This text is based on a presentation delivered at the Higher Seminar in Sociology at Uppsala University, March 4, 2026:

“Sociology as Symbolic Capital”: A Critical Reading of the ISA’s Decision to Suspend the Israeli Sociological Society

Thank you for the invitation to the sociology department. I am delighted to have the opportunity to return to my alma mater in Uppsala and discuss these issues with colleagues whose work has influenced my thinking for so many years. While this discussion may revolve around a sensitive topic, hopefully we can disagree in a productive, sociological manner.

Rather than starting with the ISA controversy itself, I would like to begin with a broader sociological question that has preoccupied me in recent years: What happens to the autonomy of a scientific field when moral and political positioning increasingly become central forms of recognition within academia?

Recent discussions suggest that we may be witnessing a transformation in the ethos of academic life. I am here referring to Bruce Macfarlane’s argument about a shift from CUDOS (the four norms of science proposed by Robert Merton) to DECAY (a set of norms focused on egoism and advocacy in neoliberal times), and the 2024 book We Have Never Been Woke by the sociologist Musa al-Gharbi. With their arguments, I want to share my critical reflections on how external moral, and political criteria increasingly shape the distribution of symbolic capital.

This story was initially experiential rather than theoretical. Following 7 October 2023, I became interested in how the war was discussed within Swedish academia. Despite the fact that many of us — me included — do not work on, or frankly know much about, the Middle East as an empirical field, I was surprised by the level of emotion involved.

In March 2024, I wrote an article about the denial of Hamas’ sexual violence, particularly on the left, which I had observed in Sweden. The article discussed the possibility of acknowledging the pain experienced by Israeli women who were raped or killed – while also speaking out against the terrible war crimes committed by the Israeli government, by highlighting the gendered aspects of the conflict.

In the short article published in Fempers, I wrote: ‘Postcolonial theorists have pointed to the difficulty of speaking for and representing the subaltern. What we can do, however, is create discursive spaces for these voices. From our safe distance, we should also be able to acknowledge the mutilated and deceased Israeli woman, and allow ourselves to mourn her life, even though she is on the ‘wrong’ side of the conflict lines, which in this case are more than two.’

Immediately after publication, hundreds of comments appeared on social media from colleagues, friends, professors, intellectuals and activists. These included personal attacks on a scale that I had never experienced before and accusations that questioned both my research and professional legitimacy.

I was called a racist, a white feminist, a Karen and a supporter of genocide and dead children. People I had known for decades ended our friendships, both online and IRL. I became, so to speak, contaminated.

Some found it particularly provocative that I was a professor of ethnicity and migration, a position which they expected would come with specific set of views on the matter. Instead of engaging with the arguments, I was seen as a traitor for occupying such a position as a white person.

Two weeks after publishing 902 words in a rather marginal feminist magazine, I received an email from the co-supervisor of my doctoral student. She informed me that I would no longer be continuing in my supervisory role, which I had held for almost ten years. The doctoral student had suddenly decided that I should quit. I was not being replaced; I was simply being relieved of my duties. An already signed form was attached, and I was asked to sign it before the decision could be approved by the institution’s board.

This made me wonder about two things: Firstly, how could a foreign policy issue provoke such strong emotions in academics who neither research the topic nor have family or other connections to the region? Secondly, how could the basic principles of academia be reconciled with being dismissed from an assignment after what seemed to me to be a rather uncontroversial analytical article?

Rather than treating these reactions as personal events, I began to see them as empirical material for a reflexive sociology of academia. The agitated reactions prompted me to ask how moral claims, political alignments and symbolic capital circulated within the discipline and how academics positioned themselves in relation to other dominant positions within the field as systematic relations of interdependence.

Building on this analysis, today’s presentation uses the ISA decision and the debates surrounding it as a lens through which to examine broader transformations in the academic ethos — not to resolve the controversy, but to explore how competing principles of legitimation are articulated within sociology.

Like many others, I became interested in how the war generated protests within academia, involving tens of thousands of students and staff. To this day, thousands of Swedish researchers have signed petitions ranging from calls for a boycott and suspension of Israeli organisations to expressions of solidarity with students, and statements on Stina Wollter’s possible antisemitism. Not since the mass protests against the Vietnam War has such a united and long-lasting international front been formed against a war. The manifestations against the Iraq War were widespread but short-lived.

In order to understand the engagement with, and subsequent reactions to, my article within Swedish academia from a sociological perspective, I wrote an essay for the magazine Parabol called ‘Palestine Can Be a Form of Self-Interest’.

Sociologically, I wondered whether and how the fighting spirit of Palestine was connected to life and relations at home. In other words, politically driven researchers may not be entirely altruistic, but rather be driven by, or at least connected to, a struggle of self-interest in legitimising their positions within a struggle for symbolic capital within their respective fields.

In line with Bourdieu, the sociologist Musa al-Gharbi observes that the major awakenings in the 20th century have coincided with national economic turmoil and elite overproduction. Al-Gharbi concludes that the many recent social protests for ‘social justice’ may be as much about power relations around us than they are about what is happening outside our institutional walls and national borders. For example, protests against the Vietnam War began when white people realised they too had to go to war (and not just non-white minorities).

It is not a coincidence that protests take place at university campuses. Universities tend to play a central role in this symbolic economy, he argues. Rather than changing the political course of events these protests result in symbolic changes like new speech codes and performative gestures “to show that one is ‘up’ on social justice”. In this sense, activism becomes a strategy within the academic field, where moral and political commitments function as sources of symbolic capital.

From a different perspective, Bruce Macfarlane identifies a shift in scientific norms, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, moving from universalism and organised scepticism to egoism and advocacy. In the new DECAY paradigm, he argues that HSS researchers are encouraged to demonstrate their positionality as a source of legitimisation, rather than downplaying their personal investments, as in the CUDOS model.

According to Bourdieu, the most important form of recognition is ‘field-specific symbolic capital’. Bourdieu recognised early on that international publications in the Web of Science were not the only path to achieving status. Being visible in non-academic media and claiming moral validity was equally important. Taking a political and intellectual stance could thus be crucial for a researcher’s recognition within and outside the scientific community. Hence, merits — in terms of citations and publications — and symbolic capital do not necessarily overlap.

An academic who takes the ‘right’ position on the ‘right’ issue can gain more attention and recognition compared to others in the same field. These myriads of written and unwritten rules of the academic world are paramount for researchers.

I wondered what the struggle of the politically engaged researcher was about. Was it related to the marginalised actors that the Brahmin Left — as Thomas Piketty coined them — often claim to be fighting for? Or was the main battle taking place within the dominant classes, between cultural and economic factions concerning the value of cultural versus economic capital?

If there is a centre of power in the humanities and social sciences, it is probably close to Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Internationally renowned scholars from these universities can be viewed as major agents of the ‘intellectual field’: a group of academics elevated to the status of writers and great thinkers.

The fact that the epicentre of the protests has been located to the US academia is important because the moral validity of symbolic capital, on which the vibrant Palestine solidarity movement depends, is shaped by the interconnection between national and international protests within the academic field.

Notably, some of the world’s most prominent political academics, including Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser and Cornel West (founder of the Justice for All Party in the 2024 elections), have firmly supported Palestine. This is significant because they are situated at the heart of the imperialism that anti-imperialists claim to combat. Proximity to established US scholars thus lends legitimacy to peripheral actors in Sweden and other European countries.

Political researchers seeking a share of this valuable symbolic capital would be wise to align themselves with dominant thinkers in the field. The concept of subject-oriented opinion positions captures this idea.

Here, opinions are formed in relation to other people rather than the question itself. In order to ‘think right’, one should align with the opinions of influential figures in the field whose symbolic capital is already recognised. This not only involves ‘thinking alike’ someone but also strengthens one’s own position through proximity to these important figures.

To navigate the academic field successfully, it is important to keep track of where a professor with considerable symbolic capital stands on an issue, and to take the same side — i.e. to stand as close as possible to the priest in the ambo.

In this sense, subject-oriented opinion positions are a two-way process whereby those with recognised symbolic capital can disseminate it to others who share the same view, thereby strengthening their own symbolic capital.

This is why the battle for the consensual ‘right’ view is so crucial.

Hence, people with recognised symbolic capital determine which views are adopted, even if people claim to speak on behalf of a position of resistance.

Speaking for historically marginalised and disadvantaged groups provides a particular kind of symbolic capital that al-Gharbi calls ‘totemic capital’. Totemic capital is defined as “the epistemic and moral authority afforded to an individual on the basis of bearing one or more totems, based on claimed or perceived membership of a historically marginalised or disadvantaged group”, such as LGBTQI+, Native American or disabled people.

Totem bearers are further perceived as having heightened insight, honesty, authenticity and moral superiority.

Those who do not belong to a historically marginalised or disadvantaged group themselves, such as university professors, can thus claim to fight for those who do.

From this perspective, the power relations we are embedded in do not cease to exist despite the war in Gaza. Perhaps even the contrary. Academic relations become most apparent at this point, when a real showdown between different actors, as well as a reorganisation of these relations, are taking place.

When I heard about the reactions to the Swedish Sociological Association’s response to the International Sociological Association’s decision to suspend the Israeli Sociological Society I wrote a short debate article for Curie Magazine, advocating for the defence of the sociological field’s autonomy.

I referred to Caspar Hirschi and Alexander Bogner from the German and Austrian Sociological Associations, who pointed out a fundamental problem with the suspension of the ISS: when science becomes an arena for political and activist statements, it loses its unique position.

The ISA’s decision is therefore not only a moral stance, but also a research policy choice which risks undermining the autonomy of scientific fields.

Hirschi and Bogner argue that when political battles or advocacy are brought into science, the university becomes “a protected political workshop where uncomfortable opinions and unwelcome speakers are not given a platform”. Science is then expected “no longer to deliver knowledge, but confessions, which should be uniform”.

Here, an alternative set of rules is being established in a protective bubble where only morally correct positions are accepted, and morality is expressed through academic discipline.

In my article, I expressed concern that the drive to hold Israeli sociologists collectively responsible for a potential genocide could, in the long term, undermine our independence and autonomy as a field.

I mean that by suspending a national sociological association based on its state’s actions, the field of sociology is allowing itself to be controlled by external forces, thus abolishing its autonomy.

This establishes the dangerous principle that academics’ access to international scientific discourse depends on the outside world’s assessment of their nation’s politics as a reflection of the government. This is the exact opposite of an academic space where critical knowledge can be produced independently of political power.

One could argue that the situation in Gaza is unique and therefore requires unique measures, as was the case with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Without taking a stance on this issue, the problem with that comparison is that Israeli sociologists such as Eva Illouz have provided sharp and consistent domestic criticism of Israel’s policies. Her book The Emotional Life of Populism: How Fear, Disgust, Resentment, and Love Undermine Democracy, written from within Israeli society, offers analytical tools that are particularly valuable in the current situation.

My article triggered criticism from various quarters. The first came from Samt Selman, a criminology doctoral student, who argued that:

“A serious sociological analysis inevitably leads to the conclusion that academia and its actors are just as intertwined with political power structures as any other social institution.”

I interpret this to mean that academia has no autonomy. It’s just another facet of political structures. To some extent, this is true, as Macfarelane points to the deep intertwining of academia with the neoliberal paradigm. We definitely need to consider what the neoliberal paradigm means for us all, not only in terms of economic systems.

However, unlike Selman, I would argue that our intellectual positions have the potential to be something else than just another enabler of political power structures.

The second response to my article is from Anton Törnberg, an associate professor of sociology at Gothenburg University. His critical reading came from a different angle.

According to Törnberg, I distort the meaning of the suspension and the academic boycott by making Israeli sociologists “collectively responsible for a potential genocide”. The academic boycott is institutional, not individual. It is directed at organisations and educational institutions, not individual researchers, who still have the opportunity to participate in international contexts, publish research and collaborate with colleagues.

This is probably one of the most common arguments of BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) and similar organisations. I doubt any of these organisations have been in contact with Israeli scholars who have been cancelled from publications, presentations and invitations for being associated with named departments. It is difficult to separate individual academics from their university affiliations. This is why university affiliations are so important.

According to Israeli sociologists, these cancellations have clearly weakened the centre-to-centre-left camp in Israel, which has historically been based in universities. In that sense, it has had real political effects.

Törnberg further compares the current situation to the previous suspension of Russia.

Such views raise a host of follow-up questions, as the SFF rightly points out. Which other associations should be suspended? From which acts of violence and oppression by which states must our associations officially distance themselves to remain in the ISA?

Over the past months, the Iranian regime has killed tens of thousands of protesters, including many students. The US started is currently blocking fuel to Cuba, causing real suffering and food shortages for innocent people. And in this very moment, we are witnessing major war crimes committed in the Middle East on daily basis.

Unlike Russian researchers, Israeli scholars have the opportunity — and take advantage of it — to criticise their government. Many of them have protested intensely against the war. Törnberg himself mentions that two hundred sociologists and anthropologists wrote an open letter to the ISA, demanding:

“We, Israeli sociologists and anthropologists, call for an immediate ceasefire, an end to the starvation of the people of Gaza and an end to the ethnic cleansing. We call for the return of the hostages in an agreement that will end the war. We call for increased aid to the civilian population in Gaza, the restoration of electricity and water supplies, and the rehabilitation of hospitals and universities in the Gaza Strip.”

As I see it, this supports my arguments.

However, Törnberg suggests that my interpretation of academic freedom and scientific autonomy ‘in a world that is burning’ is reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984. He writes: “Continuing to collaborate with — and thereby also financially support — academic institutions integrated into an illegal occupation and a war that more and more people consider to be genocide, is presented as a defence of scientific independence. This is a line of reasoning that turns concepts on their head: irresponsibility is reinterpreted as autonomy, and moral neutrality as a critical stance.”

My response to this critique aligns with that of the SSF. In the latest issue of Sociologisk Forskning, Åsa Wettergren on behalf of the SSF board writes: “When it comes to politics, neither I nor the board have stated that sociology can be apolitical. Rather, we have stated that those who wish to can strive to let their scientific results speak for themselves.

As the ISA letter points out, sociological knowledge is inherently politically charged. This is one reason why sociology is a thorn in the side of authoritarian regimes. However, this does not imply a moral obligation for sociologists to be politically active or to take a political stance.”

The SSF’s statement was not written in response to Törnberg, but in reply to one hundred sociologists who protested against the SSF’s letter to the ISA. In their letter of objection, they wrote:

“If the SSF board wishes to appear ‘apolitical’, it is nonetheless bound to follow the ethical principles that form the basis of both the university as an institution and sociology as a profession. Maintaining cooperation with organisations that collaborate with an occupying power that indiscriminately bombs civilians is a flagrant violation of these principles, which are ultimately based on fundamental human rights.”

As al-Gharbi notes, despite recurring social uprisings for ‘social justice’ and fights for marginalised groups over the past decades, inequalities are rising, wages are stagnating and cities are becoming increasingly segregated by race, income and education.

This shows that our engagement with marginalised groups is not necessarily a way forward for transforming the world. Perhaps because we are more interested in justification than justice.

As part of the class of symbolic capitalists – which we all are by definition in this room – we would like to portray ourselves as advocates for, or representatives of, marginalised and disadvantaged groups. Therefore, it is no coincidence that most protests for Palestine have taken place on university campuses, and often on those of Ivy League institutions.

But what if sociology itself is mainly used to enhance our own personal symbolic capital? What are the broader implications of such a shift?

If we are increasingly expected to profit from our academic ideas — which can be achieved through activism — how can we distinguish this from what Macfarlane refers to as egoism or Bourdieu’s concept of self-interest in the neoliberal era?

Additionally, al-Gharbi discusses four aspects of cognitive processes at play in egalitarian discourses, which he calls moral credentialing, moral licensing, moral cleansing and moral disengagement.

By examining institutions that adopt DEI policies, he observes that “when white people publicly affirm their commitment to anti-racism, they often become more likely to subsequently favor other whites in decisions like hiring and promotion, even as they grow more confident that race played no role in their decision-making”.

Through moral cleansing, we eliminate our shame or redefine situations as if they will “even things out” ethically and result in a net positive.

He continues, “in environments where antiracism, feminism, and other egalitarian frameworks are widely and very publicly embraced, it can become easier for people to act in racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory ways while convinced that their behaviors are fair.”

Consequently, I think we should be careful not to reduce sociology to a simple split between political and apolitical stances, especially since we all know that causality cannot be taken for granted. I sense that sociology, and perhaps academia at large, is increasingly being used for our own purposes and interests, rather than the other way around.

What message are we sending to junior scholars when we weaponise sociology as a tool for political views rather than using it to explore and criticise society itself?

The challenge for sociology today may therefore be formulated as follows: how can we engage in reflexive and critical sociological analyses from our symbolic capitalist positions in an increasingly neoliberal era, where symbolic capital is perhaps becoming the main currency in sociology, the social sciences, and academia itself?

Thank you for listening!