The final call for papers for an
exciting event titled ‘The Sociology of Contemporary Urban Life: Economies
|Cultures| Politics| Aesthetics’ on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th June 2016 has
just been announced.
This two-day conference,
co-organised by the Department and CURB (Centre for Urban Research), is an
attempt to provide a lively, open-minded forum for urban sociologists to gather
and discuss the challenges of conducting the craft of urban sociology in a
fragmented, hierarchical urban world; an urbanizing planet where the very
concept of ‘the city’—traditionally the unit of analysis for urban
sociologists—faces unprecedented levels of scepticism. The title of the conference is a riff on T.J.
Clark's (1984) book on Manet and Paris, The
Painting of Modern Life. As such, the conference aims to engage the
contours of contemporary urban life in a comparable critical manner, using
a multiplex of economies, cultures,
politics and aesthetics to explore our
contemporary urban experience/s (with or without the city). The conference will also address the
distinctive role that urban sociology has played, does play and may in the future play within the
broader academic endeavour of Urban Studies.
Several leading urban
sociologists have already agreed to speak at this event including Fran Tonkiss
(LSE), Michael Keith (Oxford), Emma Jackson (Goldsmiths, London), Phil Hubbard
(Kent), Ayona Datta (Leeds), David Pinder (Roskilde) and Richard Sennett (LSE)
(a public lecture given as part of the York Festival of Ideas).
However, the intention is also to
run a limited number of open streams and will be considering abstracts for
papers that connect empirically or theoretically with the four interconnecting
themes of the event.
250 word abstracts should be sent to both Gareth
Millington (gareth.millington@york.ac.uk) and Daryl Martin
(daryl.martin@york.ac.uk) by Friday 25th
March please. Decisions on abstracts will be made the following week. We
especially welcome contributions from early career researchers. Registration
details for non-speakers will be released shortly.