Project description

REGIONAL SEMINARS FOR EXCELLENCE IN TEACHING
EUROPEAN VISIONS AND DIVISIONS:
COMPARATIVE STUDIES FOR ADVANCES IN TEACHING SOCIOLOGY

is organized by Faculty of Sociology Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, within the framework of OSIHESP ReSET programs with academic support of European Sociological Association and Sociological Association of Ukraine

Call for Participation

Project Rationale and core Idea

The headlong stream of changes in Europe results in the increase of cultural, political, social and economic divisions that pierce through nations via national borderlines and developing supranational boundaries and identities. These complex processes emerge within the frame of European integration and enlargement, and produce a new range of conflicts and risks for sustainable development, that challenge the vision on what Europe is and how its entity and identity are constructed and reproduced within different social contexts. Studying and teaching European social space as being internally heterogeneous, historically extended and socially, culturally, economically and politically varied should be the cornerstones’ for the modern education system. It requires inter-disciplinarily and comparative approach to rethinking the core issues of societal frameworks in order to overcome “methodological nationalism” in sociology (i.e. studying nation as a direct subject of sociology and referring to other nations as examples of some processes and events) and to develop European horizons and backgrounds for sociological vision of the society.

One of the possible ways to review the existing knowledge about European societies and their sociological and public visions is given by the comparative perspective to the study of social divisions, running through the common and unique social memory as well as the modern social being of the old’ and new’ European nations composing the orchestra of the wide Europe. From the sociological point of view such the divisions refer quality of life and well-being, identities and social cohesion models, varieties of social capital and democracy as well as understanding of European social history, modernity and prospects in whole. These are the subjects that are of particular important to be developed in University sociological curriculum.

This project will bring together experts in comparative research on wide Europe from Eastern and Western Sociological Academia and Junior scholars from post-soviet European societies in order to construct a broader and more complete picture of social complexity of wide Europe. Therefore, the core goal of this project is to involve scholars into development of a new undergraduate sociological curriculum on European studies via sociological rethinking of a concept of the wide Europe as well as including into recent debates about visions and divisions of contemporary European society (from Gibraltar to Ural) by including into research experience and analyzing available data and publications. The outcomes of these discussions and the most important research findings will eventually be implemented into the basic undergraduate university Curriculum for University teaching and learning system.

The project is planned as a coherent three-year program from September 2009 till June 2012 incorporating intensive contact sessions (three summer sessions of 2 weeks each), and inter-session activities, which are to engage the participants and resource faculty in joint activities aimed at revisions of syllabi on basic sociological courses within the framework of European visions and divisions as well as preparation of a handbook on Sociology of wide Europe based on the lectures and discussion materials elaborated by the Senior and Junior scholars with compliance with Europe-wide degree programs through the Bologna process.

Within the project framework, contact summer sessions will focus on the following topics accompanied by relevant teaching issues to be discussed and improved as collaborative activities of the project participants:

 I year. (2009-2010) Comparison as a Research Method in Sociology and Approach to Teaching European Societies

II year. (2010-2011) Testing Sociological Theories in the European Context   

III year.  (2011-2012) Wide European Integration: comparing visions and divisions

More about Project's principles, main activities and outcomes