Greetings from ASA President
Frances Fox Piven

Dear Colleagues,

Come to New York City this August! Come for the restaurants, the shopping, the cultural events, and the real estate of the capital of a globalized world. We have tours to show you the changing city. Julia Rothenberg and David Halle will take you to the Chelsea art gallery district; Bill Kornblum will lead a water taxi exploration of the changing waterfront; Margaret Groarke will guide you through environmental justice projects in the Bronx; Margaret Chin will show you Chinatown after 9/11; Phil Kasinitz and John Mollenkopf will take you on a tour of Brooklyn, which they like to say is the fourth largest city in the U.S. And believe it or not, New York is actually best in August, a bit sultry maybe, but the city throbs with the beats of its immigrant neighborhoods, and the pulse of its people in the summer streets.

But mostly, come for our conference! Our world is changing very fast, and it is at times like this that sociological analysis should be sharpest, most illuminating, and also most useful. Our theme this year, Is Another World Possible, and our preoccupation with reform has led us to plan a series of sessions which assess the potential for progressive social change both in the United States and the world. A plenary about the potential for democratic rebirth in the U.S. will feature Medea Benjamin, Patricia Williams, and Joel Rogers. Barbara Ehrenreich and John Conyers pursue this theme in a dialogue about immediate prospects for change in American politics. Another plenary will consider popular culture as propaganda and as critique, and it features S. Craig Watkins, Sara Benet-Weiser, Daphne Brooks, filmmaker Byron Hurt, and hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang. Other sessions will focus specifically on American electoral politics, the erosion of the American social compact, the politics of natural disasters, immigration, the religious right, closing the low road in economic development, the progressive tradition in sociology, the politics of incarceration, and much more.

We also want to look beyond the U.S. and pay attention to the convulsive developments in Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia. Our conference will open with a presentation by Richard Lagos, the former president of Chile who played a major role in the Allende government and as president oversaw a peaceful transition to democracy. Another plenary session, on paths toward progressive reform in the world system will include Jeffrey Sachs, Naomi Klein, and Jomo K.S. And we will have sessions on the conflicts in the Middle East, social movements in the global south, reproductive rights, terrorism, religion and movements, genocide in Darfur and elsewhere, the role of NGO’s in global governance, Chinese capitalism, Marx and Polanyi and theorizing another and better world.

The sessions planned as regional spotlights will include Cornel West commenting on Mitch Duneier’s new film on homelessness, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Diane Davis and Susan Feinstein discussing the viability of New York City, and Craig Calhoun who will lead a discussion of the legacy of Robert Merton and Paul Lazarsfeld and the Columbia school of sociology.

And then also, what is always the heart of our conference, the regular sessions and the workshops. So, you will be busy, and it will be bracing, enlightening, and you’ll have a wonderful time, in the city that is, for better or for worse, the center of the world. See you there!