Conference Sessions

Despite unprecedented waves of privatization of public space and concomitant encroachments, such as commercialization, regulation, and sanitization, being in public spaces remains a fundamental component of our urban experiences. The increasingly complex public-private dynamics of urban spaces offer analytical insights into understanding how cities remain sites of publicness. Taking an expansive scope on various forms of urban spaces, this session explores themes of: participatory practices in developing urban spaces; the production of urban spaces through retail/economic activities; and, how the hybrid nature of urban spaces impacts, and is simultaneously impacted by sociability and conflict within these spaces.

As homelessness continues to rise and become more visible throughout Canada, it is crucial to understand contemporary homelessness governance strategies that attempt to supervise, regulate, and integrate people experiencing homelessness into civil and market society. This session invites papers that engage in debates about contemporary homelessness governance by an array of state, nonprofit, and/or private sector actors in spaces such as, but not limited to, emergency shelters, encampments, public spaces, and the private rental market. This includes discussions about how contemporary social-welfare systems and wider political-economic logics influence homelessness governance logics as well as how these logics impact the everyday lives of people experiencing homelessness. These can be some combination of punitive strategies that aim to discipline and/or criminalize homelessness, compassionate strategies that provide support and care, or ambivalent strategies that defer to nonprofits to provide basic human needs. As a cross-listed Housing and Urban Sociology cluster session, we encourage papers to engage in some current debates about access to housing, neoliberal urbanism, urban street clearance objectives, policing of homeless encampments, the pandemic’s impact on homelessness governance, governing of various homeless subpopulations (veterans, LGBTQ2S+, Indigenous, among others), or any emerging governance strategies.

This session broadly explores home and housing with research on insecurities, meanings, economic and environmental considerations.

How do people and institutions construct the meanings they attach to violence? This is a recurring session that aims to advance sociological theories, methods, and empirical explorations of how people come to understand violence. What conceptual frameworks and experiences enhance or prevent the understanding of the various meanings of violence? Part 1 of this session focuses on how institutions such as the state and the media produce “official stories” of violence. Part II, on the other hand, focuses on how survivors, activists, and scholars might challenge these official stories and shed new light into the uses and meanings of violence, from the perspectives of those most affected by it.

How do people and institutions construct the meanings they attach to violence? This is a recurring session that aims to advance sociological theories, methods, and empirical explorations of how people come to understand violence. What conceptual frameworks and experiences enhance or prevent the understanding of the various meanings of violence? Part 1 of this session focuses on how institutions such as the state and the media produce “official stories” of violence. Part II, on the other hand, focuses on how survivors, activists, and scholars might challenge these official stories and shed new light into the uses and meanings of violence, from the perspectives of those most affected by it.