On 11th of May, 2019, signing ceremony of renewed MoU between the Chinese Sociological Association (hereafter CSA) and the Japan Sociological Society (hereafter JSS) took place at Shanghai University. The ceremony was twenty-minutes long and Mr. Xie Shouguang, secretary general of CAS as well as president of Social Sciences Academic Press, took the role of moderator, introducing outline of the ceremony as well as its participants.
Prof. Li Youmei, President of CAS, welcomed delegates from JSS and pointed out that China and Japan should work together to lead sociological researches in the world. Prof. Machimura Takashi, President of JSS, also made a short speech, after which signing ceremony was carried out. Two presidents signed in front of the witness which includes Prof. Liu Xin (VP of CAS, Fudan University), Prof. Guan Xinping (VP of CAS, Nankai University), Prof. Zhang Wenhong (VP of CAS. Shanghai University), Prof. Bing Zheng (Chair for Research Committee on East Asian Studies, Jilin University), Prof. Zhang Haidong (General Secretary for Research Committee on East Asian Studies, Shanghai University) and me.
International Conference on East Asian Urban Social Changes and Social Governance was convened right after the signing ceremony, and participants from CAS and JSS (namely Prof. Machimura and I) as well as delegates from Korean Sociological Association made presentation in each session from 11th to 12th of May. Originally joint session co-hosted by CAS and JAA was planned at the time of annual meetings of CAS in Kunming City in 2019, but due to unexpected reasons, joint activities took the form of international conference hosted by Shanghai University where Prof. Li Youmei has been serving as Vice President.
Due to COVID-19 pandemic, annual meetings of CAS in 2020 will be suspended.
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(May 15, 2020, SONODA Shigeto)
I had opportunities to attend two annual meetings of the Taiwanese Sociological Association (hereafter TSA). One is 2018 anuual meetings hosted by the College of Haaka Studis at National Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu on 1st of December, 2018, as delegate from the Japan Sociological Society (hereater JSS), and the other is 2019 annual meetings hosted by the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica in Taipei on 30th of November, 2019, as a partipant invited by Prof. Chen Chi-jou, President of TSA.
TSA hosted a roudtable session in 2018 annual meetings titled “Dointg Sociology in East and Southeast Asia” in which I participated. Sociologists in South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines were invited to explain histrocal development path as well as challenges of each national sociology in front of a lot of audience. One of the uniqueness of annual meetings of TSA is that they invited not only undergraduate students majoing in sociology at universities but high school students who might be interested in choosing sociology as their major in the future. In fact, more than half of the audience of the roundtable session seemed to be high school students.
2019 annual meetings in Academia Sinica were very impressive because they prepared one special lecture and one special session on sociological analysis of recent Hong Kong’s democratic movements. I personally presented a paper based on the data analysis of Asian Student Survey to compare Asian country’s views toward the rise of China in a session where a group of Hong Kong sociologists made a presentation of their findings of social-economic backgrounds of the Hong Kong participants in the demonstrations, which was quite inspiring.
Though history and size of two associations are different, I believe JSS can learn a lot from TSA’s continous efforts to get connected with a variety people in and out of their “small” society.
(May 15, 2020, SONODA Shigeto)
