

This book is about how the design of institutional change results in unintended consequences. Many post-authoritarian societies have adopted decentralization—effectively localizing power—as part and parcel of democratization, but also in their efforts to entrench “good governance.” Vedi Hadiz shifts the attention to the accompanying tensions and contradictions that define the terms under which the localization of power actually takes place. In the process, he develops a compelling analysis that ties social and institutional change to the outcomes of social conflict in local arenas of power.

Using the case of Indonesia, and comparing it with Thailand and the Philippines, Hadiz seeks to understand the seeming puzzle of how local predatory systems of power remain resilient in the face of international and domestic pressures. Forcefully persuasive and characteristically passionate, Hadiz challenges readers while arguing convincingly that local power and politics still matter greatly in our globalized world.

Stanford University Press site

Hong Kong Sociological Association 11th Annual Conference

The 2009 Annual Conference of the Hong Kong Sociological Association will be held on December 5, 2009, hosted by the Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. The theme of the Conference is “Envisioning the World City”.

Papers are welcome from sociologists and colleagues in the social sciences. Prospective participants can apply to:

• present a paper.
• organize a panel.
• attend the conference.

Please send an abstract of paper or panel of 250 words, along with the abstract submission form (downloadable at Abstract Submission Form) to Dr. Travis Kong at hksa2009@hku.hk, by fax (852) 2559 8044, or by post to Department of Sociology, K.K. Leung Building, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, no later than September 10, 2009.

Proposals will be peer reviewed and results announced by the end of September 2009. Please browse the conference’s call for paper for more details.

Dr. Travis Kong
Dr. Maggy Lee
Dr. Amy Sim
Dr. David Palmer
Conference Organizing Committee, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong

Experimental Sociology in Cyborgsociability

In the interest of comparative urban sociology of global cities, somebody needs to do this is in Singapore (Botanical Gardens, Orchard Road, or somewhere in the Heartland?)…

Watch the video…
http://www.tweenbots.com/

From the website:
“Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter… Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal… The results were unexpected. Over the course of the following months, throughout numerous missions, the Tweenbots were successful in rolling from their start point to their far-away destination assisted only by strangers. Every time the robot got caught under a park bench, ground futilely against a curb, or became trapped in a pothole, some passerby would always rescue it and send it toward its goal… One man turned the robot back in the direction from which it had just come, saying out loud to the Tweenbot, “You can’t go that way, it’s toward the road.”

Global Connectedness

We often talk about “global flows” and “global connectedness” in very cliché and flippant ways in sociology, anthropology and other social sciences.

A new map of global connectedness, provides empirical evidence of this, well worth considering.

It not simply reinforces what we already know, but potentially can push our thinking on this. For example, the authors note that the Amazon basin is actually not all that ‘remote’ (though the Tibetan plateau is).

On the Evolution of Bureaucracy (Comments on Kaiser & Yong 2003)

With Edgar Kaiser visiting this week, presumably some if not many in the department have recently read his work. If not, Kaiser and Yong (2003) “War and Bureaucratization in Qin China,” American Sociological Review 68(4):511-539, comes highly recommended.

Here are my thoughts and comments on this article:

The basic question being addressed is one of the evolution of organizational complexity – how do social systems (specifically, what are thought of as ‘state’ or ‘political’ systems) undergo a qualitative transition from patrimonial (or patron-client) type systems organized around personalized ties to bureaucratic type systems organized around impersonal ties. [Note 1]

Film Screening: Hard Candy

The Sociology Graduate Students’ Committee is happy to announce the 2nd installment of the Sociology Movie Screening.  This time we will be screening Hard Candy, .  The rest of the movies to be screened for the remainder of the semester will be announced shortly.  In the meantime, we leave you with the film’s synopsis, trailer video link, and other information below:

Screening Information:
Date    10 March 2009, Tuesday
Time    6:00 PM
Place   TBA

Sociology Graduate Seminar Series 3