Facing an Unequal World: Challenges for a Global Sociology

Yuan-Tseh Lee, former president of Academia Sinica and Nobel Prize Winner, opened the second conference of the Council of National Associations with a call to scientists the world-over to come together and confront ever-deepening global problems. Some of the most serious challenges facing mankind -climate change, energy crisis, and disease – stem from processes that transcend national boundaries and social divisions, yet the tools to tackle them are still largely locked within national boundaries and controlled by powerful, vested interests. The problem, Dr. Lee insisted, is not so much globalization but its incompleteness. Developing global communities along with global governance is necessary for tackling global problems. We can no longer retreat back to an insular localism, so we must move forward to realize the potentials of a more complete and complex globalization. He posed the challenge to sociology: how did we respond? As sociologists we specialize in studying the downside of globalization, the obstacles to a globalization that will benefit humanity. We are experts in the ways inequality and domination present the deepest barriers to tackling the daunting challenges of our epoch. We postulate conditions for overcoming such barriers while criticizing false solutions that redistribute rather than diminish the ill-effects incomplete globalization. It is the presumption of this conference that for sociologists to address the exclusion and oppression underlying poverty and war, disease and environmental degradation on a global scale, our scientific community must itself first assume a global character ruled by dialogue and accountability We gathered together in Taipei, therefore, to examine our own discipline through the bifocal lens of domination and inequality – a risky but necessary project -so as to create and embrace a global sociology that is equal to the global tasks we face.