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UPDigest

Check out our quarterly UPDigest newsletter for the latest updates from the Sociology Department. We will be recapping developments in our Department, providing relevant information for students and taking a peek at the future. Our timely and relevant information will help keep you informed about our work, major trends in Sociology and relevant news from around the world impacting our work.

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September 2023 UPDigest Issue

September 2023 Issue

Just a few days ago, climate scientists have issued a new report, based on sophisticated computing models, grounded in newest data, that shows our planet to have crossed six out of nine critical thresholds of sustainability. This is real. And perhaps this is the magnified ‘crisis’ that we face in a post-Holocene world.

However, while climate change is real and the future is uncertain, it is precisely this uncertainty that is an invitation to act. Uncertainty invites our intention to steer change in the right direction. Sociologically speaking, we need to also ask from what vantage point, with what specific geopolitical and material landscape in mind, with what concrete scenario of climate injustice are people grappling with.

And in terms of cultural sociology, we need stories that help us to act (now) and they must differ from just repeating that there are major crises that seem to affect everybody in similar ways. They clearly don’t. We must be more imaginative. As sociologists it means, it is us who can mobilize, shift frames, enable action, form new alliances, create pathways for change. Use a critical and global perspective.

So welcome back to another year of learning and creating such pathways!

In this digest: welcome to new people, farewell to Jackie, our longstanding administrative coordinator and soul of this department, invitations to participate in a march for the land, the sociology annual lecture, and our book club: pick a read from recommendations by your profs.

Wishing you all well in this fall season.

Michael Nijhawan, for the Sociology team.

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