In July 2025, the 5th ISA Forum of Sociology will unfold in Rabat, Morocco—a place where continents, cultures, and histories will intersect. Hosted at Mohammed V University, the Forum will transform the city into a vibrant meeting ground for sociologists from across the globe. Against the backdrop of a region long shaped by exchange and encounter, participants will gather to engage in urgent debates under the guiding theme “Knowing Justice in the Anthropocene.” Just days before Rabat turns its attention to the Africa Cup of Nations, the city will first become a stage for critical reflection, dialogue, and even a public sociological film festival that will extend these conversations beyond academia.
At the heart of the Forum will lie a pressing question: how will societies come to understand justice in an era increasingly defined by human impact on the planet? The Anthropocene—whether officially recognized as a geological epoch or not—will continue to shape intellectual and public discourse. In Rabat, scholars will confront this contested concept, exploring how knowledge about the Anthropocene will be produced, challenged, and transformed. Whose voices will be heard, and whose will be marginalized? What forms of knowing will gain authority, and what consequences will follow for social and environmental futures?
The Forum will invite participants to rethink the role of sociology in these debates. While other disciplines will have already taken prominent positions, sociology will step forward to expand the conversation, drawing on its capacity to connect individual experiences with broader structural conditions. By engaging the sociological imagination, attendees will seek to better understand how people will live together—amid uncertainty, inequality, and ecological change—and how they might shape more just futures.
Central to these discussions will be the question of justice itself. Participants will explore how ideas of fairness will be defined and redefined in the Anthropocene. From environmental and legal justice to racial, gender, and interspecies justice, the Forum will open new lines of inquiry into how these dimensions will intersect under changing planetary conditions. It will ask not only what justice will mean, but how it will be known—and whose knowledge will count in determining it.
Bringing together diverse perspectives from across ISA’s Research Committees, Working Groups, and Thematic Groups, the Forum will create a space for dialogue across boundaries—disciplinary, geographical, and epistemological. In Rabat, sociology will not only reflect on the world as it is, but will imagine what it could become.
Dr. Piotr Goldstein will contribute in presenting his research, including “Convivial Visual Research with Mobile Workers and Migrants in the Polish-German Borderzone: Opportunities and Challenges” (together with Magdalena Nowicka), “Legacies and Practices of Diversity in a Post-Multi-Ethnic City” and “Everyday Activism Meets Lifelong Social Engagement: Insights from 10+ Years of Research with Everyday (Migrant) Activists”.
Dr. Goldstein will also organise two panels:
- Pathways of Collaborative Visual Research
- Fortunes of (Post-)Multi-Ethnic Cities