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The present organization,
recent accomplishments and up-coming activities of the Research
Committee on Sociocybernetics of the International Sociological
Association, RC51, were recently communicated to the parent organization
in the form of the statutory Activity Report covering the period
1998-2000. The substance of the Report is reproduced below. Notes
and tentative programs for the upcoming RC51 Annual Meeting in Panticosa,
Spain and the RC51 sessions at WCSS 2000 in Toronto, Canada are
reported further along in "RC51 News".
BOARD, RC51
President, BERND HORNUNG
Honorary Presidents, WALTER BUCKLEY and FELIX GEYER Vice-president,
VESSELA MISHEVA Secretary, RICHARD E. LEE Newsletter editors, FELIX
GEYER and COR VAN DIJKUM Book Review and MembersÕ Publications Editors,
PHILIP NICOLOPOULOS and BERNARD SCOTT Membership Drive and Conference
Announcements Coordinator, MICHAEL BYRON Note: as membership drive
coordinator, Mike Byron is assisted by GALIN GORNEV (Eastern Europe),
TORCUATO PEREZ DE GUZMAN (until his death March 17, 1999); succeeded
by JORGE GONZALEZ (Latin America) and MICHAEL G. TERPSTRA (North
America). Editors for New Developments Within and Outside of the
Social Sciences, TESSALENO CAMPOS DEVEZAS and PAUL MAITENY Scientific
Liaison with the Latin-American World, TORCUATO PEREZ DE GUZMAN
(until his death March 17, 1999); succeeded by JORGE GONZALEZ Coordinator
of Interim Conferences, FRANCISCO PARRA-LUNA Webmaster, CHAIME MARCUELLO
RC51 ANNUAL
MEETING, 1999 1st International Conference on Sociocybernetics Sociocybernetic
Bridges Between the Past, Present and Future: Problems of Emergence
and Complexity in Sustainable Systems
The Annual Meeting of
the Research Committee on Sociocybernetics, RC51 of the International
Sociological Association, took place at the Orthodox Academy of
Crete, Kolimbari, Chania, Greece from May 26th through May 31st,
1999. The organizing committee consisted of Felix Geyer, Richard
Lee and Philippos Nicolopoulos. The event was sponsored by the University
of Crete and KEK (adult training center) INTERSYN, Ioannina, Greece.
The Orthodox Academy of Crete is located on the northern coast of
Crete to the west of Chania, a beautiful and historic port city.
Both hotel and conference facilities at the academy were excellent
and everything possible was done to make our stay both comfortable
and productive. It was in this setting that the conference was inaugurated
on the morning of May 26th. Bernd Hornung, President of RC51, greeted
participants with a short address and all observed a moment of silence
in remembrance of Torcuato Perez de Guzman. Nikolaos Paritsis then
offered a warm welcome on behalf of the University of Crete. The
formal program of the conference included seven plenary sessions
during which nineteen papers were presented and discussed. An abstracts
committee had vetted all paper proposals on the basis of both a
250-word abstract and a 1000-word abridged paper; the members of
that committee, who served as volunteers, were Mike Byron, Tessaleno
Devezas, Felix Geyer, Bernd Hornung, Richard Lee, Paul Maiteny,
Vessela Misheva, Bernard Scott and Mike Terpstra. A listing of the
papers presented is included as Appendix 1 of this Report, while
the abstracts are available at the RC51 website at http://www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics.
In addition to the formal presentation and discussion of papers,
participants of the Crete conference had the opportunity to benefit
from any of four special sessions: three moderated by Heinrich Ahlemeyer,
including a "warm-up" at the beginning of the conference and two
evening sessions on the development of RC51. Bernd Hornung conducted
a simulation game entitled "Autopoiesis and Structural Coupling
- Learning by Experience". On May 31st, after having finished all
scientific sessions, board and business meetings, a group of participants
embarked on an excursion that took them past Chania towards Rethymnon
and Iraklion, with a stopover to see the Campus of the University
of Crete, and Festos, Agia Galini and Spilion on the way back.
RC51 ANNUAL MEETING,
2000 2nd International Conference on Sociocybernetics
Sociocybernetic Designs for Globalization and Sustainability:
Self-Organization and Management of Complex Evolving Systems
The Annual Meeting of
the Research Committee on Sociocybernetics, RC51 of the International
Sociological Association, will take place at the Balneario de Panticosa,
Spain, June 25th - July 1st, 2000. The Balneario de Panticosa is
situated at a height of about 1600 meters in the Spanish Pyrenees,
with a mountain lake nearby--an environment particularly conducive
to concentrated, creative work. Felix Geyer and Chaime Marcuello
are managing the organization of the conference; the Abstracts Committee,
consisting this year of Mike Byron, Bernd Hornung, Richard E. Lee,
Vessela Misheva, Bernard Scott and Mike Terpstra, is vetting paper
proposals by the same process used in 1999. The tentative list of
presentations is included as Appendix 2 of this Report, while again
the abstracts are available at the RC51 website.
WORLD CONGRESS OF THE SYSTEMS SCIENCES, in conjunction
with the 44th ANNUAL MEETING, INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE SYSTEMS
SCIENCES Understanding Complexity: The Systems Sciences in the New
Millennium
In celebration of the
new millennium, RC51, along with some 20-odd "co-host" organizations
in the systems fields, will join with the International Society
for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) to organize a three-day World Congress
of the Systems Sciences in Toronto, Canada, July 16-22, 2000. The
purpose of the Congress will be to provide a scientific forum for
addressing the many challenges that humankind will face in the new
century. Attesting to the integration of the Research Committee
on Sociocybernetics in the systems and cybernetics fields and the
close contacts it has with other such national and international
organizations, RC51 will participate in this World Congress with
four paper-presentation sessions and a plenary session. The tentative
program of the RC51 sessions, with paper proposals vetted in the
usual way, is included as Appendix 3 of this Report.
ASSOCIATE EDITORSHIP Journal of Applied Systems Studies (JASS)
Methodologies and Applications for Systems Approaches
The Journal of Applied
Systems Studies addresses all aspects of systemic analysis. It invites
contributions from practitioners and academics, as well as national
and international policy and standard-making bodies, and anticipates
becoming the definitive international reference source for such
communications. Indicative of the stature and accomplishments of
RC51, the Editor-in-Chief of JASS, Nikitas A. Assimakopoulos, invited
RC51 to supply an associate editor for applied sociocybernetics,
as well as referees judging contributions in the field. At present,
Richard E. Lee fills the position of Associate Editor; Referees
are Iris Balsamo, Lucio Biggiero, Bernard Scott, Markus Schwaninger,
Karl-Heinz Simon, Mike Terpstra, and Dimitris Tsagdis.
MONTREAL VOLUME
Felix Geyer and Johannes
van der Zowen have consigned the final edited manuscript of a collection
of thirteen papers presented in various RC51 sessions at the World
Congress of Sociology, Montreal, 1998 to Greenwood Press. The volume
will be entitled Sociocybernetics: Complexity, Autopoiesis and Observation
of Social Systems and should appear in late 2000. It is divided
into three parts, corresponding to the subtitle of the volume.
CYBER PRESENCE
In June 1998, RC51 established
its own website at the University of Zaragoza (http://www.unizar.es/sociocybernetics)
where a detailed description of the group's activities, past, present
and future, are posted and updated. The website contains: abstracts
of some 100 papers presented at the World Congress of Sociology
in Montreal, abstracts of 19 papers presented at the 1999 annual
meeting in Kolimbari, Greece, and some 40 presentation proposals
for the 2000 annual meeting in Panticosa, Spain; a 400-item bibliography
on sociocybernetics; personal website addresses of some 65 RC51
members; detailed news about upcoming conferences and other activities;
and links to other websites in related fields, such as General Systems
Theory, first- and second-order cybernetics, autopoiesis, chaos
theory and complexity studies. The RC51 discussion list, entitled
"Sociocybernet", has been moved to the RC51 website at the University
of Zaragoza and is now maintained by webmaster Chaime Marcuello.
All members are automatically subscribed. Mike Terpstra, RC51 board
member, has established a discussion list entitled Jottings on Luhmann,
dedicated to the diffusion of the theoretical perspectives of its
namesake, Niklas Luhmann. The list is aimed at an international
audience with a special emphasis on its American component.
NEWSLETTER
In 1998, RC51 published
two issues of its Newsletter: Volume 3, number 1, January of 15,000
words and Volume 3, number 2, July of 11,000 words. In 1999, two
issues were also published: Volume 4, number 1, January and Volume
4, number 2 July, each of more than 24,000 words. The Newsletter
was edited by Felix Geyer and Cor van Dijkum. While the Journal
of Sociocybernetics (to be available for downloading from the website
twice yearly in the Spring and the Fall) will supplant the Newsletter,
it will continue to publish the normal Newsletter rubrics in the
"RC51 News" section.
JOURNAL OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS
The Journal of Sociocybernetics
responds to the growing interest evinced in sociocybernetics over
the past two decades and the concomitant demand for a venue expressly
dedicated to disseminating work in the field. Indeed, sociocybernetics
has attracted a broad range of scholars whose departmental affiliations
represent the entire spectrum of the disciplines and whose countries
of origin attest to the wide international appeal of sociocybernetic
approaches. Journal of Sociocybernetics extends an open invitation
to, and welcomes submissions from, the totality of that ecumenical
community of RC51 scholars engaged in the common quest to explain
and understand social reality holistically and self-reflexively
without forsaking a concern human values. The Journal of Sociocybernetics
will be edited by Richard E. Lee, Felix Geyer and Cor van Dijkum
and RC51 Board members Byron, Devezas, Gonzalez, Hornung, Misheva,
Nikolopoulos, Scott and Terpstra will make up the editorial board.
The Journal will become the official organ of the Research Committee
on Sociocybernetics, RC51, of the International Sociological Association
with the appearance of its first issue in May 2000.
OBITUARIES
The Bulletin of the
International Sociological Association published Bernd Hornung's
obituary of Niklas Luhmann in its spring 1999 issue (no. 78-79).
Along with RC51 members in general, Luhmann's passing was especially
mourned by those Board members who had known him personally, such
as Bernd Hornung, Felix Geyer and Vessela Misheva. The death of
RC51 board member Torcuato Perez de Guzman was memorialized in an
obituary by José Luis Piñuel published in the winter 1999 issue
(nº. 80) of the ISA Bulletin.
MEMBERSHIP
RC51 presently counts
113 members in good standing with ISA. RC51 also counts 126 non-ISA
affiliated members. A complete list of RC51 members is attached
to this Report as Appendix 4. Non-ISA affiliated members are regularly
approached with an invitation to join our parent organization. Some
of these efforts have had success, even in cases involving non-sociologists,
despite the difficulties of convincing our highly interdisciplinary
membership of the benefits accruing to them in joining multiple
professional associations.
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