Please consider submitting an abstract of about 500 words for an individual presentation or a panel relating to community, democracy, and organizations at the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) annual meeting. The conference submission deadline is Jan. 19, 2024. Our 2024 annual meeting will primarily be an in-person conference spanning 3 days in Limerick, Ireland, June 27-29, 2023. For those unable to travel, our network—Network A: Community, Democracy, and Organizations—also have a very limited number of virtual presentation slots in two sessions to be scheduled for June 18-21. (Details about those are here.)

As the organizers of Network A: Community, Democracy, and Organizations, we would be glad to consider any papers on our network’s topics that you wish to submit, in addition to any ideas you have for pre-formed panels with multiple paper presentations, roundtable discussion panels, or book salons (aka Author Meets Critics panels). SASE is an international organization of scholars who study topics related to economic sociology and political economy. Network A focuses on the moral or values-based underpinnings of human thought, practices, and institutions that comprise civil societies, particularly as they relate to the participatory, collectivist, and democratic aspirations of organizations, markets, and other spaces of collaboration and contestation. We examine how communities, enterprises, and societies can be organized around principles of democratic governance or other substantive values that go beyond calculative self-interest and instrumental relations. In particular, we welcome submissions relating to: (1) how groups and initiatives promote social change, through formal organizations, informal groups, prefigurative organizations, decentralized projects, participatory decision-making, and various forms of shared ownership; and (2) how collectivities reinforce prevailing conventions of hierarchical, bureaucratic, and profit-driven organizational structures and markets.

Examples of relevant phenomena include, but are not limited to: affinity groups; anti-oppressive human services; artistic or cultural collectives (including democratic governance and autonomy-respecting practices in creative organizations more broadly); collectively governed commons; community land trusts; community real estate investment cooperatives; community-based economic exchanges; community-run marketplaces; decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs); free schools; giving circles; limited equity housing cooperatives and co-housing; mutual companies and aid networks; open, commons-based, and inclusive innovation and valuation frameworks; participatory budgeting; public-private partnerships; social enterprises; solidarity economies; and worker, producer, or consumer cooperatives, including platform cooperatives.

To learn more about our network and its history, please read here. To join our Network A listserv, visit https://inthefray.org/list.

For more information about the 2024 conference, visit https://sase.org/event/2024-limerick/#submissions.

How to submit to the 2024 SASE annual conference:

If you are interested in presenting in person or virtually, please submit your paper title(s) and abstract(s) to https://auth.oxfordabstracts.com/?redirect=/stages/6679/submitter and select “Network A: Community, Democracy, and Organizations” by Jan. 19, 2024.

SASE’s Early Career Workshop brings together PhD students, recent PhDs, and independent scholars who wish to participate in small roundtable discussions of their work with assigned faculty mentors. It is held in person shortly before the SASE annual meeting, with some travel expenses paid. Applicants should submit full papers and other required materials, as specified here, by Jan. 19, 2024.

Please direct any general questions or comments about Network A to sase@inthefray.org.

How to support Network A:

Network A relies entirely on the efforts of volunteer organizers and additional support from colleagues at all stages of their careers. Please consider supporting the growth and sustainability of our community in these and other ways: 

(1) Circulate this cfp to listservs and other potentially interested parties, particularly those who might not have heard of our network or the SASE conference.  

(2) Help us build community at the SASE conference in Limerick, Ireland. Among other things, please send us suggestions for local venues, local organizations, or other groups that might be of interest to our network’s members and that could possibly present at the conference, host field trips for our members, etc.  

(3)  Consider becoming  part of the Network A leadership. There are many ways to help, including by organizing conference panels, social events, and virtual sessions. 

We look forward to reading your submissions!

Best wishes from your SASE Network A organizers,

In-person team

Katherine K. Chen, kchen@ccny.cuny.edu

Victor Tan Chen, vchen@vcu.edu 

Philipp Degens, Philipp.Degens@uni-hamburg.de 

Virtual session team

Joyce Rothschild, joycevt@aol.com 

Marc Schneiberg, schneibm@reed.edu

Coordination team

Paola Ometto, pometto@csusm.edu