Some months ago, we mooted the possibility of organising a mini-conference in Barcelona, as part of the ISA “Forum” to be held there on 5-8 September 2008.
The context of this plan was that the “Figurational” Ad Hoc Group that had met at various International Sociological Association (ISA) World Congresses since 1994 has been promoted to a more permanent status as a Working Group
within Research Committee 20 (Comparative Sociology) of the ISA.
At an embarrassingly late stage, I noticed that after all RC20 is not one of the RCs participating in the 2008 Forum. This renders it much more difficult, perhaps impossible, for us to organise a separate inaugural meeting of the Working Group in Barcelona. So Robert van Krieken and I, as self-appointed provisional chair-cum-secretaries of the WG, have decided to
abandon plans for then.
The first formal meeting of the Working Group will thus be postponed until the ISA World Congress in Göteborg, 11-17 September 2010.
Several of us will nevertheless hope to be meeting at the other World Congress, that of the International Sociological Institute (ISI), 26-30 June 2008.
In the meantime, two conference ideas are in the air: one on the application of the ideas of civilising and decivilising processes to the USA, and a second on civilising and decivilising processes in non-European contexts more generally. We shall try to develop these projects, and suggestions are welcome.
Stephen Mennell