The European Sociological Association invites abstracts for a Research Stream at their 2019 conference on:

Practicing the Future: Social, Material and Affective Futures

The field of studies of futurity in sociology is flourishing with new contributions (for instance, in youth studies, visual culture, feminist theory, queer theory, cultural theory, emotion and affect studies, science and technology studies). The purpose of this research stream is to engage with the future as an analytical object, and not simply a neutral temporal space into which objective expectations can be projected.

Two key ideas are critical to this Call for Papers: (1) The awareness that “practices make time and are not made in time” (Bourdieu 2000) (2) The understanding that the intersecting of local and global in the ways we practice futures is of the utmost importance.

 

The Research Stream intends to foster debate starting from a number of questions:

How are futures enacted in everyday practices?
How are futures constituted through the unstable field of language, practices and materiality?
How do place and belonging embed the way we practice the future?
How do imaginaries of the future empower (or disempower) agency?
How do long term and short term futures (and big and little futures) interact?
How do we inhabit the future through affect and sensations?
How do hope and fear provide the emotional substratum (the ‘ropes’) that make everyday protentions possible?

Abstracts should be submitted via the conference website.

Abstracts should not exceed 250 words. For further details see the ESA2019 full Call for Papers.

Deadlines 2019:
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 1st February
1st April: Notification of acceptance
April/May: Opening of Participant Registration
20 – 23 August: 14th ESA conference in Manchester