[CITASA] Fwd: An invitation to organize sessions and submit papers

[gustavo at soc.haifa.ac.il]

Theme Statement for the 2010 Joint Annual Meeting

North Central Sociological Association
and the
Midwest Sociological Society

March 31- April 3, 2010 Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile


COMMUNITIES IN AN AGE OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

     Our intention is to look at a very old theme in sociology from  
the vantage of current debates about social changes that are occurring  
with a rapidity, expansiveness, and depth that have led some to concur  
with Anthony Giddens that we live in a “runaway world.” The word  
“community” has been part of the English language since at least the  
fourteenth century, referring since that time to a sense of a people’s  
common shared identity and to feelings of mutuality and belonging. In  
Keywords, British cultural theorist Raymond Williams observed that it  
would appear that the term “seems never to be used textunfavorably.”  
It often does seem to have a halo over it, despite the fact that  
people often leave particular communities—including small towns,  
monasteries, and religious sects—because they are experienced as being  
too restrictive and parochial. Our stress is on communities, not  
community, for we believe that it is essential for sociology to come  
to terms with the varied ways and reasons that people bind themselves  
to others. As sociologists, we continue to be interested in the fate  
of traditional communities, while at the same time we turn our  
attention to new community types that have emerged in recent decades.  
We seek to use the sociological tools at our disposal to make sense of  
the external factors that serve to promote or inhibit communities.  
Likewise, we are interested in advancing the sociological  
understanding of the motives that are at play when people commit to  
binding themselves to particular communities. Finally, we want to  
revisit the long tradition of focusing our sociological vision on the  
form and content of social interaction within particular communities.  
Among the kinds of communities we want to focus on during this  
conference are the following:

         •Communities of place—including neighborhoods, local  
friendship networks, and ethnic enclaves
         •Communities of space—which includes transnational  
communities and translocal friendship networks
         •Elective communities based on shared beliefs—including  
religious communities, political organizations, and social movements
         •Imagined communities—most significantly being, as Benedict  
Anderson’s work attests, the product of nationalism
         •Virtual communities—which include the fantasy worlds of  
multi-user domains, chat rooms, and civic networks

     We have defined the focus of the 2010 meeting with the broadest  
of strokes. Indeed, a person would be hardpressed to find any topic of  
interest to sociologists that cannot be linked to the idea of  
community. At the same time, we would note that by framing  
sociological topics in terms of community, it raises one of the most  
fundamental questions in sociology: What are the bases of social  
solidarity? This question, in turn, gets at an even more fundamental  
question driving sociological inquiry, even if it is an undercurrent.  
We refer to the question Georg Simmel posed a century ago: How is  
society possible?

f you are interested in organizing a session, send your proposal to  
the appropriate person LISTED BELOW.

Please include:

    1. Title of your session
    2. Your name and institutional affiliation
    3. Mailing address AND email address
    4. Telephone and fax numbers
    5. Send NO LATER than
       August 31, 2009

Program Co-Chair
Debra Swanson, Hope College
swansond at hope.edu

http://www.ncsanet.org/ALEXANDER%202009/NCSA%20meeting.html

-- 
Gustavo S. Mesch, Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
University of Haifa
Chair-elect, Communication and Information Technologies Section
American Sociological Association
http://soc.haifa.ac.il/~gustavo




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