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COCTA PANELS
PROPOSED FOR ISA CONGRESS
Brisbane, Australia -- 7-13 July 2002
Go to Plan || Panels || Abstracts
This planning document supplements information posted on the ISA Home
Page at: RC35 Panels
Interested persons are invited to contact the panel organizers.
Please keep Fred Riggs informed of
progress so he can post additions and revisions.
PLAN . Globalization poses important
new problems that require re-thinking what we already know and developing
a new vocabulary that recognizes what the Program Committee calls: all aspects of diversity existing
in the international sociological community, including variety of gender,
languages, continental, regional and national traditions.
Details can be found at the ISA Congress.
COCTA panels at the Brisbane
ISA Congress in July 2001 will take the growing diversity generated by
globalization into account. Most comprehensively, this means that the
diversity of interests, claims and pressures could lead to the terrors of
global disorder or, instead, to growing integration, something that hinges
on our capacity to promote global democracy in place of
anarchy and authoritarianism - Henry Teune will plan a panel on this concept.
Society has become a focus for political leaders in responding to
globalization. Global interconnectedness has challenged local ideas of
society. Both proponents and opponents of globalization invoke society,
but the concept's scope has never been so indeterminate. We need to draw
both from diverse cultures and other disciplines to shape a concept fit
for global challenges to humankind. Martin Albrow will raise such
questions in his panel on concepts of human society.
These changes imply
fundamental reorientations in the relationships between different classes
and communities, social strata, the genders, age groups and sexual
orientations - Volker
Dreier will focus attention on them in a panel on social
power. In order to cope with the monumentally complex problems
generated by these changes, we clearly need to know much more than we have
ever known in the past - Peter
Ohly will put these questions into focus in his panel on
knowledge society. Historical sociology has sensitized us to the
fact that globalization has been a long-term process with an ancient past,
but the pace of change has grown faster and faster in the context of
electronic innovations such as the World Wide Web - Hartmut Rosa will consider such
questions in the context of a panel on the concept of
acceleration in a temporal context. At the
methodological level, it is not possible to talk clearly about all these
problems without an adequate vocabulary of concepts and terms - Fred Riggs will prepare a panel that focuses on
methods used in the analysis of concepts.
Because the themes of these
COCTA sessions are related to each other, it is hoped that those
interested in any one of them will attend the others as well, thereby
promoting the linkages among diverse themes that will support growing
creativity and understanding in conceptual analysis.
Series Organizer:
Henry Teune
, University of Pennsylvania
PROPOSED PANELS AND THEIR ORGANIZERS
Asterisks following the names of panel organizers link to their
abstracts
The Concept of Global Democracy
Henry Teune
*
University of Pennsylvania 211 Stiteler Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6215
Phone 898-4209, Email: hteune@sas.upenn.edu:
For some related thoughts see his paper, Globalization and Local
Democratic Governance
The Concept of Social
Power
Volker Dreier* Dr. Volker Dreier, Institut fuer Soziologie,
Universitaet Jena, Otto-Schott-Str.41, D-07443 Jena, Germany;
Phone:
++49(0)3641-945543, e-mail: dreier@soziologie.uni-jena.de
The Concept of
Society.
Martin Albrow*
, Roehampton Univ., UK (on leave, Woodrow
Wilson Center, Washington, DC.:)
Knowledge
Society
Peter
Ohly ,* GESIS
Informationszentrum Sozialwissenschaften, Bonn, Germany
Methods for Analyzing
Concepts
Fred Riggs * , University of Hawaii,
Political Science, emeritus (home: 3920 Lurline Drive, Honolulu, HI 96813)
Tel: (808) 732-5308; His Home Page
Preliminary draft of paper on Electronic Nomenclators
for Brisbane Congess.
See also Electronic Term List
-- and the digest -- not for
quotation without author's permission.
Background information can be found at: Shelter Concepts for
a COCTA panel at the Montreal ISA Congress, July 1998
Time and the Concept of
Social Acceleration
Hartmut Rosa:
*
Institut f|r Soziologie, Friedrich-Schiller-Universitadt,
07740 Jena, Germany
Tel.: 03641-945514 (945510), Fax.: 03641-945512, email:
rosa@soziologie.uni-jena.de
New School University, New York, Department of Sociology,
65 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y.10003
from September 2001 to August 2002.
ABSTRACTS FOR THE PROPOSED PANELS:
The Concept of Global Democracy:
Organizer: Henry Teune
Despite amibguities and contested meanings, the ideas of local and
national democracy have entered social science terminological and
conceptual discourse. What, however, does democracy mean at a global
level? Does it require only individuals or can groups and nations be part
of it? How can democratic values, processes, and practices be attached to
transnational and global actors and institutions? What concepts used for
local and national democracy--transparency, accountability, pluralism,
competition of ideas--can be applied globally?
The Concept of Knowledge Society
Organizer: Peter Ohly
In order to cope with the monumentally complex problems generated by
globalization, we need to know much more than we have ever known in the
past - the Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for the rapid
diffusion of scientific sociological knowledge
The Concept of Social Power Organizer: Volker
Dreier
The concept of power plays a fundamental role in critical
reflection about society. However, even the most basic questions
concerning the concept of power have been subject to ongoing debate.
Furthermore, and especially in a rapidly changing world society which we
denote by the term, globalisation, we can discern a new quality of
*
social power structures and changing relationships related to social
classes and communities, social strata, ethnic communities, the genders,
age groups and sexual orientations.
The Concept of Society Organizer: Martin Albrow
Society has become a focus for political leaders in responding to
globalization. Global interconnectedness has challenged local ideas of
society. Both proponents and opponents of globalization invoke society,
but the concept's scope has never been so indeterminate. We need to draw
both from diverse cultures and other disciplines to shape a concept fit
for global challenges to humankind.
Methods for Analyzing Concepts Organizer: Fred W.
Riggs.
A preliminary
draft of the paper by Riggs on Electronic Nomenclators
Two definitions of concept can be found
in the entry for this word offered in the Web Dictionary of Cybernetics
and Systems. According to the first, a concept is a word or
phrase used in propositions purporting to describe real world
relationships. The second defines it as the smallest unit of
(conscious) thought processes. As understood here, only the second
definition is accepted: words are viewed as symbols or lexical units
capable of representing concepts, but they are not themselves
concepts.
Sometimes concepts are confused with theories but it is important to
recognize that, although all theories are composed of sets of interrelated
concepts, no concept can be understood as a theory. Unfortunately, in
ordinary usage, concepts often name a theory. For example, concept of
evolution may refer, ambiguously, to a theory or a concept. Of
course, a word used to name a theory may also designate a concept --
capitalizaation would help us make this distinction: e.g.,
Evolution names Darwin's theory but evolution represents his
core concept.
Because concepts are so easily confused with the terms (words, phrases
or symbols) used to represent them, we need methods that clearly associate
the concepts we need with the terms used to represent them. To begin the
analysis of any concept, we need a complete representation of its
necessary or distinctive characteristics. This can be provided by text
(description or definition) a picture or a diagram, that identifies its
essential characteristics. For convenience, however, whenever we make
frequent use of a concept, we need a short form such as a symbol, word,
phrase, number or ikon --– i.e. a erm --– that can succinctly and
unambiguously represent it. This inverts the familiar lexicographic
context in which one defines the meanings of a word. Each sense of
a word as found in a dictinary definition describes a different
concept. Concept descriptions, therefore, are not the definition of a
word, even though such definitions may contains several concept
descriptions.
Many difficulties result from lack of agreement about which concept any
particular term represents. Ideally, terms are unequivocal: that
is to say that, in context, it is apparent to users just which of several
possible concepts is intended. However, when terms are equivocal --
as they often are -- they may be understood as referring, in the same
context, to two or more concepts. It is utopian to expect any term to be
univocal, i.e. to have only one meaning in all contexts of use.
Moreover, many concepts can be described but lack any simple
designation:– they are, therefore, termless . The development of
clear discourse in the social sciences, especially in the formulation of
theories and the growth of scientific knowledge, requires a methodology
that permits us to use terms unequivocally. Although such expressions may
be ambiguous out of context, in the context where they are used it is
important for us to know their intended meanings. At a time when our world
is globalizing and both invention and diversity generate novel ideas, it
is more important than ever to respond to perplexity, diversity and
confusion by being able to identify useful concepts and develop
unequivocal terms to represent them.
Since concept can be used, equivocally, to represent a unit of
thought, a word, or a theory, and we need all three ideas, the convention
used in much COCTA discourse rests on using concept unambiguously
just to represent a unit of thought, the first of these ideas. We can
substitute term for concept when thinking about lexical
items, and we can use theory instead of concept when we
want to talk about propositions that link sets of concepts.
Time and the Concept of Social
Acceleration Organizer: Hartmut Rosa
In current debates on Globalization and late-modern societies, it is
often said that many social processes have accelerated and that the rates
of social change themselves are changing. Thus, we find frequent
allegations that society, history, culture or, curiously enough, even time
itself are accelerating. However, pace Virilio and his likes, the
concept of acceleration itself remains very fuzzy, elusive and
ill-defined. The panel therefore aims to clarify the concept and thesis of
social and historical acceleration by searching for answers to the
following questions:
1) What could it mean for a society to accelerate? Which
areas, spheres, institutions or structures of society actually change at
higher rates than before? (Here, it seems plausible to distinguish between
technological acceleration, acceleration of social change and acceleration
of what could be called the 'pace of life' for individuals and groups)
2) How can processes of acceleration be measured? Which
structures, processes or institutions do not change today, but rather
remain inert? How do processes of acceleration relate to processes of
social, historical and/or cultural deceleration as postulated in the
'post-histoire' and 'End of History'-discourse?
3) Assuming that substantial acceleration of social change has
occurred, what are its driving forces? Capitalism, structural
features of modern society -- i.e. functional differentiation -- or
cultural factors have all been identified as 'the' driving forces of
acceleration. However, a further possibility is suggested by adherents of
'catastrophism' who hold that major changes are caused by forces external
to the societies involved, like natural disasters, wars etc.
4) If there are substantial increases in the rates of social change
and/or in the 'pace of life', what are their social effects? How do
processes of technological, economic and scientific acceleration affect
the prospects for democracy and deliberative policy-making (which cannot
easily be accelerated at all)? How do these accelerations affect the
prospects of individual autonomy and identity? (Some hints at the problems
we will have to discuss in the latter respect can be found in Richard
Sennett's book on the corrosion of character) What -- if any -- are the
temporal limits of society's capacity to integrate social groups and
spheres, and of any individual's capacity to integrate changing
experiences and adapt to changing circumstances?
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Posted 14 June 2001
