The Department of Educational Sociology at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University and the Danish Sociological Association invite all interested parties to the Danish Sociology Congress 2022. The congress was initially to be held March 2020, but had to be cancelled due to COVID-19 and the associated restrictions.
Preparations for the congress have begun again, to be held 24-25 March 2022 at the Copenhagen campus of the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Tuborgvej 164, 2400 Copenhagen NV.
The overall theme for the congress is:
Optimisation logics, change processes and disruption: consequences for societies and individuals
A number of changes are currently taking place in Danish society. We are witnessing fundamental realignments covering every occupational sector and professional field. These realignments are frequently referred to using buzzwords such as disruption or more academic concepts such as the fourth industrial revolution. The protracted lockdown in conjunction with COVID-19 placed certain aspects of these change processes in a new light.
One characteristic of the current changes is that they are now accelerating exponentially rather than linearly. At the same time, these changes are more far-reaching than was previously the case: The digital revolution and the ways it combines with other technologies seems to constitute a paradigm shift within the economy, the corporate sector, society and the sphere of the individual. Furthermore, the changes appear systematic, altering entire systems, transcending national borders and occupational sectors, and affecting every aspect of national and international society.
This overall perspective charts a development that raises a whole torrent of issues that would swamp the congress were they all placed on the agenda. In order to facilitate a focused discussion, we coin the term optimisation logics. The desire to optimise and perfect has roots stretching back to the Enlightenment and has been a persistent trend in how modern societies perceive themselves. In recent years, for instance, research has linked this way of thinking to the idea of the competition state. We expect the various sessions and presentations at the congress to include sociologically oriented research related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We encourage all interested parties to participate in the Danish Sociology Congress 2022, presenting papers and organising sessions approaching such themes from various sociological perspectives, including empirical studies and more theory-driven contributions. We also welcome proposals for sessions and papers on other sociological topics.
Keynote speakers:
Vanessa Barker, Stockholm University
Richard Arum, University of California Irvine
As well as these keynote speakers, two (parallel) workshops will be organised focusing on:
Sociology and Open Science, led by Nate Breznau, University of Bremen
Professionalism and professionalisation, led by Michael May, RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Wiesbaden
Important dates:
Deadline for the submission of proposals for sessions: 11 January 2022. Successful proposals will be announced 14 January.
Deadline for the submission of abstracts for individual presentations: 17 January 2022. Accepted abstracts will be announced 3 February.
Proposals for sessions must include a title, a brief presentation of the overall theme, the name of the person organising the session, the names of participants (at least four per session) and abstracts for the presentations by each of these participants. Abstracts submitted as part of a session proposal do not need to be submitted again separately. Abstracts should not exceed 300 words. Submissions in either English or Danish are welcome
Abstracts for individual presentations should be sent to http://sociologi.dk/conference2022_eng/km_abstract.php?key=sW6s8tC85wGfs0Y26oGXRvjLah
Session proposals should be sent to http://sociologi.dk/conference2022_eng/sessionproposal.php?key=sW6s8tC85wGfs0Y26oGXRvjLah
The following sessions were proposed for the cancelled 2020 congress:
- Social inequality and social mobility
- Experience analysis
- Social exclusion in the welfare state
- New worlds of work
- Sociology of taste
- Challenges in schooling
- Professions and professionalisation
- Cultural lifestyles
- Children as an object of optimisation
- Criminality
- Partnerships and cross-sectoral work.
If you submitted one of these proposals for the 2020 congress and would still like to organise this session, please let us know via the link above.