The International Sociological Association's RC33

Abstract

President

Nina Baur

(Germany)

Secretary

Vera Toepoel

(Netherlands)

Vice President - Finances

Wander van der Vaart

(Netherlands)

Vice President - Membership

Emanuela Sala

(Italy)

Vice President - Information

Karl M. van Meter

(France)

Vice President - Conferences

John Goodwin

(United Kingdom)

Vice President - ISA World Congress Programme Coordination

Claire Durand

(Canada)

Vice President - ISA Forum Programme Coordination

Martin Weichbold

(Austria)

Vice Presidents at large

Claire Wagner

(South Africa)

Pei-shan Liao

(Taiwan)

Fumiya Onaka

(Japan)

Adriana García Andrade

(Mexico)

Yashwant Deshmukh

(India)

Past President

Katja Lozar Manfreda

(Slovenia)

Report from the RC33 President - Challenges for the Next Years and Upcoming Conferences

Dear RC33 Members,

The last few years we have been busy with the re-organizing of RC33 – as many board members have retired, we have elected many new board members, we have organized our membership data and the RC33 Web site, and we have finalized our new statutes. We have also discussed at the World Congress the challenges RC 33 faces during the next years. Namely, we (the new Board) believe that RC33 is challenged by specialization which is good (because it increases the quality of discussions), but also a danger as it might lead to fragmentation. Namely:

Fragmentation of Sociology and Methods

Fragmentation of Methodological Discourse itself (Statistical Modelling, Survey Research, Qualitative Methods, MMR, Historical Methods …)

Fragmentation of World Regions (Asia, Europe/Africa, America)

In order to use these challenges in a productive way, we decided to keep in mind what RC33 is actually about: discussing methodology! Therefore, in the future, we will assign our various congresses specific functions, each of them addressing one of these challenges, namely:

Third ISA Forum of Sociology - The Futures We Want - Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World (10-14 July 2016, Vienna, Austria) As this worked very well at the last ISA Forum, we will use the next ISA Forum for countering the fragmentation of sociology and methods, namely linking methodological discussion with special fields of sociology (methods of sociology of religion, methods of sociology of aging, methods of sociology of organization …).

Ninth International Conference on Social Science Methodology (11-16 September 2016, Leicester, UK) This conference always has been and also will be in the future our main conference. As we have always done, we will use it not only to discuss methodology but also to counter methodological fragmentation and instead link various methodological discourses (Statistical Modelling, Survey Research, Qualitative Methods, MMR, Historical Methods …).

RC 33 Regional Conferences To tackle the fragmentation of world regions, we will try out a new format – RC 33 Regional Conferences. The long-term plan is to have one in each world region between world congresses in subsequent years (one of which will be the main RC33 Conference). Although there will also be a general methodological discourse, regional conferences will especially focus on the methodological problems and members of that world region. For practical reasons, we will start with Asia (Taipeh 2017). If this works, we will use this as a model for the Americas.

19th ISA World Congress (2018, Toronto, Canada) The World Congress is the place to draw it all together and to avoid that we ourselves become fragmented.

Nina Baur

RC33 President

Report from the RC33 Secretary

On 13-19 July, the World Congress of Sociology took place in Yokohama, Japan. The weather was warm and for many of us, it was our first visit to Japan. The program of RC33 was full, and many RC33 members found the time and money to go to Japan. Participants came from all over the world, with a high percentage of Europeans and a larger-than-normal percentage of Asians. Since the number of attendees from Africa and South America was relatively low, the RC33 Board will devote special attention to these world regions and members from South America and Africa are invited to play an active role in RC33. We had 18 sessions about various topics, ranging from measurements of inequality to response latencies in survey research, and all that is in between. During the Board meeting, we discussed decreasing membership rates when conferences are not in Europe or the US. Unfortunately, the number of new members from Asia does not exceed the number of drop outs of European membership. To keep the geographical spread, it was decided to organize mid-term RC33 conferences in both Europe (UK) and Taiwan. We discussed that the number of slots during ISA congresses and the money that RC33 receives, which depends on the number of ISA members. Therefore, it is important that RC33 members are also members of ISA. Another point we discussed was the relationship between RC33 and the European Survey Research Association (ESRA). We want to make sure that future RC33 conferences do not have to compete with ESRA conferences. ESRA and RC33 have a lot of overlap in terms of members, and we do not wish to compete. The ISA World Congress was very well organized, and Japan (and Yokohama in particular) was a nice venue. We look forward to the new conferences in England and Taiwan, and the ISA Forum of Sociology to be held in Vienna, Austria, on 10-14 July 2016.

Vera Toepoel

RC33 Secretary

RC33 Board (2014-2018)

Dear RC33 Members,

As a result of your voting, we elected the new RC33 Board (2014-2018) during the “18th ISA World Congress of Sociology” in Yokohama. To represent all geographical regions on the Board, we nominated additional Vice Presidents at large during the following weeks. As we have so many new Board members and so many new members who might not know the long-standing Board members, the Board members will also introduce themselves through texts that will be sent via our RC33/BMS email distribution list, due to space limits in this edition of the RC33 Newsletter. In summary, the current RC33 Board members are:

President: Nina Baur, Technical University Berlin, Germany

Secretary and Designated President: Vera Toepoel, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Vice President for Finances: Wander van der Vaart, Universiteit voor Humanistiek, The Netherlands

Vice President for Membership: Emanuela Sala, Universita di Milano Bicocca, Italy

Vice President for Information: Karl van Meter, CMH-ENS, Paris, France

Vice President for Conferences: John Goodwin, University of Leicester, UK

Vice President for ISA World Congress Programme Coordination: Claire Durand, University of Montreal, Canada

Vice Presidents at Large:

Adriana García Andrade, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico

Claire Wagner, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Fumiya Onaka, Japan Women's University, Japan

Pei-shan Liao, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Yashwant Deshmukh; India

Past President: Katja Lozar Manfreda, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia

Nina Baur

(RC 33 President)

Ninth International Conference on Social Science Methodology (RC33)

11-16 September 2016, Leicester, UK

Call for Session Organizers

Dear RC33 Members,

We want to invite you to suggest a session at the Ninth International Conference on Social Science Methodology (RC33) which will take place on 11-16 September 2016, at the University of Leicester (http://www.le.ac.uk/).

If you are interested in organizing a session, please submit an abstract containing the following information to John Goodwin (jdg3@leicester.ac.uk) by 31 July 2015:

Session Title

Session Organizers (Name, Email Address, Institutional Affiliation)

Session Abstract (containing a short description of the session and the type of papers you want to be submitted to the session).

The conference organizers will inform you if your session has been accepted by 15 September 2015, and there will be an open call for papers. Please note that all sessions apply the rules of session organization found in the RC33 statutes (see below).

RC 33 Rules for Session Organization (According to RC Statutes)

The conference language is English. All papers therefore need to be presented in English.

All sessions have to be international: each session should include speakers of at least two countries (exceptions will need good reasons). Moreover, each paper must contain a methodological problem (any area, qualitative or quantitative).

Speakers can only have one talk per session. This is also true for joint papers: it will not be possible for A and B to present at the same time one paper as B and A during the same session. This would just extend the time allocated to each speech in the different sessions.

Sessions will have a length of 90 minutes with a maximum of four papers or a length of 120 minutes with a maximum of six papers. Session organizers can invite as many speakers as they like. The number of sessions depends on the number of papers there are.

There will be several calls for papers via the RC33 Newsletter. To begin with, session organizers can prepare a call for papers on their own initiative, then at a different time, there will be a common call for papers, and session organizers can ask anybody to submit a paper. RC33 members may distribute these calls via other channels.

Papers may only be refused for the conference if they do not present a methodological problem (as stated in Article 3 of the RC33 Statutes), are not in English or are somehow otherwise estimated by session organizers as not being appropriate for the conference.

Session organizers may ask authors to revise and resubmit their paper so that it fits these requirements. If session organizers do not wish to consider a paper addressed to them, they should inform the author and forward the paper to the conference chair who will find a session where the paper fits.

Papers directly addressed to the organization committee (and those forwarded from session organizers) will be offered to other session organizers (after proofing for quality). It is then up to the organizers to include a paper in their session(s) or not. If they think it does not fit into the session(s), the papers should be sent back as soon as possible to the organizing committee so that it can offer the paper to another session organizer.

There will be a conference Web site with information about the procedure for submitting a paper and deadlines.

The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World

Third ISA Forum of Sociology

10-14 July 2016, Vienna, Austria

Call for Papers

Dear RC33 Members,

We want to invite you to submit the paper for the Third ISA Forum of Sociology (“The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World”) which will take place on 10-14 July 2016, at the University of Vienna (Austria).

As most of you probably know, the ISA Forum is the ISA Intermediate Conference between World Congresses. So in contrast to the RC33 conference (where mostly methodologists attend), the ISA is meant to be a discourse between different fields of sociology and to provide a platform for the wide spectrum of our many Research Committees (RCs), Working Groups (WGs), and Thematic Groups (TGs). The conference theme aims to encouragr forward-oriented research ranging from the smaller worlds in micro situations to the broadest macro dynamics affecting the entire planet. The rather uncommon plural “s” in futures points to the diversity of possibilities, projects, and visions. Social actors aspire, desire, envision, expect, fear, imagine, plan, and ultimately shape in their more or less contentious interactions at multiple scales in new conditions. Empirical research from around the world is needed to help tackle the critical problems and opportunities in our age of advanced globalization. While papers related to the umbrella theme are particularly welcome as a way to connect across RC/WG/TGs, as always other methodological papers from RC33 members are welcome.

At the time of writing this call for papers, many organizational aspects remain to be worked out by the ISA, so I can only provide you with general guidelines. The anticipated time window for submitting abstracts for proposed papers to the online system is 3 June-30 September 2015; followed by abstract selection 4 October-24 November 2015; with acceptance notifications to be sent to authors by 30 November 2015. Please find the complete Call for Papers and further information on the conference Web site at http://www.isa-sociology.org/forum-2016/. Please also note that all papers and sessions adhere to the rules of session organization found in the RC33 statutes (see above).

Nina Baur

(RC 33 President)