Momentum: LSE Sociology Conference

The Annual Sociology Conference showcases the department’s research, with a special focus on the work of advanced PhD students and recent graduates.

A wide range of sociological concerns have long consolidated around the unfolding of social processes–how things come to be, how they are sustained, how they fall apart, and what follows collapse. In other words, sociologists are often interested in momentum– when and how change takes place as well as the historical, political, material, and/or affective forces involved in transformation. To speak of a contemporary moment is to speak of time and matter, global trajectories and histories, formation and information: Where are we, where have we come from and where are we headed?

This year’s conference wishes to address the momentum of our current moment and its global polycrisis, marked by phenomena such as growing social and economic inequalities, neocolonial violence, global warming, and epidemiological vulnerability. As sociologists we are immersed within certain tempos, entangled with the world that we research. How can critical sociological practice engage with the friction of resistance, the cultivation of new rhythms and orientations? What is ‘momentum’ to sociology today, in a political climate that is increasingly driven by fascism, shrinking academic freedom, and the fragmentation of the left? What do we do; and what can we do? We expand the equation that “momentum equals mass times velocity”, welcoming contributions from a wide range of topics:

• the study of social movements and revolutions, the changing meaning of class struggle and formation, (sub)cultures and temporalities of protest, queer/crip/anticolonial momentum;
• global perspectives on human rights, war, migration and border regimes, the urban spectrum, financialisation, shifting hegemonies and the legacy of empire, empowering histories from below, decolonising sociology;
• techno-utopias, climate action, more-than-human perspectives on science, health and illness, posthuman challenges to politics, and the challenges of posthumanism now;
• transformation through research and expanding the sociological imagination, reflections on mixed, participatory, and creative methods, experiences in the field and explorations of failure;
• theoretical engagements with time and social reproduction, work that emphasises concepts like rhythm, acceleration, liquidity, friction, (dis)coordination – all determinants of momentum etc.

The conference programme will be announced soon.

Please register for the event by Monday 3 November.

The department would like to thank Matthew Galloway for the wonderful design work. If would like to know more about Matthew's work you can follow their Instagram @matthewcgalloway.

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