Page 13 - The ISA Handbook in Contemporary Sociology

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xii PREFACE

These new conflicts are certainly not the carried out from a comparative (or transver-
only ones, and they do not preclude diverse sal) perspective.
forms of cooperation. In my view, they are I would also like to add a more institu-
the opposite of a crisis, and are best thought tional statement to this preface. This
of as opposed to, rather than as complemen- Handbook is the first published by the ISA in
tary to the idea of violence. To my mind, there this millennium, and it is clear that this pub-
is conflict when actors oppose one another for lication will be followed by further editorial
control of the same stakes, when they initiatives. There are certainly a number of
acknowledge that they are in a relationship, edited works in sociology which deal with
that they are adversaries; at the same time this major themes in the discipline. Their quality
does not entail their being transformed into depends, in large part, on their contributors,
enemies who make war against each other, but also on the way in which the authors were
and, in extreme cases, destroy one another. solicited, on the preparatory work by the edi-
Conflict is a relation, while crisis is a break- tors, on the guidelines given to the authors,
down or a dysfunction of a system of action. and on all the work invested in editing the
Violence is the indicator of an extreme crisis – contributions. Here, the volume was pre-
complete disintegration, the absence of any ceded by an important conference, which
relation. attests to the vitality of the Research
The book edited by Ann Denis and Committees (RCs) of the International
Devorah Kalekin-Fishman invites us there- Association of Sociology (ISA). The ISA has
fore to give the attention they deserve to the more than 50 of them, not to mention the
concepts of conflict, cooperation, and com- Thematic Groups and the Working Groups
petition. Even if most of the authors do not which pave the way for tomorrow’s Research
take the same approach as I do to these ques- Committees. Each RC has its own intellec-
tions, examining them is, in my opinion, tual life, its agenda, its own, often highly
decisive: it is important, in effect, to give impressive, dynamism. For instance, I am
voice to those who are studying the world as writing these lines after having participated
it is, without reducing it to worst dramas of in a conference of RC 04, ‘Sociology of
violence, mass crime, fundamentalisms of all Education’, which took place in Brazil (Joao
sorts, nor to the effects of globalization Pessoa, February 19–22, 2008) with almost
alone. In conflict, cooperation, and competi- 1500 participants who came from all over the
tion, there are actors, social relations, and world. The RCs are a resource of the ISA,
intercultural relations, all at various levels, perhaps even its principal resource; they
and not only victims, criminals, armies, make our association a unique locus of intel-
remote economic forces, or communities lectual life, and not merely an incorporated
which have withdrawn into themselves. By organization. The ISA not only encourages
examining the available paradigms and its RCs to be as active as possible, to be open
approaches, by reflecting on the possible to researchers from every part of the globe, to
articulations of these concepts, in attempting function in the three official languages, to
to apply them in diverse fields of social sci- give opportunities for presentations by
ence, including in the framework of mono- ‘junior sociologists’ alongside those of rec-
graphs dedicated to case studies, the authors ognized researchers; it also creates the condi-
recruited by Ann Denis and Devorah tions which allow for their meetings and for
Kalekin-Fishman perform the service of discovering their complementarity. This
returning a set of concepts, approaches, or Handbook is the fruit of in-depth dynamics,
paradigms to their legitimate place. and the conference which preceded it was
Furthermore, they provide us as well with an only one event, certainly a particularly intense
original instrument, a Handbook, which is all one, among others. Additional ISA resources
the more useful because it was conceived and are found in the quality and substance of its