Conference Sessions

The discipline of sociology has a range of theoretical and empirical tools for considering the social world. This session explores the insights yielded by these tools when they are turned inward, to consider the discipline itself. Papers consider the influence of sociologists on disciplinary knowledge, methodologies, and their relationship to the cultural and political context of the field. Focusing on new contexts and developments in sociological research, they offer insights about how sociology is changing, and ways it is staying the same.

In a world rife with inequity, death, and loss, it is easy to forget that the concept of crisis is not new, and that the sociological impacts of “crisis” events cut across time and memory. Communities, collectives and persons who have struggled with, responded to, and resisted the catastrophes, disasters, and atrocities of the past lay the groundwork for how we address such phenomena today. These histories offer insights into what it means to live through a crisis and the realities of death and unlivability, as well as the systems of domination that shape them. Documenting crises in real-time and recalling them later can be challenging, especially within a post-crisis present. Collective memory thus becomes a crucial lens for those studying crises and atrocities. In dialogue with this session, a subsequent session on Methods, Ethics, and Affects in Memory Studies will explore methodological and ethical considerations in memory studies.

This panel critically examines health care systems and delivery, focusing on the powerful phenomena of waiting for sexual and reproductive health care, the WHO’s shifting discursive commitment to traditional medicine, a critical look at digital health records in Canadian long-term care facilities, and improving care in rural emergency departments.

This session broadly explores democracy and integration.

This panel devotes considered attention to how social trauma – collective experiences of suffering and adversity – is experienced, negotiated and resolved. Drawing on the diverse cases of racial reparations, territorial stigmatization and political violence, it engages with the interplay of social exclusion, symbolic boundaries and existential anxiety within modern societies.