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

Abstract

The European Sociological Association (ESA) is a non-profit, Europewide academic organization with over 1,500 members. It aims at facilitating “European sociological research, teaching and communication between sociologists and between sociologists and other scientists” (ESA 2009). The association was established in Vienna in 1992, at the first European sociological conference. The latest biennial ESA conference was held in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, between September 2-5, 2009. The main question of the conference was whether we can look at European society as an increasingly cohesive entity or whether divisions of nation, class, ethnicity, region, gender, and so on continue to be more salient. Is there one European society or are there many European societies? Is the nation-state the most appropriate unit of analysis or are other approaches needed? Is there convergence or divergence between the regions of Europe? A particular focus of the conference was the role of sociology in understanding the European area and how sociologists from different countries and with different traditions can work together toward this end. The aim of our analysis is to provide a special description of contemporary European sociology, based on the presentations of the 9th ESA conference. We will examine to what extent European sociological life is homogeneous, how it is structured, and which subjects attract major research attention. The analysis is based on a database compiled by the authors of the present report. It contains the most important information about the approximately 2,500 abstracts and their first authors (hereafter referred to as presenters) as they appeared in the official Abstract Book.3 The database includes all presentations at plenary, semi-plenary, and normal sessions and all posters and distributed papers (referred to hereafter as presentations). For each presentation, the following information is contained in the data set: sex, country and city of origin of the first author; the session in which the abstract was included; the type of presentation (plenary, semi-plenary, or session presentation, poster or distributed paper); and whether the presentation was purely theoretical or included empirical analysis. The number of countries analyzed in the international comparative presentations and the databases used are also recorded and represent a special focus of the present analysis. In the following sections, we examine the first authors’ countries of origin, the sessions and themes of the conference, gender differences, and the characteristics of cross-country comparative research. (...)