Call for abstracts: SAGSA Annual Conference 2023

The Sociology and Anthropology Graduate Student Association (SAGSA) at Concordia University will be hosting its annual conference from March 25 to 26, 2023, under the theme Sustainable Futures? Being with and Beyond “Crisis.”

Inspired by the "action turn" in the social sciences, the purpose of this two-day graduate student conference is to better understand how the next generation of researchers are responding to people’s sense of 'crisis' in the world not only to imagine but also to realize sustainable futures. We recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, growing economic precarity, political divides, conflicts and the plight of refugees have engendered all sorts of “crisis” as well as a sense of urgency for solutions.

In response, one could argue that researchers are increasingly thinking about their work in terms of what Kenneth J. Gergen calls future-forming endeavors, of "staying with the trouble" as Donna Haraway puts it — i.e., moving beyond reflecting, exploring and illuminating the reality of the “crisis” and toward a form of inquiry that is about creating, making and transforming worlds.

In this conference, we encourage presenters from across disciplines to think about the challenges but also possibilities of working in the tension between a present in “crisis” and the idea of a sustainable future. In the spirit of sparking a lively conversation on the different issues, the conference welcomes papers looking at the implications of such work for different power dynamics, gender, class, caste, etc. It invites reflections on the kinds of methodological, epistemological and ontological knowledge upon which our everyday responses to crisis are based. Scholars might reflect on the following but not be limited to the following themes:

• political and economic systems
• knowledge-making as collaborative praxis
• citizenship, immigration and refugees
• gender, identity and difference
• government, law and policy
• social movements
• bodies and senses
• digital media, technologies and online gaming
• conflict, crisis, catastrophe
• sustainable development goals/future
• power structures and agency
• decolonization and indigeneity
• environment, infrastructure, development
• youth and the family
• multispecies ethnography; digital and experimental ethnography
• transnational mobility, migration, diaspora, displacement
• eco-anxiety, climate change, ecological crisis and livelihood
• covid-19, pandemic, curfew

The SAGSA organizing committee welcomes a variety of theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions stemming from across disciplines whether completed or in progress. We invite interested contributors to submit a 250-300 word abstract for papers, panels and workshops as well as 3 to 5 keywords related to their research to concordia.sagsa@gmail.com.

This conference will take place both in-person and online via Zoom. Papers can be submitted and presented in English or French. The submission deadline is February 1 and a notification of acceptance will be sent out by February 15.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the organizing committee at concordia.sagsa@gmail.com.

Dates to remember

• Submission deadline for abstracts and panels: February 1, 2023
• Notification of paper and panel acceptance: February 15, 2023
• Conference dates: March 25-26, 2023

Amrita Gurung (chair), Carlos Eduardo Olaya Díaz & Manoj Suji (co-chairs)
SAGSA Conference Organizing Committee
Department of Sociology and Anthropology