Blog 1

Global Sociology? How Does That Work?

In class when the topic/issue of collaborating globally to solve global issues came up, it sounded very straight-forward. Everyone works together, identifies issues, and comes up with solutions for said issues. Once the class started discussing the topic, an armada of issues came forth. One main issue is the huge amount of inequality still surrounding global sociology:

• The International Sociology Association has three main languages; those who do not speak these languages may have to sacrifice portions of their main idea in an attempt to even communicate it.
• Access to sociological communities are often only granted to the privileged with western credentials.
• In some parts of the world, rural sociology is not practiced and this provides a slanted view of rural systems.

These three points describe a very western-based global sociology, which, in my opinion, excludes some of the most interesting and unknown situations. Many countries that are in a state of rapid development (see adjacent chart) are also non-western, and the sociological topics surrounding this state of rapid growth could be overlooked by our current global sociology community. The findings from these topics could provide great insight for what to expect from other rapidly developing countries in the future, but with such inequality, sociologists in these countries may not be able to speak out or present their ideas. This is just one example of why true global sociology is still something to strive for in the future. Luckily, from the readings, it's evident that the issue has been noticed by the global sociologists.