4/29/07

Country Report of SSF-Iran
Ali Tayefi *

At the turn of the New Year 2007, at the invitation of Judith Blau the president of SSF-US along with Alberto Moncada, president of SSF (international), SSF-Iran was formed. In the last 4 months SSF-Iran had many activities such as:

  1. Created a useful web log for SSF-Iran ( ISWB ) that has had more than 3500 visits till now. In the web log there are many Iranian and world links on the our agendas i.e. human rights, social justice, poverty, globalization, children and women. http://iswb.blogspot.com
  2. The site, sociology of Iranhas become the famous site as an independent space for all Iranian sociologists and social researchers, now there are more than 150 members in SSF-Iran who are from Iran and some other countries as students or as exiled elite.
  3. In the last months after warning of likely invasion of US against Iran, SSF-Iran proposed publishing a petition to condemn this inhuman and anti-democratic threat. . Fortunately, by alliance of other SSF’ers i.e. US, Spain, Brazil, the petition was published on line. After a few weeks this petition in English was supported by many other versions i.e. Persian, English, Spanish, French, Portugal, and Germany languages. This petition was the first united campaign between academician and sociologists in the world and it received more than 1700 signatures. The petition has been linked by more than 50 web sites and web logs and it was perhaps the most successful multilingual petition in the world, at least to date..
  4. In this period some SSF-Iran members mobilized by its president to carry out some joint actions such as translate some articles for ISWB. Now there are more than 7 articles which have translated and published on the SSF-Iran website. In addition, for strengthening of SSF-Iran, I wrote 2 essays “Without Borders” & “globalization and Fundamentalism” and some Iranian members participated on the discussions in SSF network.
  5. SSF-Iran could arrange a good relation with Iran Sociology Association (ISA) and coordinate some activities such as exchange our notes, websites and mailing list of members. Some of SSF-Iran members already were members of ISA.
  6. After three months activity, president of SSF-Iran received the “First Annual Alvin Gouldner Prize” from SSF. It was for his activities and critical writings on applied sociology.
  7. There are some draft initiatives for some joint projects between SSF’ers i.e. SSF-Italy and Turkey. We contacted to design and invite our members to joint on those.
  8. Now the president of SSF-Iran has been selected as editor of the new SSF Newsletter "Updates" on the internet to publish all articles, notes, reports, debates and opinions of SSF’ers on the world. This website was published nearly a week ago at the address: http://ssfupdates.blogspot.com.
  9. SSF-Iran wants to develop its activities in the near future on the discussion, some sessions on the human rights and sociology and spread its network with some other NGOs in Iran to do some joint activities.

* Ali tayefi is president of SSF-Iran and Editor of SSF newsletter “Updates”. See His C.V.

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