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.
Conference Programme
9:30 | Welcome Tea and Coffee
9:45 | Opening Address by Ayça Çubukçu
10:00 to 11:30 | Panel 1 – Sustaining the Moment: Wealth, Class, and Inequality Now, chaired by Aaron Reeves
● David Kampmann, “Forget Wealth Inequalities: An Alternative View on Assets, Finance, and Class Power”
● Hobeth Martínez Carrillo, “Land, Wealth, and Class Reproduction: A Theoretical Exploration”
● Mike Savage, “Quiet’ and ‘Loud’ Elites: The Visibility of Economic Power in the UK”
11:30 to 11:45 | Coffee Break
11:45 to 13:15 | Panel 2 – Building the Moment: Public Space, Housing, and History, chaired by David Madden
● Delilah Wallbank, “Campaigning Against Dampness 1985-2025”
● Maxence Dutilleul, “Inflation Double Standard, or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love House Price Inflation”
● Carla Rivera Blanco, “The Invention of Public Space: Moral Ordering in the Late 20th Century”
13:15 to 14:15 | Lunch (provided)
14:15 to 16:00 | Panel 3 – Assembling the Moment: Politics, Emotions, and Identities, chaired by Sacha Hilhorst
● Marco Perolini, “Mobile Rights from Below: Opportunities for New Approaches to Human Rights”
● Fuyun Wei, “Nationalism as Identity-Work: Internal Boundary-Making and Its Durable Appeal Among Reflexive Chinese Youth”
● Rajesh Bhattacharya, “On the Uses and Abuses of Anti-Racist Momentum: An Outline for a Genealogy of Political Blackness”
● Nicolás Arenas, “On the Epistemic Power of Emotions: Marketing and the Rationality Behind the Production of Truth”
16:00 to 16:15 | Coffee Break
16:15 to 17:30 | Roundtable on Momentum, chaired by Maria Persu
Participating faculty:
The roundtable involves an intervention by artist collective Apparatus 22.
17:30 to 17:45 | Closing Address by Aaron Reeves
The organising committee includes PhD Candidates (David Ilkiw, Maria Persu, Mina Mahmoudzadeh, Pratap Jayaram) and faculty members (Aaron Reeves, Haley McAvay, Kristin Surak) from the Department of Sociology. They are collectively selecting the papers, organising the programme and chairing sessions during the conference.The organising committee is grateful for the generous support and guidance of the department's PS research team, Liudmila Pliner and Will Kendall. The organising committee also wishes to thank Claire Moon and the artist collective Apparatus 22 for their support of the conference.
The department would also 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.
LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.