The 9th conference of the European Sociological Association: European sociology or European sociologies?

摘要

The European Sociological Association (ESA) is a non-profit, Europewideudacademic organization with over 1,500 members. It aims at facilitatingud“European sociological research, teaching and communication betweenudsociologists and between sociologists and other scientists” (ESA 2009).udThe association was established in Vienna in 1992, at the first Europeanudsociological conference.udThe latest biennial ESA conference was held in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon,udbetween September 2-5, 2009. The main question of the conference was whetherudwe can look at European society as an increasingly cohesive entity or whetheruddivisions of nation, class, ethnicity, region, gender, and so on continue to be moreudsalient. Is there one European society or are there many European societies? Is theudnation-state the most appropriate unit of analysis or are other approaches needed?udIs there convergence or divergence between the regions of Europe? A particularudfocus of the conference was the role of sociology in understanding the Europeanudarea and how sociologists from different countries and with different traditionsudcan work together toward this end.udThe aim of our analysis is to provide a special description of contemporaryudEuropean sociology, based on the presentations of the 9th ESA conference.udWe will examine to what extent European sociological life is homogeneous,udhow it is structured, and which subjects attract major research attention.udThe analysis is based on a database compiled by the authors of the present report. It contains the most important information about the approximatelyud2,500 abstracts and their first authors (hereafter referred to as presenters)udas they appeared in the official Abstract Book.3 The database includes alludpresentations at plenary, semi-plenary, and normal sessions and all postersudand distributed papers (referred to hereafter as presentations). For eachudpresentation, the following information is contained in the data set: sex,udcountry and city of origin of the first author; the session in which the abstractudwas included; the type of presentation (plenary, semi-plenary, or sessionudpresentation, poster or distributed paper); and whether the presentation wasudpurely theoretical or included empirical analysis. The number of countriesudanalyzed in the international comparative presentations and the databasesudused are also recorded and represent a special focus of the present analysis.udIn the following sections, we examine the first authors’ countries of origin,udthe sessions and themes of the conference, gender differences, and theudcharacteristics of cross-country comparative research. (...)