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International Sociological Association
WG 01 Working
Group on Sociology of Local-Global Relations Main Page
Established in 1996
Recognized as Working Group in
July 2006
|
News: III International
Research-to-Practice Conference «New Forms of Cooperation of Local Communities, Civil
Society and Political Movements under the Conditions of Globalization» 22 April, 2010, Moscow, RSUH. Chile, Last Politological Congress hoto-report from Conference in Moscow “GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY: MAIN TRENDS, RISKS AND PROSPECTS”( in Russian State University for the Humanities) Forum ISA, Barselona New and long-expected photos from last conferences Conference in Moscow We are pleased to announce the results of the ballot sent to the members of the Working Group last March |
Working Group on Sociology of
Local-Global Relations / Group Objectives
The subject matter of the WG01 is
the emergence and shifts of the new 'localisms', neighborhoods, local
communities, ethnic and language identities, affinity groups, and economic and
political associations, and their aggregation into networks and their formation
of systems that create regions and impact the incipient world system. As part
of this, the role of the individual will be examined, in particular the
processes of individualization within a global framework.
The theoretical
contexts include spatial and temporal relations, the development of increased
complexity or integrated diversity that transcends traditional boundaries, the
logics of regionalism, including those of political integration as well as
classical concepts from human and social ecology.
The new methodological
base of the WG01 would be that of fuzzy sets, most of which has been advanced
in the engineering sciences and yet has limited applications in the social and
behavioral sciences other than psychology. This methodology would depart from
standard cross-level analyses, so much a part of ecological research with fixed
sets, to that of fuzzy and sets and systems in which the member components have
multiple and shifting memberships. Some of this has now been developed in
computer programs, at a stage similar to that of cross-level analysis about 15
years ago, that can be adopted to sociological data.
The data to be
addresses are at several levels, community, region, country, transnational
regions, and the world as a whole, at two or more points in time. This would be
the ideal. Much less structured data are expected to be the norm. Since the
1950s data on sub national units and groups within countries have been
accumulating, and, of course, these data are being stretched into several
points of time. Indeed, the combination of individual survey data within
structures of groups, countries, and associations beyond national boundaries,
envisioned by Stein Rokkan more than three decades ago, have now become a
reality for many domains of human activity and organization.
The group organized Ad
Hoc sessions at the ISA XIII World Congress of Sociology in Bielefeld, 1994,
and since then has been involved in exchange of research among the participants
on the Democracy and Local Governance research program which now has gathered
data on local political leaders in 24 countries.