SSSP 2025 Annual Meeting
CALL FOR PAPERS SUBMISSION DEADLINE
All papers must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Time) on January 31, 2025 in order to be considered.
Current Server Date and Time: Saturday, December 21, 2024 (Eastern Time)
Listed below are the sessions for the 2025 Annual Meeting.
If you encounter any issues using the Call for Papers system, please contact us at sssp@sssp1.org for assistance. For more information, visit the Call for Papers FAQ.
Please submit or view your extended abstract (required) and paper (optional).
Additionally, review the approved annual meeting policy statements.
If you have any questions about the SSSP Annual Meeting visit the Annual Meeting FAQ.
You may filter the session display by selecting from the sponsor list or meeting type. To select multiple sponsors, hold down the Control Key (Command Key on Mac) while clicking the sponsor names.
Session # | Session Title | Sponsor(s) | Organizer(s) |
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1 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Co-constructing Methodologies Towards Just and Sustainable Futures-THEMATIC
Session Description
In this session, we seek work that is rooted in community voice and disrupts deficit-based narratives in community-based participatory action research. We hope to raise examples of methodologies that center epistemic justice through meaningful co-creation. This session promotes an research ethics grounded in relationality, disrupting the university-academic divide, as well as global north and south divides in knowledge production and social problem definitions.
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2 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Power to the People: What is Insurgent Sociology?-THEMATIC
Session Description
This panel seeks to foster a critical dialogue on how sociological practices can disrupt hegemonic discourses and empower marginalized voices, much in line with the critical frameworks discussed in the Critical Sociology Journal. We encourage contributions that interrogate power relations, challenge socio-political structures, and engage in reflexive critique while inviting diverse perspectives on the role of sociology in activism. Presenters should consider the implications of insurgent approaches in various contexts, including but not limited to racial justice, environmental activism, and economic inequality. Join us in redefining sociology’s role in addressing pressing social issues and fostering transformative change through engaging discussions and collaborative learning. We encourage submissions from all: practitioners, activists, community leaders, and academics.
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3 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Transformative Justice: Theory and Research in Pursuit of Emancipatory Power, Agency, Community, and Peacemaking-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session invites papers and presentations focusing broadly on theories and research on/in transformative justice praxes: for communities, peacemaking, and agency addressing root causes of violence and inequality, fostering community and solidarity, and realizing emancipatory power and healing. Submissions may explore a broad range of topics, such as justice for the Global Majority/Global South, restorative practices, community-engaged work, Indigenous, post-colonial, and grassroots justice models, intersectional approaches to justice and power, political praxis and transformation, social justice and social change, practicing and teaching transformative justice, and approaches to and strategies for transformative justice research. We welcome theoretical, empirical, and interdisciplinary contributions engaged with diverse methodologies and contexts. We encourage submissions from all: practitioners, activists, community leaders, and academics.
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4 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Critical Reflections on Mutual Aid and Anticapitalist Approaches to Community and Care
Session Description
This session encourages researchers, scholars, social workers, organizational leaders, and community organizers of all backgrounds and professional settings to bring together a diverse collection of works on mutual aid, anticapitalist, and other alternatives to dominant community organizing models. Through a collective dialogue catalyzed by a diverse group presenters reflecting on, developing, and employing alternatives to the dominant models of community change, sessions organizers aim to create a collaborative session drawing from not-for-profit, nongovernmental, community activist, social movement, and social work practice across a number of areas (e.g., health, poverty, housing, criminal justice, disabilities, etc.), including those from global/international experiences and perspectives.
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5 | Reparations, Reckoning, and Regeneration from Global and Local Contexts-THEMATIC
Session Description
Reparations for traumatized communities have been long advocated for by historians, social scientists, and community activists. Yet, the realization of reparations has not yet come to pass. In the US, conversations have focused on financial reparation to descendants of racial slavery. However, from a broader and transnational perspective, reparations extend beyond financial into practices and processes that fall into 5 distinct categories as put forth by the United Nations: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction, and guarantees of non-repetition. At the same time, there are formal and informal bodies that have successfully implemented reparations from whom we can learn. In this session, we seek to highlight these emerging movements and practices, as well as the burgeoning research around reparations and their impact.
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6 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: The Everyday Work of Abolition-THEMATIC
Session Description
We are facing crises in which housing is not seen as a right, substances are allowed to be corrupted which leads to death, those with the most financial influence are destroying the environment, and the prison industrial complex is targeting those most marginalized. These crises are organized by multiple social, political, material, economic, and institutionalized systems. In response, we are imagining new ways of taking action together. Abolition provides ways to imagine, strategize, and act for justice, wellbeing, and care outside of systems that are unacceptable. We call on those taking action in this pursuit to illuminate the work of abolition and to contribute to a shared dialogue about how we can better incorporate abolition into our lives.
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7 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: How to Teach Social Change in the Classroom
Session Description
This session will explore innovative approaches to teaching social change in the classroom, equipping educators with strategies to inspire critical thinking, activism, and social responsibility among students. Participants will engage with practical methods for integrating topics such as equity, inclusion, justice, and community engagement into their curriculum. Presentations will explore a range of approaches, from case studies, interactive discussions, integration of research into lectures, to real-world examples. The aim is to focus on how to develop learning environments that empower students to address societal issues and become agents of positive change in their communities and beyond.
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8 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Right to Resist: Insurgent Counter-Hegemony and Agency of the Unapologetic, Emancipatory, Revolutionary, and Transformative Kinds-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session explores themes around the framing of resistance, particularly the notion that it be orderly and easily ignored. This session interrogates the political and symbolic struggles against state, institutional and interpersonal violence, like racism, war, genocide, structural violence and the implicit demand that those who are oppressed suffer quietly and gratefully. The session concept is engaging the question of “who gets to determine the “right” or “acceptable” way to resist your oppressor?
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9 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Fighting for Socioeconomic Rights: The Growing Crises of Structural Violence and our Human Right to Exist
Session Description
Across the world, economic instability, austerity, growing inequality, and the deprivation of socioeconomic rights for oppressed groups of all kinds challenge and undermine human rights and people’s wellbeing. This session invites work on the struggles people the world over are engaged in: fighting for, moving towards, creating and protecting, and/or restoring their rights. Organizers welcome submissions on a broad range of “fighters” (e.g., community organizing, nonornamental organizations, social movements, participatory-action research, scholar-activism, critical pedagogy, labor unions, policy advocacy) and topics (e.g., racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, austerity, labor, human rights, dispossession).
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10 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Collective Care in Action: The Praxis of Solidarity through Mutual Aid-THEMATIC
Session Description
A critical dialogue session through which organizers, activities, and researchers can collaborative discuss, spotlight, and synthesize mutual aid praxis as a transformative and formative practice of community care, social justice, political praxis and solidarity. The work of activist and those outside of academia, especially those from Chicago and Chicago-land area organizations, are encouraged to participate. As a venue for more than just scholars and researchers, this session encourages mutual aid organizers and organizational leaders to not only participate, but lead discussions on their organization, their challenges faced, solutions found, and, in dialogue with others in the session, discuss the connections between and across their experiences and discoveries therein.
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11 | Community-Based Solutions to Criminal Justice Problems-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session will present papers that address community-based solutions to criminal justice problems. The impact of the justice system on communities (particularly minority communities experiencing poverty) has been profound. Therefore, community members may be best poised to address the problems surrounding the implantation of criminal justice. Authors are encouraged to discuss a range of topics from program evaluation, to experiences of community members, and more.
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12 | Victimization and Victims
Session Description
This session will present papers that address issues of victims and victimization. Studying the experiences of victims is a key aspect of understanding crime and justice. Authors are encouraged to discuss a range of topics from victimology, the experiences of victims and advocates, and more.
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13 | The Perpetual Crisis of Mass Incarceration
Session Description
This session will present papers that address issues in incarceration. Despite overwhelming evidence that the prison system creates more harm than good, the United States still imprisons more people than any other country. To call this a crisis is an understatement. Authors are encouraged to discuss a range of topics from the history and scope of the problem, to the experiences of those impacted by incarceration, to remedies for this crisis, and more.
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14 | Juvenile Justice and Systems of Surveillance
Session Description
This session will present papers that address issues in the juvenile justice system and the role of the system in surveillance of youth. Authors are encouraged to discuss a range of topics from the history of surveillance approaches to the experiences of youth in the system, program evaluation, collateral consequences of surveillance, and more.
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15 | Teaching about Conflict and Inequalities in Challenging Times
Session Description
This session will present papers that address challenges and strategies for teaching about conflict in unprecedented times. Attacks on DEI, books, and professors make it clear that teaching about social problems is a task that must be navigated with care. Authors are encouraged to discuss how an insurgent approach might guide educators to confront important issues and teach about conflict and social problems.
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16 | Social Problems Theory and Decarceration/Abolitionist Movements in Prison Studies
Session Description
From Mathiesen’s (1974) The Politics of Abolition to contemporary, critical theorizing regarding ‘e-carceration’ (Arnett, 2019-2020), social movements within and beyond academia have aimed to ameliorate the caustic impacts of mass incarceration, especially in the United States. This session invites consideration of how social problems theorizing informs decarceration movements and abolitionist thinking and action. In what ways do critical approaches inform efforts and understandings regarding decarceration and/or abolitionism? What are the strengths and possible limitations of these frameworks? Rather than explicate trends in decarceration per se, this session foregrounds the role of theory in relation to the goals and outcomes of decarceration and/or abolitionism movements.
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17 | Racial Disparities in CJ/CL System
Session Description
This session will present papers that address the racial disparities in the criminal justice/criminal legal system. Throughout its history, the system has been plagued by racial disparities at almost every level. Authors are encouraged to discuss a range of topics from the history and scope of the problem, to the experiences of those impacted by disparities, to remedies for the problem, and more.
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18 | Category Crisis: South Asian Immigrant Experiences in the US-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session delves into the complexities of South Asian immigrant life in the United States. It addresses the ongoing challenges faced by this diverse community, particularly in the context of the Census category labeling crisis, which often fails to accurately capture the rich tapestry of South Asian identities and experiences. The session will also highlight the struggles that South Asian immigrants encounter as they navigate between their cultural heritage and the expectations of their new homeland. Through personal narratives and scholarly insights, attendees will gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of the assimilation process for South Asian immigrants, and the balancing act of preserving one's roots while integrating into American society.
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19 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Imperial Policing and Counterinsurgency-THEMATIC
Session Description
Policing is intimately tied to the histories of racial slavery, (settler)colonialism, and militarism. In this session, scholars examine the historical and contemporary dynamics of policing as imperial acts that reach far beyond the routine actions of law enforcement. Extant research contends for the framework of “Carceral Warfare” to understand how policing, prisons, surveillance, and other means of social control are acts of war and counterinsurgency. Therefore, this session has a dual focus. First, to situate the mundane and pervasive forms of policing within the legacies of imperialism, militarism, racial slavery, and Carceral Warfare generally. Second, to examine the variegated ways racially marginalized and criminalized populations resist policing at all levels—within and beyond criminal legal system—as moments of insurgency.
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20 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Resistance on College Campuses-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session will explore the historical context of campus-based protest movements, and they don’t exist in isolation. Examples of campus-based protest include, but not limited to Civil Rights, the Feminist movement, the Vietnam war, Black Lives Matter, the Ukraine conflict, and the War on Gaza. Meaning, they must be viewed in terms of the political and the ideological forces that dictate the appropriate narrative. The question raised here is why certain protests were viewed as a threat and others were not viewed in the same Lense. This is a critical question this session is exploring and at the same time, ask the following question and that is why the difference in narratives and response.
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21 | Intersectionality in the Classroom
Session Description
This session aims to discuss how to effectively incorporate the concept of intersectionality into teaching and in interactions with students. Moreover, it will focus on how intersections shape students' experiences and how educators can create an inclusive learning environment that acknowledges and supports these diverse perspectives. Presentations will address the relevance of intersectionality in education and why it is crucial to address it in teaching and the impact of intersectionality on students, their experiences, of privilege, oppression, or marginalization. Furthermore, presentations will discuss strategies to discuss intersectionality in the classroom, to develop teaching materials that effectively incorporate an intersectional approach, to create an inclusive environment in the classroom.
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22 | Pushed to the Brink: Insurgencies, Emergency Responses, Societal Neglect and Vulnerability of People with Disabilities-THEMATIC
Session Description
In the world of insurgencies where opportunities and safety have become a nightmare, people with disabilities are often encountered and confounded with multiple jeopardies. They are bedevilled with the tragedy of contemporary realities and particularly susceptible to vulnerabilities as they are exposed to different kinds of realities during insurgencies. They are faced with difficulties in accessing necessary social protections despite efforts to live dignified lives. They remain invisible and not given priority in the state emergency responses. They, therefore, find themselves grappling with unimagined hardships, voice muted, and have been pushed and left at the fringes of the society.
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23 | Victimisation Experiences and Mitigation of People with Disabilities in Insurgent Committees-THEMATIC
Session Description
People With Disabilities (PWDs), suffer multiple victimisation. This is worsened by socio-cultural beliefs, diseases, poverty, violent attacks and insurgencies. Although extant literature shows the enormity of problems that PWDs face, yet, gaps persist on how they construct and cope with victimisation experiences during insurgencies. This session, therefore, will be examining their victimisation experiences, construction of disability, interventions/mitigations of state and non-state actors who form committees of emergency responses and their coping strategies of PWDs during insurgencies.
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24 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Diverse Families at the Margins/LGBTQ+/Parents and Children with Disabilities
Session Description
This session focuses on diversity within the family. We welcome submissions for works that touch on topics such as racial/ethnic identity family experiences, LGBTQ+ family experiences, diverse types of parents and or parenting experiences, children and or adults with disabilities. Works on other diverse families are also welcome!
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25 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Problems and Possibilities of Community-Engaged Research Involving People Who Use Drugs-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session focuses on efforts to meaningfully involve people with lived experience of drug use in all stages of research regarding people who use drugs (PWUD), exemplified by the growing prominence of Community-based Participatory Action Research and similar frameworks that aim to guide the conduct of community-engaged research. Individual papers will address salient challenges experienced by individuals involved in various forms of community-engaged research, strategies used to manage these challenges, and the broader implications and future directions for such work. The session relates to the conference theme of insurgent sociology, as these forms of knowledge production have the potential to challenge not only established practices in drug use-related research, but also the ideological orthodoxies that undergird them.
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26 | Emerging Threats and Responses to an Increasingly Dangerous, Adulterated Drug Supply
Session Description
This session will highlight recent trends in illicit drug markets (e.g., the continuing proliferation of fentanyl in multiple classes of drugs, the expanding presence of xylazine), their effects on people who use drugs (PWUD), and emerging strategies to mitigate the harmful consequences of these drug market shifts. Innovative interventions have emerged to help PWUD manage these threats, including street-based or mobile wound care for xylazine-associated lesions, drug-checking technologies that help PWUD identify dangerous adulterants in drug samples, overdose prevention centers where PWUD can use drugs in a safe and supervised setting and, in Canada, experimental “safer supply” programs that prescribe PWUD pharmaceutical-grade substitutes for illicit drugs to reduce their exposure to street drugs with unpredictable potency and potentially toxic ingredients.
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27 | PAPERS IN THE ROUND: Problems in Schools
Session Description
This session is generally about educational problems, and invited authors working in the sociology of education to submit their work.
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28 | Protest on College Campuses-THEMATIC
Session Description
Studies, activism, and/or community-based research about how college protests occur, their impact, and responses to them, as well as how social movements off-campus are connected with university-based social action will bring the annual meeting's theme to bear on higher education.
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29 | PAPERS IN THE ROUND: Doing the Work of Education
Session Description
Conversations will center educators as laborers and the labor process of education.
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30 | Collaborative Approaches: Schools, Families, and Community Mental Health
Session Description
This session will explore innovative strategies that integrate educational and community resources to support mental health. This session will highlight successful partnerships, share best practices, and foster discussions on enhancing collaboration among schools, families, and mental health professionals for holistic support.
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31 | Environmental Activism as a Form of Insurgency-THEMATIC
Session Description
This panel invites papers that explore the insurgent nature of environmental activism. Papers are particularly welcomed that consider activism as challenging ideologies and practices that suppress or deny access to environmental justice, those that view activism as promoting social justice and directly confronting environmental harms committed by powerful actors and endemic to neoliberal market perspectives.
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32 | Climate Change and Displacement
Session Description
This session explores the impacts of climate change and its impact on vulnerable populations and those most at risk of the effects of climate change. It considers the challenges of migration and forced displacement as a consequence of climate change and invites papers that examine this as a pressing social problem.
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33 | Ecofascism: Impacts and Responses
Session Description
Eco fascism marries racist, reactionary politics and environmentalism to situate environmental threats within debates around immigration, a ‘natural order’ of a healthy white environment and a restrictive view on who should have access to natural resources. This panel invites papers on the impacts and responses to how environmentalist ideas can be weaponized in pursuit of a fascist political agenda.
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34 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Institutional Ethnographies of New Technologies
Session Description
This session focuses on institutional ethnographies of new technologies, particularly those that explore Artificial Intelligence. We are interested in papers that use institutional ethnography as a method to explore new technologies and the ways that new technologies both capture and are captured in work across industries and contexts.
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35 | Environment and Ethnography-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session seeks papers that are based on either ethnographic or institutional ethnographic approaches to researching environmental problems. While we recognize that IE approaches the gathering of data in ways that are often different than traditional ethnographers, we hope that this session will bring researchers into conversation with each other in order to explore the ways in which we approach the study of environmental problems "on the ground" in specific locations.
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36 | Environmental Injustice, Policing, and Inequalities
Session Description
This session presents papers exploring environmental injustice and the manner in which policing and regulatory bodies contribute to or fail to address environmental risk. The panel also considers how surveillance and enforcement activities can also be negative factors in achieving effective environmental justice and contribute to environmental inequality and injustice.
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37 | Eco-Anxiety and Technological Solutions: Understanding and Addressing New Mental Health Challenges
Session Description
This session provides a platform for mental health and environmental professionals to discuss the emerging issue of eco-anxiety and to share innovative technological solutions like apps designed to help individuals cope with their anxiety.
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38 | Works-in-Progress
Session Description
Do you have work that is progress that centers around the family, aging, and youth? In this session we welcome you to submit any in-progress work at any stage. Graduate students are encouraged to submit. This session will serve as a space for feedback on works-in-progress. An experienced researcher will be on the panel to provide feedback.
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39 | Youth in Crisis-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session specifically focuses on youth in crisis. Crises include but are not limited to: loss of a loved one, mental health challenges, homelessness, bullying, human trafficking, poverty, family issues, LGBTQ identity challenges, etc.
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40 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Institutional Ethnographies of Family Welfare
Session Description
We welcome institutional ethnographic papers that examine the intersections of care-work in families and institutions across the life-course – that is, care-work with young children, infants, or adolescents; care-work with aging adults; and care-work in other interdependent familial relationships. We solicit papers that explore how familial care-work is (dis)organized by the ordinary social, institutional and political-economic processes in labour markets and in/across education, social welfare, child protection, housing, criminal-legal, socio-legal, immigration, and health systems.
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41 | Families in Crisis-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session invites papers that focus on the varying ways that families experience and navigate crises. In focusing on the myriad issues facing families in a contemporary moment, authors are encouraged to center discussions around the social and structural conditions that allow for familial issues (and issues with the family) to develop. Crises include but not limited to: divorce, unemployment, job loss, homelessness, loss of a loved one, COVID challenges, incarceration, domestic violence, physical/mental health, political challenges, etc.
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42 | Issues in Caretaking and Carework-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session is focused on the multiple caregiving crises that are currently occurring, different responses to them, as well as evaluations of their success. Qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods research or evaluation-related abstracts are welcome. They may pertain to paid or unpaid care to recipients of any age or condition (e.g., eldercare, childcare, care for people with disabilities, injuries, or chronic conditions).
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43 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Community-Based Sexual and Reproductive Care
Session Description
This session will take up issues regarding the differentiation of funding at the federal level for various types of sexual health and reproductive care, issues around who has access to STI prevention, as well as issues regarding to whom we are marketing biomedical interventions.
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44 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Insurgent Transnational Feminism and the Question of Empire
Session Description
The session will explore transnational feminist movements, solidarities, and discourse that resist and lay bare the tools of imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism that normalizes the subjugation of people including gender minorities in the global south.
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45 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Gender, Sexualities, and Class during Capitalist Crises
Session Description
Crises are a recurring and inherent feature of capitalism, but their impact varies, disproportionately affecting oppressed people. This session explores the intersections of race, gender, sexualities, and class in the context of capitalist crises. Drawing on feminist, queer, and class-based critiques, this session will analyze how capitalist crises deepens social inequalities, alters intimate and public spheres, and its impact on intersectionally oppressed individuals. It will also examine how gender, sexuality, and processes of racial formation change under capitalist crises. Presenters will discuss how crises amplify pre-existing structural oppressions, while also examining the strategies of resistance, solidarity, and survival that emerge in response.
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46 | Global Solidarities for Climate Justice in the Age of Climate Chaos
Session Description
This session is open to all papers that address the topic of climate justice in global context. In keeping with the theme of insurgent sociology, we welcome papers that focus on transnational/translocal social movements and the solidarities that emerge within them to fight against the global economic and social systems that have created climate injustice; climate futurisms and envisioning climate futures through a justice lens; and more.
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47 | Militarization, Forced Migration, and Authoritarianism
Session Description
Open to all papers addressing issues of militarization, authoritarianism, and forced migration around the world, whether the populations themselves, effects of their absence, native reactions in sending/receiving countries, the political and economic elements of citizenship, theoretical approaches to inclusion/exclusion of these groups, and more.
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48 | Food Insecurity, Place, Poverty, and Global Struggles for Food Sovereignty
Session Description
This session explores the interconnected dynamics of food insecurity, place, and poverty within local and global contexts. As economic inequalities deepen, food insecurity has emerged as a critical issue that disproportionately affects impoverished communities, shaped by geographic location and socio-economic structures. The session will delve into how poverty and food insecurity intersect with broader issues of class, race, inequality. We also welcome papers exploring the role of transnational movements fighting for food sovereignty, reclaiming local food systems, and advocating for the rights of communities to determine their own food sources. Ultimately, this session seeks to unpack the global and local dimensions of food insecurity and offer insights into the transnational struggles aimed at creating more equitable and sustainable food systems.
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49 | Pursuing Racial Justice to Improve Health Inequities in Historically Marginalized Groups
Session Description
Current Heath Sociology and Public Health Scholarship acknowledge the need to eliminate health inequities in order to achieve health justice. However, despite awareness of this great need, much discussion in academic and policy circles are concerned with socioeconomic resources exclusively and neglect how groups from marginalized disadvantaged communities experience multiple oppressions simultaneously and overtime. This session will explore the interface of social protest for human and civil rights that communities are still fighting in the quest for racial justice and good health. Topics are welcome from health, human rights, environmental justice, criminology, education, etc. which make connections between racial justice and human rights related to various social determinants which drive adverse health outcomes.
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50 | PAPERS IN THE ROUND: Reproductive Autonomy, Justice, and the Law
Session Description
Reproductive autonomy and justice encompasses the ability to have children, not have children, and to care for families and communities in safety and with dignity. This session invites submissions on the impact of policies and law on reproductive autonomy and justice at local, national, international, and global levels. We welcome submissions on any topics related to reproduction, including (in)fertility, contraception, abortion, assisted reproductive technology, pregnancy, birth, mothering, and more, in relation to laws and policies.
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51 | Technology, Surveillance and Access to Health Services
Session Description
This session will explore the use - and developments of - technology in healthcare, surveillance of patients and medical providers, and access to services across healthcare services.
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52 | Insurgent Sociology in Health Care-THEMATIC
Session Description
The purpose of this session is to engage submitted papers on unique and challenging approaches to approaching health care eligibility, coverage, and delivery, particularly in the emerging electronic age.
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53 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Using IE to Explore Intersecting Crises: Climate, Social Justice, Housing, and Health-THEMATIC
Session Description
We welcome institutional ethnographic papers that go beyond the single institution tendency (Hastings & Mykhalovskiy, 2023) and draw analytic connections across seemingly distinct social problem contexts (e.g., climate change and homelessness; opioid poisonings and child protection); papers that explicate how social, institutional, and political-economic processes produce "crises" (as political objects) in environmental, health and social contexts; and/or papers that show people's experiences of a crisis as shaped by what Smith describes as relations of ruling (e.g., how people's experiences of a housing affordability crisis are shaped by specific mechanisms through which the real estate market has been re-organized as an investment opportunity or through which states have systematically de-invested in public housing).
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54 | New Directions in Institutional Ethnography
Session Description
This session is open to people using Institutional Ethnography in novel ways, including but not limited to novel research topics, methods, and analytical processes.
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55 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Teaching Social Problems through Institutional Ethnography
Session Description
This session focuses on using Institutional Ethnography (IE) to explore social problems and social change with academic and non-academic audiences. Institutional Ethnographers who are teaching/imparting what they have learned from their IE research to academic and non-academic audiences are invited to submit their contributions to this session. Presentations can focus on how to guide, through IE, academic and non-academic audience in understanding how everyday experiences are shaped by institutional and social forces, in discussing the impact of IE research, and in highlighting the potential of IE to uncover hidden power dynamics, policies, and organizational practices. This aim is to discuss how to help these audiences and communities critically examine institutions while engaging with the possibilities of impact that IE offers.
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56 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Contingent Work
Session Description
This session examines contingent and precarious work across a range of sites (human services; Amazon; sex work; multi-level marketing) and situates the conditions of precarity/contingency among a complex array of analytical schemes: late-stage neoliberal capital; professionalism and white-collar self-perception; global supply chains; and more.
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57 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Labor of Academic Conferences
Session Description
This session examines the changing landscape of academic conferences and the labor involved in planning and hosting them. These changes have implications for faculty, students, and hotel employees. This session will examine the changing economic conditions of academic organizations, their respective conferences, and the conditions in which they are being planned. This session aims to examine the various challenges and benefits of academic conferences from a variety of perspectives.
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58 | Law in/as Crisis: Contemporary Problems-THEMATIC
Session Description
This thematic session on law and its (dis)contents will present papers that address contemporary, emerging, and growing problems related to law, legal consciousness, and legal systems. Submissions to this session might focus on variance in the ways that laws are applied, how legal systems create and maintain various forms of inequality, crises within legal systems, the law as a site and source of crisis, and more.
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59 | Social Movements for Legal Change
Session Description
This session will present papers that address pathways toward legal and social change. A broad range of topics will be considered for this session, but authors are encouraged to focus on the ways in which law and society are mutually embedded forces, efforts to change or revise laws and/or legal systems to contribute to social justice, how laws and legal systems affect social movements, what can be done to address inequalities in law, its application, and its experiences, and more.
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60 | Disrupting the Norm: Mental Health, Illness, and the Law-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session explores the various ways in which the legal system interacts with those with mental illness and/or mental health conditions, as well as delving into the long-term implications for what those interactions mean and the consequences of these interactions.
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61 | Engaged Sociology and Activism: Crisis Narratives, Lived Experiences and Poverty Abolition
Session Description
This session critically examines the narratives constructed around crisis, focusing on their impact on our understanding of poverty, class, and inequality. Welcoming scholars, activists, and practitioners, it explores the everyday experiences of poverty, with particular attention to housing struggles, the relationship between work and poverty, and the geographic dimensions of inequality. The session also highlights the work of poverty abolitionists, offering insights from grassroots movements and activist efforts aimed at dismantling the structural roots of economic injustice. Through these discussions, participants aim to challenge dominant crisis narratives and engage in a dialogue that bridges sociological theory and activism, fostering new approaches to eradicating poverty.
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62 | Mobility, Affluence, and the Aspirational Class in a Time of Crises
Session Description
In a historical moment of numerous crises including high inflation, gentrification, unaffordable housing, overtourism, pandemic and AI-fueled employment shifts, mass migration, attacks on democracy, and climate change, understanding the effects of inequality and contemporary class dynamics demands research on both poverty and privilege. Complementing sessions on poverty, class, and inequality, this panel provides an opportunity to share research on affluence, mobility, and the aspirational class. How do the affluent use their resources and status to influence social institutions, communities, culture, and politics? How do the affluent view themselves, their status, and their role in inequality? How do aspirations shape the behavior and attitudes of the not-quite-rich? What roles do affluence and mobility play in current crises?
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63 | Insurgent Sociological Theory-THEMATIC
Session Description
With an emphasis towards critical theory, this session will explore how theoretical frameworks can challenge the status quo and provide avenues for generating social change.
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64 | New Directions in Social Problems Theory
Session Description
This session explores new trends and developments in social problems theory.
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65 | Intersectionality in Action: Bridging Mental Health and Social Problems Theory to Address Complex Social Issues
Session Description
Analyzing the importance of intersectional approaches, this session will illustrate how understanding mental health as a multifaceted social problem can lead to more effective interventions and advocacy strategies.
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66 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Teaching Social Problems and Theory: The Present and Future of Textbooks
Session Description
Many critiques have been raised regarding textbooks, including the cost, the tendency to reinforce Western dominance of the discipline, the absence of marginalized voices, and the narrow pedagogical approaches. This can especially be true of surveys of social problems courses and social problems theory courses. What is and is not considered a social problem is influenced by institutional social forces. Textbooks can reflect this bias towards establishment ideas about social issues. This critical dialogue session encourages submissions examining the present state of social problems texts and speculation of how self-publishing, OER, AI, and decolonization movements will influence the future of textbooks in social issues courses. Submissions examining specific texts and general discussions about textbooks are welcomed.
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67 | Collective Healing: Insurgent Strategies for Mental Wellness and Social Justice Movements-THEMATIC
Session Description
Exploring how collective approaches to mental wellness can empower communities and create transformative change in societal structures.
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68 | Mental Illness and Shared Identity Making
Session Description
Approaching mental illness as an identity category beyond a personal diagnosis, this session explores how shared meanings and shared identity-making occurs between members of this category, and how shared meanings conform to and resist medical and society interpretations of what it means to have a mental illness.
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69 | The Impact of Trauma on Mental Health Mental Illness and Disability
Session Description
We will discuss various types of traumas and their psychological impacts, as well as the intersectional factors—such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status—that influence these experiences. Participants will engage with research findings, case studies, and trauma-informed care strategies, highlighting the role of social welfare policies in supporting affected individuals.
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70 | Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare Institution Perspectives in Response to Recent or Current Crises I-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session draws on the conference theme of insurgent sociology in a time of crisis. We will focus on sociology, social work, and social welfare institution perspectives in response to recent or current crises. We welcome submissions on sociological and social work research and responses to a broad range of crises (i.e., crises in domestic social problems, social welfare organizations, communities). Placement in one or the other of these two division-specific sessions will be made based on thematic assessment of accepted submissions.
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71 | Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare Institution Perspectives in Response to Recent or Current Crises II-THEMATIC
Session Description
This session draws on the conference theme of insurgent sociology in a time of crisis. We will focus on sociology, social work, and social welfare institution perspectives in response to recent or current crises. We welcome submissions on sociological and social work research and responses to a broad range of crises (i.e., crises in domestic social problems, social welfare organizations, communities). Placement in one or the other of these two division-specific sessions will be made based on thematic assessment of accepted submissions.
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72 | Renegades, Rebels, and Rogues: Player Resistance and Institutional Responses
Session Description
According to Huizinga, play is a central activity for flourishing societies. The act of play, however, requires structure and participants who are willing to work within those limitations. The focus of this regular session is about the “spoil-sport,” a player who ignores or breaks the rules of a game. Players who conform to the structure of play are likely to respond to the “spoil-sport” by treating them as a threat to the play-world and casting them out of the game. Players for this session include people at all levels of leisure activities and/or games, including hobbyists, amateurs, semi-professionals, and professionals. An institution will be considered a collective used to maintain distinct norms, expectations, and functions to fulfill societal needs.
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73 | Insurgent Productions: The Use of Culture as a Vehicle for Social Change-THEMATIC
Session Description
In this thematic session we will focus on productions that generate cultural goods for social purposes. Panelists for this session will have conducted research on the production of symbolic and material aspects that are associated with a group of people’s shared beliefs, values, and practices (e.g., applied art, comedy, fine art, music, poetry, sport, and so on). They will particularly focus on production of cultural goods that are made to deliver social change.
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74 | We All Play: Unequal Recognition of Human in Sport and Leisure
Session Description
Social play refers to human behavior and interactions that occur in everyday life. It may be relaxed and spontaneous, planned, or compulsive. Playful activities are self-chosen, self-directed, and intrinsically motivated. All bodies are able to engage in play. This includes bodies of all abilities, ages, ethnicities, genders, race, mental health, and so on. The act of play occurs for its own sake and may involve social play, symbolic play, parallel play, cooperative play, or collaborative play.
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75 | WORKS IN PROGRESS: “Bring Your Own Brilliance”: Sharing our Ideas That Have Been Successful in Teaching
Session Description
In this session, presenters are invited to bring their most innovative and successful teaching strategies, techniques, and ideas to the floor. Participants can share insights, experiences, and best practices that have enhanced learning in their higher education classes. Presenters could showcase their unique approaches, from engaging pedagogical methods, creative use of technology, strategies for ensuring inclusivity and supporting student well-being, to writing practices to improve the classes contents. This session is an excellent opportunity to learn from each other's brilliance and build a collective resource of teaching excellence. Participants can be seasoned educators or junior scholars who desire to share their experiences.
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76 | Teaching Social Problems in a Time of Crises: Challenges and Opportunities-THEMATIC
Session Description
Teaching social problems in the contemporary world, with its economic downturns, political radicalization, climate change effects and environmental disasters, pandemics, and armed conflicts brings challenges but also opportunities. While some opportunities can lie, for instance, in exploring the complexity of social issues and critically discussing the contribution that the sociological discipline along with interdisciplinary approaches can bring, some of the challenges can concern emotional and psychological stress, resistances, misinformation and the need to adapt teaching methods. This session will host presentations that address these opportunities and challenges.
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77 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Revolutionary Possibilities: Confronting Capitalist Crises and Fascist Forces with Transformative Theory and Practice
Session Description
Humanity stands at a crossroads. Economic, ecological, social, and political crises, state violence at home and endless war abroad – including U.S. funded and armed genocide in occupied Palestine – are our reality. Ruling class forces are moving toward fascist state rule and winning their social base in support of fascism. Social struggles are rising to demand a resolution to these crises and an end to war. Our survival and the survival of our planet are contested terrain. What does it mean to be an “insurgent sociologist” – individually and collectively – in this moment? What are the “revolutionary possibilities” of our collective present and future? What is our theory and practice as scholars and agents of change in making our vision a reality?
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78 | CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Sociologists as Workers and Political Actors in Today’s Multiracial and Multigendered Working Class Struggle
Session Description
The university is a microcosm of society. Its purpose is to produce the next generation of workers and to reproduce the existing class relations. Crises within the corporate university are part of global capitalist crises. Sociologists, as workers, face deteriorating economic working conditions, an attack on tenure, and increasing censorship and repression in relation to teaching, research, and political expression. Ironically sociology has contributed to invisibilizing the concept of working class. Is the resolution to the crises we are experiencing located in becoming more professionalized, more accepting of our exploitation and oppression as workers? Or should we be organizing collectively as a front of today’s multiracial and multigendered working class struggle? What could this look like?
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79 | Resistance and Survival
Session Description
Over the last 600 years, coloniality organized global hierarchies and reproduced institutions of the capitalist imperialist / white supremacist/ Euro- and western centered, heteronormative patriarchal/Christian-centric modern/world system (Grosfoguel, 2011). This system is in great upheaval characterized by multiple crises of new proportions. And yet, our times also exemplify deep and intensifying resistance, particularly of those who have faced the brunt of the system’s brutality. Presenters will reflect on formations that have emerged and expanded in recent decades, globally. Whether called alternatives, revolutionary projects, communes, cooperatives, or solidarity economies, these provide examples of a way forward at a time when genocide is televised, fascism is on the rise and democratic processes that existed if at all, are being abandoned.
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80 | Universities Confronting their Past: Social Justice Approaches to Confront and Address Complex Legacies of Harm
Session Description
Growing numbers of insurgent social scientists are pursuing decolonial approaches to confront epistemicide, extraction, and marginalization in higher education. This session explores this issue in settings in which legacies of harm may involve race, ethnicity, culture, citizenship, state and tribal sovereignty, and international dimensions, among others that must be addressed simultaneously in university settings. These concerns are often complex given that they are numerous, multidimensional, intertwined, and often clashing. Both personal and institutional reflexivity are required, as all have occupied spaces as perpetrators, targets, and survivors. This is especially relevant in the context of the colonial legacies of the westernized university. Presenters are invited to address the above topic from the point of view of researchers, activists, and/or scholar-activists.
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