SAI BULLETIN, FEBRUARY 2000
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THIS EDITION OF THE BULLETIN INCLUDES THREE MAIN ISSUES/ARTICLES:
1. Attached, and also below, the call for papers and booking form for
the Annual SAI Conference.
The SAI e-mail and administration office is now up and running @:
[log in to unmask]
For queries or information, contact:
SYLVIA EARLEY
SAI ADMINISTRATOR
Sociological Association of Ireland.
c/o Department of Sociology,
St. Anne's Building,
NUI Maynooth,
Co. Kildare,
Ireland.
Tel: 00-353-1-7083941
Fax: 00-353-1-7083528
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
2. Discussion article (attached and below) submitted by Ciaran
McCullagh, UCC:
"THE STATE AND STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN IRELAND:
A Practitioners View"
3. Call For Papers, submitted by Hillary Tovey, TCD
Sustainable Rural Livelihoods - Building Communities, Protecting
Resources, Fostering Human Development.
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CALL FOR PAPERS
SOCIOLOGY ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
27TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
5TH - 7TH MAY 2000
THE NEWPARK HOTEL, KILKENNY.
CONFERENCE TITLE:
IRELAND IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY:
IDEOLOGY, POWER AND CHANGE
Under the broad title Ireland in the 21st Century: Ideology, Power and
Change it is envisaged that this years conference will consider the
contribution of sociology to our understanding of Irish society to date,
and its potential contribution in the future. The committee would
welcome abstracts for papers relevant to the following themes:
Nationalism and Ethnicity
Ideology Power
Economic Change Theories of Irish Society
The Future of Feminism Open Stream
*In addition to the specific areas outlined above there will be an open
stream to accommodate contributors whose papers do not fall within
the conference streams.
Abstracts of 150 words should be sent, both on disk and in hard copy to
Sylvia Earley, S.A.I. Administrator, Room 1.4, St. Anne's Building,
NUI, Maynooth, Co. Kildare on or before March 1st 2000.
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REGISTRATION FORM
SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
27TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
5TH - 7TH MAY 2000
THE NEWPARK HOTEL, KILKENNY.
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BALANCE DUE: ----------------
Please make cheques payable to the Sociological Association of Ireland
and return them with the completed form to:
Sylvia Earley, SAI Administrator, Room 1.4, St. Anneís Building, NUI
Maynooth, Co. Kildare
CONFERENCE FEES
Institutionally funded SAI members £210
Institutionally funded non SAI members £235 *
Non-institutionally funded SAI members £190
Non-institutionally funded non SAI members £215*
Daily rate
£45 ** Conference Only
£95 ***
Student Fees
SAI members £160
SAI non-members £170*
Daily rate
£ 25**
Conference Only
£ 50***
The full conference fee is inclusive of registration, two nights
accommodation, tea/coffee, wine reception, lunch and conference dinner.
* Includes SAI membership
** Includes conference registration, lunch, tea/coffee
*** Includes conference registration, lunch, tea/coffee and conference
dinner.
A £50 (£20 for students) deposit should be sent to Sylvia Earley, SAI
Administrator, Room 1.4, St. Anneís Building, NUI, Maynooth, Co.
Kildare on or before March 30th 2000.
All prices inclusive of accommodation are for shared rooms. A limited
number of single rooms are available for a supplement of £15 per night.
A list of bed and breakfast and hostel accommodation is available from
the SAI ADMINISTRATOR, NUI MAYNOOTH on request FROM:
Sociology Association of Ireland.
c/o Department of Sociology, St. Anne's Building,
St. Patrick's College, Maynooth,
Co. Kildare, Ireland.
Tel: 00-353-1-7083941
Fax: 00-353-1-7083528 email: [log in to unmask]
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*******
"THE STATE AND STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN IRELAND:
A Practitioners View"
Article Submitted By:
Ciaran McCullagh
Dept. of Sociology
U.C.C.
Cork
****************
There has been a significant though largely underacknowledged change in
sociology in the Republic of Ireland in the past five years. This has
been the filling of four professorships in the major universities.
With the exception of that in the University of Limerick, they have all
gone to candidates with three significant characteristics. All have
fine qualities. But none of them has been distinguished by a
demonstrated interest or publication record in the study of Irish
society, none were previous to their appointments working in Irish
educational or research institutions, and all are male.
This is something that perhaps should be more widely discussed and
publically debated in the discipline. Whether we like it or not
the discipline gets its image largely from its professors. At a public
level, they are the ones the media approach for comments on public
events and for their analyses of political and social change. Their
pronouncements have a legitimacy that goes largely unchallenged in the
public sphere. In the university system they represent the public face
of sociology as they sit on the major internal decision making bodies,
they sit on the external bodies that decide on research funding and
they sit on interview panels that influence the future make up and
direction of the discipline.
The central role of professors was brought home to me in the early
1990's when a colleague in the natural sciences with some sympathy for
sociology asked me, quite seriously and quite soberly, would the
sociology department in University College Cork survive the fall of the
Berlin Wall? I was taken aback at the question and pursued the issue
with him. He said that the then professor was a Marxist (he knew this
because the man had a beard and used the word capitalism) and assumed
that by definition we all were. In fairness to my colleagues, I had to
defend them and tell him that some of us knew more about wine and
foreign holidays than about the working class or the labour theory of
value. We also didn't all have beards.
The fact that none of the new professors has a demonstrated and
significant research record on Irish society has to be a concern. It
suggests that the appointments process places a low value on the study
of the society within which we teach and research. It could be argued
that one of the functions of sociology is to understand the particular
society within which the individual sociologist works. Indeed one of
the educational functions of teaching sociology is to enable and
encourage students to understand and to be reflective on the society in
which they live. These appointments would suggest that whatever about
the understanding many sociologists in Ireland might have about the
role of sociology these are not shared by those who make decisions
about the future of the discipline.
The neglect of issues like this may be facilitated by one of the myths
of sociology. This is that social theory has its own inner life and
logic. Yet while much theoretical work is often at a level of
abstraction that makes it appear unrelated to particular social worlds
its concerns and its inflections are drawn from and influenced by the
particular cultural and social background of the theorist. As Alan
Touraine noted in Montreal in 1998, "sociological notions are part of
different cultures, at the same time, that they try to formulate and
convey universalistic statements and analysis". Thus while the work
of Bourdieu has a universal significance its full understanding and
appreciation is enlarged by an understanding of the specific French
cultural concerns that it embodies.
The issue of why none of the new professors had any previous experience
of working in Irish academic departments raises questions that are more
personal, probably more painful but still essential to confront. Is it
the case that those of us who applied for these positions are simply
not good enough when judged by external standards of research and
publication? And if so, is this due to inherent deficiencies in our
work or in ourselves? To put it bluntly, are we mediocre sociologists?
Or is it due to the conditions under which we have been trying to
operate. These include lack of facilities, lack of research money,
lack of time off from teaching, heavy correction loads, heavy
administrative loads and so on. I calculated recently that for about
fourteen years I spent almost a third of my working time reading essays
and examination papers. This has meant that we have not been able to
compete against candidates who have access to what appeared to us to be
privileged working conditions. We have also had to work to establish
that the discipline had a distinctive perspective in a system where we
were considered to be the theoretical face of social work and social
policy. When it comes to interview boards, it is certainly
my experience that these kinds of contextual factors are either unknown
to the members of the boards or considered irrelevant by them. I am
awful sorry someone didn't tell me this a long time ago.
Alternatively, this situation could have other sources. It might be due
to the operation of an Irish inferiority complex which means that
coming from an Irish institution with publications in Irish journals or
with books published in Ireland about Irish topics automatically puts
you at a disadvantage. If they were that good, the logic seems to be,
then they would be published in international journals. On closer
examination, such journals turn out to be either British or American
and hence all in the English language. This is a very circumscribed
form of internationalism.
Finally, there is the issue of gender. Isn't it strange that in a
discipline where so many of the students are female there are so few
female professors? It may well be that they do not go on to take up
careers in sociology or it may be that they experience discrimination
at the level of appointments. It may also be that as so many of the
senior decision-makers in Irish sociology are male the imbalance gets
reproduced through the normal operation of the system. The interview
board for the professorship of sociology in UCC was, for example, all
male. This is not to imply that the process is conscious or
intentional but we know as sociologists that these are not necessary
conditions for the reproduction of dominance.
In this short piece, I have tried to raise a series of issues that have
been provoked for me by the new appointments. I said at the outset
that I thought it was now time that they be widely discussed. I should
be more specific. They are being discussed - by email, over the phone
and in bars after meetings and conferences. Maybe we should start to
talk about them more openly and more publically. This bulletin might
be the ideal forum.
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CALL FOR PAPERS
The X World Congress of the International Rural Sociology Association
will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 30 July to 5th August
2000, on the theme : Sustainable Rural Livelihoods - Building
Communities, Protecting Resources, Fostering Human Development.
>As convenor of one of the workshops in this Congress (see below), I am
keen >to encourage offers of papers which use, reflect on or are
generated out of >aspects of Irish experience. The deadline for
receipt of abstracts has >been extended to 29 February 2000, and
>papers, if they are to be included in the CD-Rom of the Congress,
should be >submitted by 15 April 2000.
> You can find further information about the Congress and its
organisation >on: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/irsa/
>You are also very welcome to contact me directly about presenting a
paper, >or about any other aspect of the Congress.
>The organisers promise that registration and hotel costs will be
'very >reasonable'.
>Besides plenaries, symposia, and workshops on a wide range of rural and
>development issues, the Congress will include a special symposium on
the >notion of 'sustainability' organised jointly between IRSA and RC24
>(Environment and Society) of the International Sociological Association.
>Workshop 23: Alternative Agricultural Movements
>Co-ordinator: Hilary Tovey
>Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin, 1 Foster Place,
Dublin 2, >Ireland. Phone: +353 1 608 1371 Fax: +353 1 677 1300
Email: >[log in to unmask]
>Alternative agricultural movements have the capacity to play a central
role >in the creation of socially and ecologically more sustainable
rural >livelihoods. The goal of this workshop is to develop a
discussion of >movements in, for, or indeed against, alternative
agriculture, food >production and distribution, around such questions
as the following: What >are the implications of such movements for the
promotion of more >sustainable uses of nature? What impacts do they
have on local >development? What are the understandings of 'nature'
and of the relation >between humans and other species which underpin or
emerge through such >movements? Do they challenge existing relations
of power, particularly >around knowledge and its application in new
agricultural or food >technologies? Do they suggest that, globally or
locally, rich and poor >peoples share the same interest in developing
more ecologically sensitive >or 'anti-productivist' forms of rural
resource management? >
>Papers might address such questions through a focus on particular
cases, >such as: movements which seek to retain more of the value
created through >food production in the hands of farmers, small
processors or local groups >(including the development of alternative
ways of trading food, or >alternative distribution networks); movements
to support ëtraditionalí >products, production practices, breeds or
seeds, locally or >internationally; movements to reconnect food
quality with place (restoring >local or regional identity to foods);
movements to encourage >self-provisioning or independence from food
markets (allotments movements, >LETS movements etc.); food consumer
movements (vegetarianism, 'natural >foods' movements etc.) and the
opportunities or constraints these impose on >small producers.
> >Presenters are encouraged to draw on, and to see themselves as
contributing >to, the substantial body of theoretical work in sociology
on 'social >movements'. We need its help in addressing questions like:
how and why do >people join or start movements? What happens in the
course of movement >participation to their sense of individual
identity, their understanding of >society, their cognitive world-view?
How do movements develop over time - >what counts as success or
failure, and what are the benefits or problems of >movement
'institutionalisation' (incorporation into 'partnership' with the
>state or other powerful bodies)? What is, or what should be, the role
of >the rural sociologist within the social movements she researches -
>observer? participant? organic intellectual?
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