Essay prize and linguistic discrimination

In response to Judy Kessler:

>It is a shame that FURS opts to penalize those young non-native scholars
>who, for reasons often not of their chosing, happened to pursue graduate
>studies after having reached the age of 35.


Actually I find something else far more worrying and I wish the
International Sociological Association would give it some serious thought
instead of simply completely forgetting about it - and that's the linguistic
discrimination  of Third World countries:

Read carefully:

>. Essays written in the following languages will be
>> considered: English (provided the author is not a national of
>> the UK, the USA, anglophone Canada, Australia, New Zealand,
>> Ireland or any other native English-speaking community), French,
>> Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian.
>>
Now - am I the only one to notice that these are all European and by and
large First World languages and that major `Third World' languages like
Turkish, Farsi, Hindhi, Malay and (God forbid !) Arabic are absent. I
specifically mention these ones since in each of them there's a large (in
Arabic even a very large) sociological literature.

How can an `international sociological association' ever really become an
`international' association and have the serious dialogue with the Third
World it is verbally commited to if it immediately erects a `First World'
linguistic fence around itself ?

There's already a major linguistic barrier between Arabic scholars and those
from English-speaking countries and with the inevitable spread of Hindhi as
medium of national scholarly communication we'll see another fence erected
around the Subcontinent as well very soon.

For the supposed scholarly dialogue between the First World and the Third
World is now entirely going in ONE direction only (and is perpetuated by the
utter unwillingness of  `First World' scholars to consider anything in a
Third World language as even meriting attention. The, `if it's good it
should be in English', mentality). English books are being translated into,
say, Farsi, Turkish or Arabic but how many Arabic or Farsi scholarly works
are EVER being translated into English ?  In Farsi I can't think of even a
single one.

And YES English-only speakers, writers and readers of this lists: there ARE
departments of sociology in Teheran or Cairo - and YES they DO publish
scores of books, and YES they ARE important. But - because of this
linguistic slant against Third World languages - I'm very afraid to most
readers of this list this is news.

R.J. Barendse
Leiden University