Montréal, Québec, Canada, August 11, 2017

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 20, 2017

We invite submissions of extended abstracts for the 11th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held in Montréal, Québec, Canada, on August 11th, 2017, the day before the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The JTS is a one-day conference featuring the work of up-and-coming sociologists, sponsored in part by the Theory Section of the ASA. Since 2005, the conference has brought together early career-stage sociologists who engage in theoretical work, broadly defined.

It is our honour to announce that Richard Biernacki (University of California - San Diego), Julian Go (Boston University), and Joey Sprague (University of Kansas) will serve as discussants for this year’s symposium. We are also pleased to hold an after-panel entitled, “Theory, the Good Society, and Positionality.” The panel will feature Gabriel Abend (New York University), Seth Abrutyn (University of Memphis), Hae Yeon Choo (University of Toronto), and Claire Decoteau (University of Illinois at Chicago).

We invite all ABD graduate students, postdocs, and assistant professors who received their PhDs from 2013 onwards to submit up to a three-page précis (800-1000 words). The précis should include the key theoretical contribution of the paper and a general outline of the argument. Successful précis from last year’s symposium can be viewed here. Please note that the précis must be for a paper that is not under review or forthcoming at a journal.

As in previous years, in order to encourage a wide range of submissions, we do not have a pre-specified theme for the conference. Instead, papers will be grouped into sessions based on emergent themes and discussants’ areas of interest and expertise.

Please remove all identifying information from your précis and submit it via this Google form. Shai Dromi (Harvard University) and katrina quisumbing king (University of Wisconsin - Madison) will review the anonymized submissions. You can also contact them at juniortheorists@gmail.com with any questions. The deadline is February 20. By mid-March we will extend up to 12 invitations to present at JTS 2016. Please plan to share a full paper by July 21, 2017. Presenters will be asked to attend the entire symposium and should plan accordingly.
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Finally, for friends and supporters of JTS, we ask if you might consider donating either on-site, or through PayPal at this link or to the juniortheorists@gmail.com account. If you are submitting a proposal to JTS 2017, we kindly ask that should you wish to donate, you only do so after the final schedule has been announced.
 
 
 
 
 

We need to recover the lost art of writing brief, densely packed journal articles.  We need more flexibility, a greater range of acceptable, legitimate options, one that reflects the wide diversity of ways in which good theorizing can be done.  Sometimes good ideas fail to come out because authors feel they need to produce a standard-length paper in order to get them published.  Sometimes good ideas would be better served by short, focused pieces than by articles that follow the conventional guidelines. 

As editor of ST, I encourage you to give me your best theoretical ideas.  If the most appropriate vehicle for doing so is a manuscript of no more than 4,500 words, then so much the better!  It’s the ideas that matter, not the format in which they’re delivered.
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Also, publishing the occasional short paper will allow us occasionally to publish longer pieces, on the model of AJS or Theory and Society.  Again, something for everyone.

Read below for more information on...

• The ISA Forum of Sociology seeking papers for “The Futures We Want: Global Sociology and the Struggles for a Better World.” WebForum of the same name presents essays from prominent sociologists.
  
• ASA miniconference on “Psychodynamics of Self & Society”
  
• A book series seeking proposals for Decolonial Options for the Social Sciences
  
• ​The ASA Rose Series in Sociology ​seeking books that offer synthetic analyses of existing fields, challenge prevailing paradigms, and/or offer fresh views on enduring controversies

Seattle, Washington, August 19, 2016
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 22, 2016
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We invite submissions of extended abstracts for the 10th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held in Seattle, WA on August 19th, 2016, the day before the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The JTS is a one-day conference featuring the work of up-and-coming sociologists, affiliated with the Theory Section of the ASA. Since 2005, the conference has brought together early career-stage sociologists who engage in theoretical work, broadly defined.

​We are pleased to announce that Mounira Charrad (UT Austin), Ann Mische (Notre Dame), and Tukufu Zuberi (UPenn) will serve as discussants for this year's symposium. In addition, we are pleased to announce an after-panel on the relationship between theory and method featuring Christopher Bail (Duke), Tey Meadow (Harvard), Ashley Mears (Boston University), and Frederick Wherry (Yale).   
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Open Paper Session 1: Directions in Relational Sociology: Theory, Method and Practice
Session Organizer: Emily Erikson (Yale University), email: emily.erikson@yale.edu
Relational sociology provides a large-scale theoretical framework for the social sciences. This panel is will address the following types of questions: How do you practice a relational sociology? Are some methods inherently more relational? What is the pay-off to using relational concepts, theory, or methods in empirical research -- particularly relative to other theoretically driven research programs? What makes research relational?
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Open Paper Session 2: Abduction and the Craft of Theorizing
Session Organizer: Iddo Tavory (New York University), email:  iddo.tavory@nyu.edu
The past few years have seen increasing attention to early pragmatism, and a resurgent interest in abduction: the imaginative recasting of the world in terms of surprising observations. We invite papers that develop or critically assess this move, linking it to explanation, causality, and the craft of theorizing. 

Open Paper Session 3: Theorizing Perception
Session Organizers: Joseph Klett (University of California, Santa Cruz) and Terence McDonnell (University of Notre Dame), email:  jklett@ucsc.edu
This session welcomes research that builds theory for the sociological study of sense perception. Cognition and materiality are hot topics in theory these days. New research on the sociology of perception and sensory experience can bring these important theoretical contributions into conversation. To further close this gap, this panel seeks papers that push forward sociological theorizing on perception, including papers that consider perception beyond the visual to hearing, taste, smell, and touch. How are the senses made and remade in everyday life? What does perception "do" to interaction and interpretation? And how might we test these theories using qualitative methods? We encourage authors to submit papers that address the social production and reproduction of perception, the roles of perception in interaction, and/or the methods which researchers might use to study perception. We welcome a broad range of perspectives including but not limited to theories of culture, cognition, embodiment, and practice. Of particular interest are papers that contribute to material-semiotic or hermeneutic analysis, papers that critically engage affordance theory/ecological psychology and/or cognitive science, and papers that address perception at work in collective action.

Theory Section Refereed Roundtables 
Session Organizer: Achim Edelmann (University of Bern), email: achim.edelmann@soz.unibe.ch

Critical Realism: Reimagining Social Sciences
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN (USA)


Submission Deadline: April 1, 2015
Conference Dates: July 28-30, 2015


Conference Website: http://csrs.nd.edu/events/iacr2015/

“What difference does critical realism make for how we do our empirical work?” That is the question that many social scientists who hear about critical realism initially ask, especially in the United States. This is an honest question that needs good answers. 

How does the alternative meta-theory of critical realism change the kinds of scholarly research we conduct and the ways we conduct it? What real differences does critical realism make analytically and methodologically? How would social science that was primarily informed by critical realism, instead of some other background philosophy, look and act differently?

Critical realism makes a big difference, in fact. Some of these differences are subtle, others more profound. Yet more work must be done to think through and spell out specifics on how critical realism already does and might continue to re-orient scholarly research in practical ways. 

“Critical Realism: Reimagining Social Science” is the theme of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the International Association of Critical Realists (IACR), to be held at the University of Notre Dame, July 28-30, 2015. Papers on all topics relevant for critical realism are invited for submission for presentation in a session at IACR 2015, but papers that focus on the practical analytical and methodological implications of critical realism are especially welcome. 

To submit a paper for consideration, please prepare an abstract of no more than 500 words and send it by email -along with your paper title, name, contact info, and organizational affiliation- to Nicolette Manglos-Weber at nmanglos@nd.edu. Submissions must be received by April 1 for full consideration for inclusion on the program. 

Registration costs are only $400 USD, which includes full room and board from the evening of July 27 to the evening of July 30. All participants must register for the conference by May 30. After that date, an additional fee of $40 USD will be applied.     

Conference costs are supported with generous grants from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at Notre Dame University and the Templeton Religion Trust.

Two Calls for Abstracts:


2015 Junior Theorists Symposium
Deadline: Feb 13, 2015
Chicago, IL
August 21, 2015

Call for Abstracts: Symposium for Early Career Theorists (SECT)
Deadline: Feb 2, 2015
University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Ontario
June 1 – 5, 2015.