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SVENSKA MASSAN: Swedish Congress Center in Gothenburg
Massive change in sociology to global social harmony Report on participation in the Congress Leo Semashko GHA President
In English: https://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=434 In Russian: https://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=464
XVII World Congress of Sociology, International Sociological Association (ISA), was in Sweden, in a small (900,000 population) and green Gothenburg, 11-17 July 2010. Schedule of the 700 Congress Sessions as well as its other features the reader can be found at the ISA website: http://www.isa-sociology.org/congress2010. The Congress registered more than 5,000 participants from 104 countries that characterize its global scope and importance for understanding contemporary social trends. I shall fix only on the three aspects of the Congress: 1. Its general ideological orientation, 2. My work in Congress and 3. Its significance for Global Harmony Association (GHA). I'll start in reverse order.
ISA President Michel Wieviorka opens the Congress
Swedish Church Chorus “Tetra”: symbol of the Scandinavian harmony
Integrative Session
Round Tables
Plenary Session
1. I will say at once: the Congress was very rich in new people and new ideas for the GHA. This is the main result. We found many new supporters of the GHA. Main new idea: to create on the GHA initiative a new Thematic Group (TG) in ISA to institutionalize "public sociology" of harmonious civilization started in the GHA over 5 years ago and presented in the GHA 20 projects and 4 books. Another idea: co-sociological study of the dynamics of spheral classes of the population in U.S., Russia, China and Sweden with the Swedish National Data Service. The Congress was attended besides me 5 members of the GHA: Bernard Scott of Britain, Reimon Bachika from Japan, Ananta Giri and Maitreyee Roy from India, as well as Kuseyn Isaev of Kyrgyzstan. All of them, in one way or another, helped in distributing our leaflets and books on Congress.
Bernard Scott (at the left), RC51 Sociocybernetics President at Thematic Session
Presidential Session
Installation of New President Michael Burawoy, USA
2. My main work at the Congress has been distributing leaflets and books "Harmonious Civilization”, which were the effective tool for acquaintance and intercourse with sociologists from different countries. I brought in Congress more than 50 books, of which I could sell only two copies, and the rest I gave sociological youth and elite, as well as sociologists from developing countries. (I noticed that at such congresses the books almost no one is buying for reasons of cost, availability of the Internet and their heaviness in transportation). I printed 500 flyers for the Congress in the English language (http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=436). Leaflets have been the most effective information tool that has attracted attention and was perceived by the public willingly. I gave them on the Presidential and other Sessions, as well as at the table with our books. Here I acquainted with more than 40 sociologists who are interested in the book, and whom I have invited to join the GHA and its projects. Our book, along with a flyer, I gave to the ISA sociological elite: new President Michael Burawoy from the U.S.; former ISA Presidents: Michel Wieviorka, Piotr Sztompka, Alberto Martinelli and Margaret Archer; as well as such outstanding sociologists as Alan Touraine from France, Jeffrey Alexander, Craig Calhoun and Saskia Sassen from the USA; Li Peilin - Director of the Institute of Sociology of China; Eliza Rise of Brazil, the Nobel Laureate in Chemistry - a keynote speaker at the Congress - Professor Yuan Lee – President Emeritus of Academia Sinica in Taiwan; Manuel Castells from Spain; the former Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Jan Eliasson; and many others. Almost one in ten members of Congress received our leaflet with information about GHA and its program book. I have not seen on the Congress other similar books and leaflets. There were many but they were limited by various private and traditional aspects of society. Although, I do not exclude, that I have not seen anything: all the Congress information was impossible to reach. In addition, I participated in the Presidential and some other Sessions, and spoke at the RC51 Session with the paper "Global Education as Harmonious Education of Global Harmonious Civilization."
President of Japanese Sociological Association Yazawa Shujiro represents a place of the ISA following Sociological Congress in 2014: Iokohama, Japan
RC51 at the left: Arne Kjellman - Sweden, Eva Buchinger – Austria, Chaime Marcuello – Spain, Mary Luz Sandoval - Colombia, Bernd Hornung – Germany, Leo Semashko – Russia, Bernard Scott – England
3. Now the ideological trends and achievements of the Congress. In order to reflex with them, I created on the GHA website "Peace from Harmony" the bilingual (Russian and English) seven new pages, united in a new special section: International Sociological Association: Move towards Sociology of Global Harmony http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=433 http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=463 On this page I published the ISA new TG Program and Statement drafts. These documents are virtually summarize the ideological crossing GHA and ISA at the Congress in Gothenburg. Under this section, I opened another six pages. XVII World Congress of Sociology, Gothenburg, July 2010: Start to Understand Social Harmony http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=464 http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=434 On this page I published my report. It is two rows of my vision of the Congress: the visual, which includes about 40 photographs, and mental, includes the most important ideas. To this page adjoins a few personal pages of the ISA prominent sociologists and keynote speakers from Congress, with the publication of their brief biographical data, photos and papers (with comments), which they kindly sent me for publication and translation:
RC51 with Maitreyee Roy – India
Lunch
With colleagues from India: A.C. Pandey with the GHA book “Harmonious Civilization”, Smita Verma, Leo Semashko and Ananta Giri
Ananta Giri with Professors from Seoul, South Korea: Young-Hee Shim and Han Sang-Jin
Russian sociologists with Michael Burawoy: Sergey Kravchenko, Natalia Babenko, Valery Mansurov, Vasily Besportochny, Dina Tanatova and others
Vladimir Ilyin at Poseidon
David Konstantinovsky with paper on the RC04 Session
Russian sociologists with the ISA past Presidents: Piotr Sztompka, Alberto Martinelli and Michel Wieviorka
Alain Tourane, France
With Alain Tourane
Russian sociologists with Yazawa Shujiro, Japan
Michael Burawoy, ISA new President. Facing the Challenges of Global Sociology http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=435 http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=465 The central idea of the ISA new President is global sociology as "my most ambitious project”, called to respond to the global challenges. This is a new and very important idea in the ISA strategy. If we acknowledge that humanity entered on the threshold of a harmonious civilization, then global sociology gain the appropriate quality. This new ISA strategy pushed me the idea of establishing in ISA the relevant Thematic Group: “Global Sociology of Harmonious civilization”, which found enough wide support in my discussions of this idea in Congress.
With Ananta Giri and Michael Burawoy
Gothenburg Panorama
Lutheran Church
Yuan T. Lee, Nobel Prize on Chemistry. Energy, Environment and the Future of Mankind http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=467 http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=437 Lee’s conclusion of deep analytical paper laid in the fact that humanity is living beyond its means, not by the resources that can provide the Earth. To solve this global problem can not any country but only all nations together as “one community”. In private conversation after the lecture I asked the question: "Do you agree that one community is a harmonious community or harmonious civilization?" At that Prof. Lee replied unequivocally: "I agree with this completely." This once again proves acceptability of harmonious civilization to the different scientists, peoples and cultures. We agree with the theme of the joint article: "One Earth, one Community and one Harmonious Civilization."
Green Gothenburg
Female Gothenburg
Children's Gothenburg
Sea Gothenburg
Lutheran Church
Margaret Archer, ISA President 1986-1990. The Current Crisis: Consequences of Neglecting the Four Key Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=438 http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=468 Margaret Archer, analyzing the sociology evolution since 1970s, reproached the sociologist with ignoring the theoretical researches of the major events of modernity: the Berlin Wall fall, the causes of economic and financial crises and so on (to it is necessary to add and start of nuclear zero in 2009). This allowed her to refer sociology to the "part of the contextual cause rather than its cure" (i.e. removed it from the interests of civil society) and to reproach it in "steady abandonment of ‘systematic sociology’ and the almost feverish production of ‘catch-phrase’ caricatures, each merely extrapolating one societal feature observable at the empirical level". We think that this abandonment and degradation of sociology are connected not only with degradation of industrial society, which it is served, but the absence of progressive systemic object, which appeared only in 2009 with birth of a harmonious civilization. Starting from Catholic Social Doctrine (which, in essence, is a harmonious one) Archer explores the "hostility" to human being nature the various individualistic models of industrial society, accelerating its crisis and devastating for the human. It is the models of ‘atomistic’, or ‘economic’, or ‘one-dimensional’, or ‘homo economicus’, or ‘homo sociologicus’ (or ‘Organization Man’), who “become subservient ‘dopes’ – extinguished as people and without the initiative”, who “do not need society”, “who contributes nothing to the ‘common good’ and to social solidarity” but involved in the fatal antagonism and is expressed as a lack of social structure. This de-humanization is expressed by “the contradictory formula: ”. The human rights in this models “can penalize racist acts and public abuse, it cannot legislate racial harmony let alone fraternity into being” and cannot serve to “the common good”. Archer, in her brilliant analytical research, unfolds that social theory together “with Marxism dead … and with Parsons in demise, died any serious concern with social integration” … has no “resources with which to conceive of a robust civil society”. “The sociological imagination during industrial capitalism generated no alternatives for the macro-conceptualization of late modernity” and lost "fraternity", "solidarity" and “subsidiarity” (necessary structural diversity). With the birth in 2009 of a harmonious civilization (“civilization of love” as was articulated by Benedict XVI in Archer’s quote) and its macro-conceptualization in the GHA book “Harmonious Civilization” (http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=379) these lost quality of sociological theorizing and imagination not only restored but also rise to a new level of global sociology of harmonious society and corresponding harmonious social thinking. This sociology has all the resources "to conceive of a robust civil society" within a deep structure of its social harmony and finding in it the lost fraternity and also new, harmonious, solidarity and subsidiarity. It is a real response to the challenges of global sociology of the latest modernity.
University Gothenburg
Michel Wieviorka. ISA President 2006-2010. Sociology on the move http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=439 http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=464 Michel Wieviorka’s keynote speech was devoted to the move of sociology to new areas, its “massive change” and globalization, which included all regions of the world. Social globalization is accompanied by progress of individualization, which is opposed to globalization. Three questions remain open in sociology: general theory, scientific character of sociology and participation in public life. These questions, in my view, are solved in the perspective of sociological move to the new global domain: harmonious civilization.
With the national singer and musician Evert Taube and Gosha
Family Gothenburg: in circle of hospitable Swedish family of musicians of Natasha and Slava Gorshkov with son Gosha
From the GHA papers are published: Leo Semashko. GHA President. Global Education as Harmonious Education of Global Harmonious Civilization http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=470 http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=440 My paper was devoted to global harmonious education as the basic generating mechanism of a harmonious civilization, at least in four aspects. First, only it is capable to transform the spheral classes of the population from spontaneous in conscious actors of social harmony or harmonious civilization. Secondly, only it provides these classes with scientific knowledge of building this civilization at all levels: global, regional, national and local. Thirdly, only it creates the person adequate to this civilization: homo harmonicus. Fourthly, creating the harmonious (multidimensional instead of one-dimensional) human resource, which unique makes all resources, harmonious education harmonizes all other social resources through the person: information, including culture and religion; organisation, including finance (money) and democracy; and economy, including markets, property, competition, incomes and environment. This education is harmonious in four moments: on the purpose, content, way and executors-educators who will prepare by the corresponding Academies of Harmony, the initial projects of which are prepared in the GHA.
With Bernard, Slava Gorshkov and Gosha
Same family at Gothenburg top
We should also mention the Chinese papers. Chinese scientists: Professor Li Peilin, Director of the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and sociology Professor Hong Dayong, Renmin University, Beijing spoke about building a harmonious society in China as a new scientific and practical strategy of strengthening China’s sustainability. Of course, for them the idea of a harmonious civilization (society) was the closest and they talked about changing sociology in this direction. Publication of the papers will continue.
Museum Gothenburg
With the friend from Gothenburg Sergey Anderson
Final brotherly chord with Ananta Giri
In these reports reflects the two main ideological aspirations: to global sociology and to the sociology of social harmony and harmonious civilization. These actual trends find the best scientific and practical connection, from my point of view, in creation of the ISA new Thematic Group: Global Sociology of Harmonious Civilization. Its initial Program and Statement were published: http://peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_c&key=433 http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=ru_c&key=463 These documents, as well as my report and the papers with the comments, are offered for discussion by the ISA and GHA members. August 22, 2010 ====================================
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