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GLOBAL 4.1 DIALOGUE NEWSLETTER 4 issues a year in 14 languages Simon Clarke – An Inspired Collaboration Sociology as Alain Touraine, a Vocation Kalpana Kannabiran Chile’s Democratic Transition Manuel Antonio Garretón Felipe Arocena, Adriana Marrero and Leandro Pereira, Uruguay’s Social Marcos Supervielle and Mariela Quiñones, Democracy Diego Piñeiro Hungary’s György Csepeli, Eszter Bartha, Rightwing Surge György Lengyel > South Africa’s Women Miners > Côte d’Ivoire’s Mobile Phone Culture > European Sociological Association’s Meeting VOLUME 4 / ISSUE VOLUME 1 / MARCH 2014 http://isa-global-dialogue.net > Final Declaration of ALAS > Social Transformations and the Digital Age > Global Dialogue’s Russian team GD > Editorial Reactions to Neoliberalism ie live in a neoliberal world where markets spread ever wider and ever deeper. Nothing escapes the market as it enters terrains that have for long been protected. From being a crea- Wtive activity labor becomes the source of ever more uncertain survival; from being a medium of exchange money becomes a vehicle for making more money through loans and bets on loans, leading to wealthy creditors at one pole and impoverished debtors at the other; from sustaining life, nature (land, water, air) is subject to the destructive forces of capitalism, and turned into a high-priced commodity, encouraging violent dispossession; once a public good, knowledge is now sold to the highest bidder whether Simon Clarke is interviewed here by two of his students about the extraordinary they be students in search of credentials or corporations in search of subsi- collaboration he cultivated with young and dized research. The commodifi cation of each factor of production feeds the gifted Russian sociologists, producing a cor- commodifi cation of all. There seems to be no limit to the market. nucopia of case studies during and beyond the market transition. Yet markets generate their counter-tendencies whether these be social movements and/or state regulation. This issue contains four articles on Uru- guay’s socialist response to the dilemmas of global marketization: redis- tributive policies leading to and caused by strong unions; social policies that have legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and marijuana; the retention of high levels of public education. Capitalism, on the other hand, has invaded agriculture, transforming agrarian society into a vehicle of accumulation. In power for the second term, the broad socialist front that includes former members of the Tupamaros guerrilla movement, pursued a popular mandate for social democracy, a trajectory so different from Chile’s conservative road. 2 Despite the rise of pink or electoral socialism in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia, Uruguay’s social democracy stands out as both hu- mane and successful. Alain Touraine, internationally renowned sociologist, describes the origins of his path- breaking theories and his innovative and now If Uruguay is an outlier in Latin America, then Hungary is an outlier within widely used methodology for studying social the former Soviet bloc – not in its socialism but in its authoritarian populism, movements. Here he refl ects on his early an alternative response to the destructive powers of the market. The three optimism and his more recent pessimism. articles from Hungary describe the rise of a mafi a state headed by the self- aggrandizing Viktor Orbán, so different from Uruguay’s President José Mujica who lives the humblest of lives. In Hungary political elites ever more removed and ever more ruthless close down democracy and public debate, discredit the idea of class as a communist distortion even as class becomes ever more salient, and cultivate a national chauvinism aimed against Jews and Roma people while scapegoating the European Union for Hungary’s eco- nomic plight. Two countries with very different economic and political histories respond to the same neoliberal stimulus with divergent political strategies. But can either social democracy or populist authoritarianism reverse the momentum Kalpana Kannabiran, enormously accom- of marketization that stalks the planet almost unhindered? Does the rever- plished sociologist and activist from India, sal of neoliberalism require a counter-movement not just on a national level relates the potential symbiosis of sociology but on a global scale, and what might that look like? Would such a global and critical legal studies in the pursuit of counter-movement expand or contract freedoms? Is it feasible or are we social justice. heading ineluctably for collective self-destruction? > Global Dialogue can be found in 14 languages at the ISA website > Submissions should be sent to [email protected] GD VOL. 4 / # 1 / MARCH 2014 > Editorial Board > In This Issue Editor: Michael Burawoy. Editorial: Reactions to Neoliberalism 2 Managing Editors: Lola Busuttil, August Bagà. An Inspired Collaboration with Russian Sociologists Associate Editors: An Interview with Simon Clarke, UK 4 Margaret Abraham, Tina Uys, Raquel Sosa, Sociology as a Vocation – Moving Beyond Sociology Jennifer Platt, Robert Van Krieken. by Alain Touraine, France 7 Consulting Editors: Sociology as a Vocation – A Conversation between Law and Sociology Izabela Barlinska, Louis Chauvel, Dilek Cindoğlu, Tom Dwyer, Jan Fritz, Sari Hanafi , Jaime Jiménez, by Kalpana Kannabiran, India 9 Habibul Khondker, Simon Mapadimeng, Ishwar Modi, Challenges of the Democratic Transition Nikita Pokrovsky, Emma Porio, Yoshimichi Sato, An Interview with Manuel Antonio Garretón, Chile 12 Vineeta Sinha, Benjamín Tejerina, Chin-Chun Yi, Elena Zdravomyslova. Regional Editors > URUGUAY’S SOCIAL DEMOCRACY Uruguay at the Vanguard of Latin America Arab World: Sari Hanafi , Mounir Saidani. by Felipe Arocena, Uruguay 15 Brazil: How Public is Uruguay’s Public Education? Gustavo Taniguti, Juliana Tonche, Andreza Galli, by Adriana Marrero and Leandro Pereira, Uruguay 17 Renata Barreto Preturlan, Ângelo Martins Júnior, Uruguay’s Miracle: Redistribution and the Growth of Unionism Lucas Amaral, Celia Arribas, Rafael de Souza. by Marcos Supervielle and Mariela Quiñones, Uruguay 19 Colombia: Uruguay’s Agrarian Revolution María José Álvarez Rivadulla, Sebastián Villamizar Santamaría, by Diego E. Piñeiro, Uruguay 21 Andrés Castro Araújo, Katherine Gaitán Santamaría. India: > HUNGARY’S RIGHTWARD SURGE Ishwar Modi, Rajiv Gupta, Rashmi Jain, Jyoti Sidana, The Rise of Hungary’s Mafi a Society Ritu Saraswat, Uday Singh. by György Csepeli, Hungary 23 Iran: The Fate of Class in Contemporary Hungary Reyhaneh Javadi, Hamidreza Rafatnejad, 3 Saghar Bozorgi, Najmeh Taheri. by Eszter Bartha, Hungary 25 Japan: On the (Ir)responsibility of Elites Kazuhisa Nishihara, Mari Shiba, Kousuke Himeno, by György Lengyel, Hungary 27 Tomohiro Takami, Yutaka Iwadate, Kazuhiro Ikeda, Yu Fukuda, Michiko Sambe, Yuko Hotta, Yusuke Kosaka, Shuhei Naka, Kiwako Kase, > NOTES FROM THE FIELD Misa Omori, Kazuhiro Kezuka. South Africa: Women Miners and the Underground Self Poland: by Asanda Benya, South Africa 30 Krzysztof Gubański, Kinga Jakieła, Kamil Lipiński, Côte d’Ivoire: The Symbolic Capital of the Mobile Phone Przemysław Marcowki, Karolina Mikołajewska, by Jordanna Matlon, France 33 Mikołaj Mierzejewski, Adam Müller, Karolina Fiut, Patrycja Pendrakowska, Nastazja Stoch, Teresa Teleżyńska. > CONFERENCE REPORTS Romania: European Sociological Association Meeting Cosima Rughiniș, Ileana-Cinziana Surdu, by Jennifer Platt, UK 35 Adriana Bondor, Ramona Cantaragiu, Miriam Cihodariu, Final Declaration Daniela Gaba, Angelica Helena Marinescu, Cătălina Petre, Mădălin Rapan, Lucian Rotariu, Adopted at XXIX Congress of ALAS, Chile 37 Alina Stan, Balazs Telegdy, Elena Tudor, Social Transformations and the Digital Age Cristian Constantin Vereș. by Elisa P. Reis, Brazil 39 Russia: Global Dialogue’s Russian Team Elena Zdravomyslova, Anna Kadnikova, by Elena Zdravomyslova, Russia 40 Elena Nikiforova, Asja Voronkova. Taiwan: Jing-Mao Ho. Turkey: Aytül Kasapoğlu, Nilay Çabuk Kaya, Günnur Ertong, Yonca Odabaş, Zeynep Baykal, Gizem Güner. Media Consultants: Gustavo Taniguti, José Reguera. Editorial Consultant: Abigail Andrews. GD VOL. 4 / # 1 / MARCH 2014 > An Inspired Collaboration with Russian Sociologists An Interview with Simon Clarke uring the 1980s Simon Clarke, a British soci- ologist at Warwick University, was best known for his contributions to theory – in particular, Dhis original interpretation of Marx, and his 4 critique of the liberal foundations of modern sociology and economics. In 1990, Clarke took a fateful journey to the Soviet Union, inaugurating two decades of research through a rare international collaboration. He became the prime mover behind a new school of Russian sociology that examined a society in the throes of transformation. Along with his colleague Peter Fairbrother, he brought to- gether a network of Russian researchers in the Institute of Comparative Labour Relations Research (ISITO). Here Clarke and his Russian colleagues produced a corpus of work that meticulously analyzed the impact of economic Simon Clarke with admiring sociologists from Samara. reform on workplaces and households, and the response of workers and their organizations. This research was unique in its scale, insight, and originality, offering an in- sistent challenge to the dominant neoliberal orthodoxy. SC: Annie Phizacklea and I took a group of Warwick Univer- The ethos of ISITO was equally noteworthy. If hierarchy and sity students to Russia in March 1990. I was immediately subordination were