Welcome to the 39th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology

The 39th World Congress of the International Institute of Sociology will take place, as announced, at Yerevan State University, Yerevan, Armenia, Thursday afternoon, June 11 - Sunday, June 14, 2009. The theme of the Congress is:

“Sociology at the Crossroads”

The five previous World Congresses of the IIS have highlighted dilemmas of human existence and societal institutions in the contemporary world. They have examined problems of social existence amidst processes of globalization, cooperation and violent conflict. They have been conducted in the spirit which guided the formation of the IIS, namely that of an engagement and encounter between a variety of theoretical positions among members of a truly international community of scholars.

The 39th World Congress will reaffirm that spirit. It will have three broad foci, namely questions concerning the way sociology can arrive at a reformulated understanding of dilemmas of humanity in the contemporary era, including the nature of war and violence, of political order and states and state-like entities, of religious and cultural encounters, of processes of collective memories, traumas and reconciliations, and of shifting conceptions of law, legal regulation, human rights and international order.

The Congress will also highlight cutting-edge theoretical advances in sociology and neighbouring disciplines as well as teaching and curricular developments of sociology and social science in general in universities in the future.

The structure of the Congress is straightforward. The Congress will open on Thursday afternoon, June 11, with two plenary sessions. Each morning of the three following days, June 12-14, there will be two plenary sessions. The afternoons will be devoted to sessions proposed and organized by participants themselves.

The Congress is hosted by Yerevan State University (YSU) and organized by Aram Simonyan, Rector of YSU, and Björn Wittrock, Principal of SCAS and President of the IIS, together with Craig Calhoun, New York University (NYU), and President, Social Science Research Council (SSRC), New York; Yehuda Elkana, Central European University (CEU); Lyudmila Harutyunyan, YSU; Peter Hedström, Nuffield College, Oxford and Singapore Management University (SMU), Secretary-General, IIS, and President, European Academy of Sociology; Hans Joas, Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt, University of Chicago, and Vice-President, International Sociological Association; and Shalini Randeria, University of Zürich and President, European Association of Social Anthropologists.

The IIS is a community of scholars, not a union of professional associations. Thus the IIS plays a complementary rather than a competitive role relative to its younger but larger sister institution, the International Sociological Association (ISA), of which IIS itself is a member and with which IIS is engaged in close and friendly interaction. At the previous World Congresses of the IIS, President, Vice-Presidents and former Presidents of the ISA have been present and have contributed greatly to the intellectual profile of the Congresses. We are convinced that there will be an equally strong presence of the ISA and of its Research Committees in Yerevan as well.          

The 39th World Congress of the IIS is jointly sponsored by YSU and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS).

We greatly look forward to seeing you at a Congress that promises to become a landmark for the extension of sociological dialogue to new areas, arenas and regions of the world.

You are warmly welcome to Yerevan in 2009,

Lyudmila Harutyunyan                          Björn Wittrock

s2009@iisoc.org