SAANZ Annual Conference 2024
Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka | University of Otago
4–6 December
The Sociology To Come
ABSTRACT DEADLINE EXTENDED TO 30 SEPTEMBER
It is clear that we live in times of unparalleled crises. These are impossible to ignore. But is there a similar sense of urgency within sociology, one that seems appropriate to this general sense of danger?
Do we need to reformulate the questions at the core of sociology’s purpose, to imagine what sociology might become? Need there only be one sociology? What are sociology’s limits and how might they be transgressed or transcended?
By “the sociology to come”, we refer to a futurism that is at once multiple, critical and utopian. In the expansive terrain of the yet-to-arrive, the sociological imagination has room to take flight, freed from the constraints of the present or the future that reproduce the existing order. We need not imagine only what sociology might become, but what it must become if we are to slough off the structures of oppression that dominate our present and threaten our future: Empire, Patriarchy, Capital.
This conference includes the following named streams, but papers on any topic are welcome:
Gender and Sexuality Stream
These are interesting times in the fields of gender and sexuality; there is considerable political, theoretical and cultural debate. We call for papers that address any aspect of gender, sexuality, or the intersection of the two. These may draw from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives; we welcome interventions from across the humanities and social sciences. Presentations may be empirical, theoretical, creative or speculative. What might we learn from the past, how might we conceive of the present, and what does the future hold?
Criminology Stream
We are living in a time of prison expansions, tighter and more punitive borders, and ‘tough’ on crime legislation. We are witnessing a genocide live-streamed throughout the world with impunity for its perpetrators. Youth are criminalised rather than cared for as the government implements ineffective boot camps. We see a renewed vigour for criminalising poverty, inequality, and people experiencing mental health challenges. The founding document of Aotearoa New Zealand, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is systematically trampled upon and disregarded. Globally, access to reproductive justice becomes more and more restricted. The need for critical criminology becomes more dire. To look more precisely at the criminology to come, we invite papers that consider the fraught context of social harm, punitive surges, and a hope for transformations yet to emerge.
Sociology Outside of the Academy Stream
Sociology has never been solely the province of academy. A great deal of sociological research and the practical application of sociology takes place outside of the university. We would like to invite sociological researchers and practitioners of all stripes to discuss their work with us and to help us think through the relationship between sociology inside and outside of the university. We particularly welcome contributions that imagine possible futures for sociology beyond the academy.
SAANZ2024 will feature a Critical Social Work Stream – please find details in tab below
Important Dates
| Call for Papers Closes: | 30 September |
| Call for Panels Closes: | 30 September |
| Early-Bird Registration Open: | Now |
| Earl-Bird Registration Closes: | 8 November |
Registration
Register for SAANZ2024 Here
| Registration Type | Early-Bird | Full |
|
Student/unwaged SAANZ member
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130
|
160
|
|
Student/unwaged SAANZ non-member
|
150
|
180
|
|
SAANZ member self-funded
|
200
|
250
|
|
SAANZ non-member self-funded
|
270
|
320
|
|
SAANZ member institution
|
300
|
380
|
|
SAANZ non-member institution
|
370
|
450
|
|
Day Rate – SAANZ Member
|
140
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140
|
|
Day Rate – Non-Member
|
165
|
165
|
Call for Papers
The convenors of the SAANZ Annual Conference 2024: The Sociology to Come, are pleased to call for submissions for conference papers. Paper presentations will be 15 minutes each, with 5 minutes for questions. This call for paper proposals closes 15 September 2024 (EXTENDED TO 30 SEPTEMBER). All proposals will be reviewed and included at the discretion of the conference organizing committee. This process will be completed by 30 September (EXTENDED TO 10 OCTOBER).
This conference will be entirely in-person, and all participants whose papers are accepted must register for the conference by 8 November 2024 at the latest. Presenters who register after this date will be included in the conference programme at the discretion of the conference organisers.
Should you have any questions about this call for papers, please do not hesitate to contact the convenors of the conference committee, Fairleigh Gilmour and Chris Brickell, at SAANZ@otago.ac.nz
Queries regarding the Critical Social Work stream should be directed to Liz Beddoe: e.beddoe@auckland.ac.nz or Donna Baines: dbaines@mail.ubc.ca.
PAPER SUBMISSIONS
Abstracts must be emailed through to SAANZ@otago.ac.nz Abstracts must include the name(s), institutional affiliation, and email contacts of the paper presenter(s), a paper title, and a 200-word abstract. Please specify if you are submitting for consideration in a named stream (Gender and Sexuality, Criminology, Sociology outside the Academy or Critical Social Work).
Instructions for Formatting Text Abstracts:
- Format: doc or docx only
- Length: 200 words max
Note: please refer to specific calls (e.g., calls for panels, submissions to the Critical Social Work stream) for any requirements related to that call.
Critical Social Work Stream - Call for Papers
There are many threats to social work’s espoused mission and values, including ongoing structural inequities and hyper-managerialist approaches to social work and social services. These forces reinforce social work as an individualistic practice rather than a discipline that engages simultaneously at the micro, meso and macro levels. New technologies, AI, education paradigms and contexts, accountability processes and organisational constraints all delimit the boundaries of social work practice towards a new conservatism. This provokes serious questions about the growing disjuncture between values and reality. The continuing downgrading of social work’s social justice agenda alongside increasing (limited) professionalisation has led to debates about the future of social work in its current form. At the same time, we see practitioners and academics building new practices and knowledge aimed at equity and social justice. This complex moment presents us with the opportunity to reimagine social work and how it can meet or respond to its own social justice agenda in new ways. In these fast-changing times, how can social work keep up? We invite papers that grapple with this theme in any field of social work or social policy.
Please send abstracts to: saanz@otago.ac.nz by 15 September.
Queries regarding the Critical Social Work stream should be directed to Liz Beddoe: e.beddoe@auckland.ac.nz Donna Baines: dbaines@mail.ubc.ca or Emily Keddell emily.keddell@otago.ac.nz
Call for Panels
Call coming soon.
Accommodation
Affordable accommodation is available at the conference venue, St Margaret’s College:
$120 per night: Bed and Breakfast, single room
$140 per night: Bed and Breakfast, double room
Bookings can be made directly through St Margaret’s college here.
Conference Dinner
The conference dinner will be held at the conference location – St Margaret’s College.
Cost:
Student/Unwaged: $50
Waged: $80
You can add a dinner ticket when you register here.
Keynotes & Plenaries
Dr Emma Tseris: The proliferation of trauma across the human services: Unpacking a ‘progressive’ concept.
Trauma-informed practices are proliferating in social work, and across the human services more broadly. Such practices are usually positioned as unproblematically positive and progressive, and they have been commended for offering a shift away from pathologising approaches. However, there is growing critical scholarship highlighting the limitations of trauma-informed practices in enacting social justice, instead illuminating the symptom-oriented and individual-focused discourses that permeate trauma-informed practices, and an increasingly amorphous understanding of the meaning of trauma-informed practice. This sits alongside a limited critical interrogation of the rise of neuro-centric perspectives that seek to predict the impacts of violence across the lifecourse. In this paper, I will argue that trauma-informed practices have become a popular approach to demonstrating a rhetorical engagement with ‘social justice’, while reinstating the professional power and expertise of psy-professionals. This is achieved by constructing victim-survivors of violence as ‘risky’ and ‘dysfunctional’, which justifies a range of oppressive practices, including paternalism, surveillance, and diverse forms of coercion. Such practices are wrapped up in notions of benevolence, leaving little room for critique. Consequently, there is an urgent need to consider whether the feminist and activist roots of the trauma paradigm can be re-discovered, or whether it is necessary to take a different direction in addressing and preventing interpersonal, institutional, and structural violence.
Jathan Sadowski: A Ruthless Criticism of AI and Technology
In 2021, science fiction Ted Chiang observed that, “Most of our fears or anxieties about technology are best understood as fears or anxiety about how capitalism will use technology against us.” The sudden boom of interest in artificial intelligence—driven by torrents of cash and threats to transform society from top to bottom—has clarified this relationship between technology and capitalism even further. People are more aware than ever of the power dynamics that drive systems like AI. It now common to see skeptical inquiry about how technologies are made, who decides their purpose, who uses them, and who are they used against? The impacts of AI are no longer merely abstract or distant concerns. The ecological, economic, and human costs are increasingly material and immediate. By expanding on Chiang’s sharp remarks about our anxieties of how capital forges technologies to then wield against us, this talk outlines three key concepts that are crucial for a political economic analysis—and a ruthless criticism—of AI and capitalism. First is innovation realism. Second is cheap data. Third is the perpetual value machine.
Conference Programme & Proceedings
The conference programme will be available through Sched closer to the conference. There will be no printed programmes.
Getting There, Facilities & Other Information
Our main campus and St Margaret’s College are in North Dunedin, adjacent to the city’s CBD. The conference venue is close to a range of motels, cafes, restaurants and bars, and the supermarket is a short walk away. The College is a half-hour drive from Dunedin airport.
Contact
If you have any questions, please email Conference Convenors Fairleigh Gilmour and Chris Brickell at SAANZ@otago.ac.nz