RN29 - Social Theory

General session

After the decades of structuralism – poststructuralism (Cl. Levi-Strauss, M. Foucault, P. Bourdieu, J. Derrida) and constructivism – poststructivism (N. Luhmann, B. Latour) with their different attempts to overcome the essentialist and subjectivist thinking in sociology and social sciences, social theory is facing again the same primary questions:

·        What are the constitutive forces of the common social relations?

·        How is community and co-existence  possible?

·        How can we understand the increasing varieties of singular form of existence?

·        What are the asymmetric dynamics of the social development and their differences and inequalities, as well new forms of dominance?

All these social theoretical questions inherently provide a series of methodological problems, such as:

·        How to think in a new way about the objective-subjective structure of the constitution of the social world as well as its phenomenological and hermeneutical extensions?

·        Further, what are the relationships between material, structural, functional, and systemic causes and mechanisms of social dynamics?

·        What is the relationship between knowledge, practice, and imaginations in the digital era?

·        Is the so called new materialism really a new realistic view of the constitution of the social world?

·        How is critical thinking in the ages of contingency possible?

·        What kind of new concepts and frames are necessary for reflecting on the processes of globalisation and global cultural changes, as well as what can be recovered from a new rethinking of the sociological classics?

Specific Sessions:

1.      Public Sociology and Sociological Imagination

2.      Critical Thinking in the Age of Contingency

3.      Global Impacts and Singular Form of Existence

4.      Social Theory and Identity Politics

5.      Theorizing New Forms of Domination

6.      Social Theory and Cultural Sociology

7.      Social Phenomenology and the New Materialism

8.      Social Imaginaries

9.      Sociology as a Cosmopolitan Science

Notes for authors

Authors are invited to submit their abstract either to the general session or any specific session. Please submit only to one session. After abstract evaluation, coordinators will have the chance to transfer papers between sessions where applicable.

Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. Each paper session will have the duration of 1.5 hours. Normally sessions will include 4 papers.

Abstracts must be submitted online to the submission platform, see below. Abstracts sent by email cannot be accepted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and selected for presentation by the Research Network; the letter of notification will be sent by the conference software system in early April 2015.
 

Abstract submission deadline (extended):                                                                                 15^th February 2015

Abstract submission platform:                                                                                          www.esa12thconference.eu

If you have further questions on the conference, please visit the conference website. For further information on the Research Network, please visit www.europeansociology.org.