History of the European Sociological Association

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History of the European Sociological Association

The idea to organize a European Conference of Sociology was first developed in an informal meeting during the Biannual Congress of the Austrian Sociological Association in Graz 1987, devoted to the theme "Societies at Borders. Social structure and social consciousness in East and West Europe". In the following, Max Haller, then president of the Austrian Sociological Association, organized a First Preparatory Meeting for a European Conference of Sociology in Vienna on 16 December 1989. This meeting was attended by 13 participants from 10 countries (H. Adriaansens, T. Boje, F. Charvat, B.Danermark, M. Haller, R. Richter, W. Kwasniewicz, D. Lane, R. Radaev, M. Thomas).

A Second Preparatory Meeting was organized during the ISA-World Congress in Madrid, 10 July 1990; 22 sociologists from 15 countries participated. They elected an Organising Committee composed of: Max Haller (Austria) and David Lane (Great Britain) as co-chairs, and G. Amendola (Italy), T. Boje (Denmark), A. Gunes-Ayata (Turkey), M. Illner (Czechoslovakia), W. Kwasniewicz (Poland), and R. Richter (Austria) as members.

After the decision for Vienna as the place of the First European Conference of Sociology, also a local Organising Committee was established, consisting of Eva Cyba, Max Haller, E. Jandl-Jager, Rudolf Richter and Ronald Pohoryles.

The First European Conference of Sociology in Vienna in August 1992 attracted 631 sociologists from East, West, North and South Europe, and from a total of 33 countries. The conference was organised by both international and local programme committees with the cooperation of 38 panel organisers from 19 different European countries. Papers from this lively and successful conference have been published.

It was at this conference that a meeting of representatives from the national sociological associations of Europe and other interested parties endorsed the desire to form a European Sociological Association and charged a Steering Committee with the task of building this.

This Steering Committee of around 25 people drawn from all corners of Europe met regularly over the three years from 1992 to 1995 drafting Statutes and planning activities.

The members of the Steering Committee were:

Sylvia Walby - University of Leeds (formerly at Bristol) (Chair)
Thomas P. Boje - Umea University (formerly at Roskilde)
Bart van Steenbergen - University of Utrecht (Chair of Programme Committee, 2nd European Conference of Sociology)
Imre Kovách - Budapest (Local Organizing Committee, 2nd European Conference of Sociology)
Giandomenico Amendola - University of Bari (Statutes)
Robert Miller - Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland
Martin Kohli - Freie Universität Berlin
Ursula Müller - University of Bielefeld, Germany
Christine Antonopoulou - University of Athens
Elena Bashkirova - Russian Academy of Sciences
Anette Borchorst - University of Aarhus
Eva Cyba - Institute for Advanced Studies Wien
SabineErbes-Seguin - GRASS- IRESCO, Paris
Ayse Günez-Ayata - Middle East Technical University, Ankara
Max Haller - Universität Graz
Elena Haavio-Mannila - University of Helsinki
Ildiko Hrubos - Budapest University of Economics
Maca Jogan - University of Ljubljana
Bernard Kruithof - SISWO, Amsterdam
Wladyslaw Kwasniewica - Jagiellonian University
Jean-Charles Lagrée - CNRS
David Lane - Cambridge University
Janusz Mucha - Hungary
Katrin Paadam - Tallin Technical University Estonia
Nicholas Petropoulos - Emergencies Research Center, Athens
Martin Potucek - Charles University, Prague
Rudolf Richter - Universität Wien
Manuel Perez - Yruela Instituto de Estudios Sociales Avanzados, Cordoba

The draft Statutes and other information were sent to national sociological associations for comment. At the 2nd European Conference of Sociology in Budapest on 29 August 1995 the first meeting of the Council of national representatives of European sociological associations unanimously endorsed the Statutes of the Association and its programme of activities.