Immanuel Wallerstein Free Chair – Inaugural Session Dr. Stephan Lessenich (Director of IfS): The Semi-Peripherization of Europe

Within the framework of the First Sociology Conference (FCS/UNC), the Inaugural Session of the Immanuel Wallerstein Free Chair took place:
“The Semi-Peripheralization of Europe” with Dr. Stephan Lessenich (Director of IfS)

Presentation
María Inés Peralta (Dean of FCS)
Marcelo Casarin (CEA Director)
Pablo Vommaro (Academic Secretary CLACSO)
Verónica Giordano (IEALC- UBA)
Coordinator: Esteban Torres (UNC-CONICET)

Prof. Dr. Stephan Lessenich is Professor of Social Theory and Social Research and Director of the Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt (Main). His research field encompasses political sociology, social inequality, welfare state theory, the dynamics of global capitalism, comparative macro-sociology, and the sociology of ages.

La Immanuel Wallerstein Free Chair It will focus on promoting awareness of new critical perspectives emerging from the Global South and North regarding the study of current processes of global social change. It is a space for global dialogue, bringing together leading intellectuals involved in the renewal of sociology, critical theory, and the social sciences in general. The increasing globalization of the major problems faced by societies in the periphery and the core of the world demands the development of new critical theories, as well as new mechanisms for disseminating knowledge that update the intellectual, scientific, and political commitment to social change.

The Chair is named after one of the most renowned sociologists of recent decades in the Western Hemisphere. His vast body of work aimed precisely at a major renewal of the social sciences, with the objective of providing studies of social change with a fully global perspective, particularly attentive to the specific realities of the Global South. To achieve this goal, Wallerstein insisted, among other aspects, on the need to overcome the old Eurocentric views of the modern paradigm. Immanuel Wallerstein Free Chair It will be the first inter-institutional academic space organized by the CEA-FCS-UNC, Institute for Sozialforschung (IfS), Frankfurt am MainGermany and the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)This global dialogue space is open, free and accessible, and its target audience includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers, non-teaching staff, researchers and the general public.

Organisation

The Chair's activities will be structured around single sessions with different guest speakers. The possibility of organizing thematic series that include more than one session is also being considered. The Chair's activities will be both in-person and virtual. Virtual activities will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel of the Faculty of Social Sciences, UNC, and on CLACSO TV, while in-person activities will be filmed and subsequently uploaded to the same channels.

CLACSO joins the Immanuel Wallerstein Free Chair as an associated institution, same as the Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (IEALC) from the University of Buenos Aires.

The organizing academic institutions are the Center for Advanced Studies of the Faculty of Social Sciences, National University of Cordoba, as well as the Institut für Sozialforschung (IfS), home of the Frankfurt School.