TASA 2023
Monday 27 to Wednesday 29 November 2023: University of Sydney & online

The Gathering
This year, TASA’s annual event sees a change of format due to the ISA World Congress of Sociology, held in Melbourne in June. TASA’s 2023 November event will be run as a colloquium. This three-day gathering, rather than the usual five-day conference, provides the opportunity to host a less jam-packed program, placing emphasis on a mix of panel-based and general papers, on discussion and social connection, and on broader regional and remote participation through both offline and online engagement.

Held, once again, in conjunction with the Council of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences Congress of HASS, TASA 2023 will kick-off with a half-day postgraduate event (Monday 27 November), followed by two further days (Tuesday 28 and Wednesday 29 November) involving panel-based sessions, general paper sessions relevant to a TASA thematic group, plenaries, social events, and TASA’s AGM and awards presentation. While we recognise that this offers fewer than usual chances to deliver a paper, it will potentially increase audience levels and thematic coherence.

The Theme
There is current foreboding about the state of the social. Struck by the tragedy of pandemic (and accompanying shifts in work, sociality and life course), marked by heightened political polarisation and faced with climate crisis, the social terrains we inhabit are in trouble. Right now, voices are in contention, cultures are apparently at war, and our environments are roaring back at us in protest.

All this goes beyond the perennial lament for unachieved social cohesion. In face of climate change, escalating inequalities and resurgent fascisms societies across the globe are contending with unprecedented change. Yet on an everyday level the response is both bleak and hopeful. Wherever social relations seem to be disintegrating they are lived vibrantly elsewhere; wherever social belonging and social participation seem to be under siege, they are in other places (both offline and online) being sustained or remade.

TASA 2023’s theme takes up this sense of social unravelling and remaking in the context of the increasing ethical imperative to live generously with and alongside other voices, diverse cultural frames, and the many environments that sustain us. The theme is deliberately a broad one but with a central focus on what it is to constitute, contest and participate in societies and social relations in current times. There are many sociologies that can speak here; sociologies of class, ethnicity, Indigeneity; of body, disability, genders and sexualities; of inequality, health, education, regionality; of culture, religion, emotion; and of economy, technology, environment and activism. We invite sociologists from all sectors – urban, regional and remote – to share their research insights and to connect their work to ways of sustaining the social.
 
The Panel & Paper Process
Given the shorter event and absence of a local organising team, TASA wants to keep the administration of the program as straightforward as possible, focusing our energy on delivering an inclusive, slower and friendly colloquium. We also plan for a moderate number of parallel sessions in keeping with an emphasis on thematic coherence and intellectual engagement.

Colloquium participants who wish to deliver a paper have two options; you can either submit an abstract to one of ten focused panel-based sessions or submit an abstract in the general paper sessions relevant to a TASA thematic group. All proposed papers should, in some way, connect with the broad colloquium theme.

Submissions will close on August 4th, 2023. For details, and to submit, click here.

Paper Selection
Paper selection will take place in mid-August through consultation with each team of panel convenors, thematic group convenors, and TASA’s colloquium convenor. Please note that only a limited number of abstracts will be accepted. Presenters will be notified in early September.

We do hope you can join us for the TASA 2023 Colloquium in Sydney or online.
    
Kim Humphery,
Director – Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University, Vice-President of TASA and Convener of TASA 2023.