---

July 16, 2014


Dear friends and colleagues,

I am writing this letter from Yokohama where the 2014 World

Congress of Sociology has taken place since July 13.

Yui from Kobe arranged a meeting with Prof. Ulrich Beck

at Keiyo University in the afternoon of July 14 (Monday)

and about 30 sociologists from all over the world joined

this wonderful discourse for 3 hours, followed by a nice

dinner at a Japanese restaurant.

Based on discussion with Ulrich Beck, I want to invite

you to a dialogue paper which pays close attention to

the concept of 'emancipatory catastrophism' and

'metamorphosis' (Verwandlung) to discuss about

1) either the theoretical-conceptual issues involved, or

2) to explore the significance of these new concepts by

an example to be chosen by the writer.

For instance, Prof. Young-Hee Shim wants to write about

"Transnational marriage from the perspective of

emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis."

This is only an example. The purpuse of this invitation is

to make known internationally such an important discouse

that we shared at Seoul from July 8-12, 2014.

The dialogue text will consists of the following items.

1) Introduction

2) Beck's original text presented in the form of public lecture (July 8)

3) Dialogue texts by the invited scholars

4) Response from Beck

I will try to have these texts published in an international journal

of sociology. I plan to meet the editors of these journals while I stay

at Yokohama.

Prof. Beck welcomed this initiative and promised to write a response

to the dialogue texts collected.

This opportunity is available to all the participants in the 2014

Seoul conference and the submitted texts will be reviewd to be chosen.

Anyone of you who is interested in this publication is strongly

encouraged to write a dialogue text which should be written

within the limit of 2000-2200 words. It is also encouraged to put

forward the title of your text. Though it will be short in length, it will

appear as an independent article. The deadline of this paper is

the end of August. Indeed, it is a short notice. Yet I feel it may be

better to cooperate while our memory of the Seoul conference

is alive vividly.

The three designated discussants are also strongly encouraged

to revise their discussion papers while taking out all the rhetorical

sentences and paying close attention to the two key concepts

as suggested above. All the texts should be an academic paper.

Particularly, young researchers who joined the Seoul conference

are welcome to join this collective work.

Please get back to me if you have any questions.

All the best,

Sang-Jin

---

August 6, 2014

Dear colleagues and friends,

Finally, I am now sending you all the collected proposals for dialogue with

Ulrich Beck on emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis.

The attahed pdf will show 16 proposals all together. Diversities can be

easily seen in topics, styles of writing, and methods of approach to the

subject. Now, internal discussion is open among the authors. Perhaps,

the most important question is about the extent to which we share the

basic goal of this dialogue initiative. It may be useful to identify what we

do NOT intend to do:

1) Dialogue is NOT intended to be a short summary of your paper presented at Seoul;

2) Dialogue is NOT intended to be a discussion of Beck's public lecture or his theory;

3) Dialogue is NOT intended to be an exploration of your own ideas independent of the

main theme that we should focus on, that is, emancipatory catastrophism and

metamorphosis. Instead,

1) Dialogue is intended to be an independent exploration of the meaning of emancipatory

catastrophism and metamorphosis with reference to the topic that you have chosen;

2) You are welcome to use your paper, Beck's public lecture or theory with an explicit

focus on emancipatory catastrophism and metamorphosis.

3) Therefore, the key question is how you use the concepts of emancipatory catastrophism

and metamorphosis as the key organizing concepts of your proposed dialogue paper.

4) All these points mean that we make joint efforts to demonstrate the usefulness of these

two key concepts that Beck suggested at Seoul by our own creative way.

5) This also means that you use 2,000 words deliberately for this purpose by keeping

the most relavant part while deleting all the less relevant parts.

These are my initial comments. I sincerely welcome anyone of you to make comments,

questions and interpretations. Of course, you are free to change the proposal as you want.

I will appreciate your revised proposal if you send it to me, but you don't have to.

The next job for me is to collect the dialogue paper by the end of August.

I will update you of further information in due time.

Best wishes from Seoul,

Sang-Jin

---

August 7, 2014

Dear colleagues and friends,

Yesterday, I received an email letter from the editor of Current Sociology

who got back to work from Yokohama. I want to inform you of the key

message from her, which will help you how to prepare a dialogue paper.

This also suggests criteria of selection, which will have to be made by us,

not by Current Sociology. 

"Indeed, the idea is having Beck's paper, 5-6 comments (1000-2000 words each)

and Beck's final response. Since so many colleagues are interested in participating,

I do strongly suggest you made a selection -considering the comment's overall quality,

but different aspects these authors could address and also, if possible, a plurality

of regional/gender/ethnic background. All in all, there's no formal requirement

for this selection, but quality and -ideally- good critics to provoque debate,

and an interesting response from Prof. Beck."

I hope you write a good dialogue paper well fitting to the suggested qualifications.

I only wish to remind you that the paper is due August 31.

Best wishes,

Sang-Jin