Three conferences:

1. Call for Papers: 16th Annual Chicago Ethnography Conference

2. INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF ANALYTICAL SOCIOLOGISTS (INAS) CONFERENCE, June 6 and 7, 2014 in Mannheim.

3. 2014 Junior Theorists Symposium, Berkeley, CA 15 August 2014.  Submission Deadline: 15 February 2014

More details below.

Call for Papers: 16th Annual Chicago Ethnography Conference

The Department of Sociology at Northwestern University is pleased to announce the 16th Annual Chicago Ethnography Conference. The conference provides an opportunity for graduate students to share their ethnographic scholarship with one another and get feedback from faculty and other graduate students based in the Chicago area and beyond. This year’s conference will be held at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL on March 15th, 2014.  Graduate students in all academic disciplines are invited to present their original ethnographic research. While preference will be given to those who have conducted substantial fieldwork, interviewing methods are acceptable. Papers in all substantive areas are welcome.  The theme of this year’s conference is cultural production and reproduction. In addition to topics that relate to the theme, graduate students are welcome to submit work on topics including but not limited to: class, crime, education, ethnicity, gender, family, globalization, health and illness, immigration, medicine, methodology, performance ethnography, race, religion, sexualities, social movements, technology, urban poverty, and work and employment.

Abstract Submissions: To submit an abstract, please complete the online submission form: http://chicagoethnography.wordpress.com/. The abstract should not exceed 250 words. The deadline for submissions is January 15th, 2014. All presenters will be notified of acceptance by February 1st. Participants will be asked to submit their full papers to the conference committee by March 1st.  Plenary Speakers:  Nina Eliasoph (University of Southern California) AND  Ashley Mears (Boston University).

INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF ANALYTICAL SOCIOLOGISTS (INAS) CONFERENCE

7th INAS Conference – June 6 and 7, 2014 in Mannheim.  Abstract Submission deadline: February 10, 2014
The University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany http://goo.gl/maps/nZ5TG
Organizers:  • Henning Hillmann, University of Mannheim, AND Clemens Kroneberg, University of Cologne

The Annual Meeting of the International Network of Analytical Sociologists (INAS) will convene at the historic Baroque palace that is home to the University of Mannheim in Germany. Analytical sociology is an approach for understanding the social world. It is concerned with explaining societal phenomena such as social network structures, patterns of segregation, collectively shared and diffused cultural and/or political ideas or common ways of (inter-)acting in a society. It explains such phenomena not merely by relating them to other societal phenomena, but by detailing in clear and precise ways the mechanisms through which the phenomena were brought about. Parts of analytical sociology focus on action and interaction as the cogs and wheels of social processes, while others consider the dynamic social processes that these actions and interactions bring about. WE invite abstracts for paper presentations using any qualitative or quantitative method that allows for the study of social mechanisms and the complex social dynamics they give rise to. We likewise welcome purely theoretical papers dealing with central aspects of the explanatory approach of analytical sociology.  Please submit your abstracts (500 – 1000 words) by email to inas2014.lswos@uni-mannheim.de no later than February 10, 2014. Your abstract should include:
1) the title of the paper, 2) the author(s), their institutional affiliation and e-mail address, and 3) a brief summary of the paper, including the research problem, main substantive argument, and empirical evidence (where applicable).

We will notify the authors of accepted abstracts by March 1, 2014. Full papers of accepted abstracts are due on May 1, 2014.

2014 Junior Theorists Symposium, Berkeley, CA 15 August 2014.  Submission Deadline: 15 February 2014
We invite submissions for extended abstracts for the 8th Junior Theorists Symposium (JTS), to be held in Berkeley, CA on August 15th, 2014, the day before the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The JTS is a one-day conference featuring the work of up-and-coming theorists, sponsored in part by the Theory Section of the ASA. Since 2005, the conference has brought together early career-stage sociologists who engage in theoretical work.  We are pleased to announce that Marion Fourcade (University of California – Berkeley), Saskia Sassen (Columbia University), and George Steinmetz (University of Michigan) will serve as discussants for this year’s symposium. In addition, we are pleased to announce an after-panel on “The Boundaries of Theory” featuring Stefan Bargheer (UCLA), Claudio Benzecry (University of Connecticut), Margaret Frye (Harvard University), Julian Go (Boston University), and Rhacel Parreñas (USC) . The panel will examine such questions as what comprises sociological theory, and what differentiates “empirical” from “theoretical” work.  We invite all ABD graduate students, postdocs, and assistant professors who received their PhDs from 2010 onwards to submit a three-page précis (800-1000 words). The précis should include the key theoretical contribution of the paper and a general outline of the argument. Be sure also to include (i) a paper title, (ii) author’s name, title and contact information, and (iii) three or more descriptive keywords. As in previous years, in order to encourage a wide range of submissions, we do not have a pre-specified theme for the conference. Instead, papers will be grouped into sessions based on emergent themes.

Please send submissions to the organizers, Daniel Hirschman (University of Michigan) and Jordanna Matlon (Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse), at juniortheorists@gmail.com with the phrase “JTS submission” in the subject line. The deadline is February 15, 2014. We will extend up to 12 invitations to present by March 15. Please plan to share a full paper by July 21, 2014.