CONFERENCE 2017

The VIIIth Conference of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction,
Studying Everyday Life: Generic Dimensions of Interactionist Inquiry,
Poland, Łódź, 04-08.07.2017

Dear Colleagues and Friends,
The University of Lodz is proud to host the 8th Conference of the European Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (EU SSSI), Studying Everyday Life: Generic Dimensions of Interactionist Inquiry, which will be held at the Faculty of Economics and Sociology from July 4th-8th, 2017.
The conference seeks to build upon the organizational experiences and successful practices established through the previous EU SSSI conferences in Pisa (2010), Kassel (2011), Rotterdam (2012), Uppsala (2013), Aalborg (2014), Salford (2015), and Topola (2016). The aim is to provide an interdisciplinary and international forum within which to utilize and extend symbolic interactionist theory and methods in the thick description and exploration of human lived experience as an evolving social process embedded in the individual’s understanding of how to manage social and cultural constraints within given contexts. The conference is also intended to foster consideration of the ways in which such empirical endeavors contribute to a more generic understanding of human group life as represented in people’s perspectives, identities, activities, relationships, collective ventures, and the like.
The conference theme, Studying Everyday Life: Generic Dimensions of Interactionist Inquiry, draws upon an interactionist standpoint as well as ethnographic research in order to investigate the richness, complexity, and diversity of everyday life. It calls upon participants to assess and extend our understanding of human knowing and acting, as well as the theoretical, methodological, and conceptual dimensions of the sociological venture. This will create possibilities for a broader dialogue about focused inquiry into the social processes at the heart of the symbolic interactionist perspective.
Join us!

The Conference has invited Research Committee 36 at the ISA, “Alienation Theory and Research,” to organize sessions and presentations at the Conference. Please indicate on your abstract submission form whether it is for an RC 36 session and send a copy to Vessela Misheva, RC 36 President, at Vessela.Misheva@soc.uu.se. Non-committee members are also welcome to present at these sessions.

The tentative conference program has 9 plenary sessions with keynote speakers, regular sessions, and pre-conference interdisciplinary workshops, as well as exhibitions addressed to the general public (see below). Scholars from European, Canadian, and American universities have confirmed that they will chair the regular sessions at the conference. Polish Universities, University of Lodz, University of Warsaw, Jagiellonian University, among others, will show their disciplinary traditions in ethnographic studies of everyday life and the use of qualitative methodology.

www.eusssi2017.uni.lodz.pl

Workshops for scholars and practitioners

• Constructing poverty by social politics
• Contemplative hatha-yoga for self-observation. Deep-self as a “tool” of psycho-social inquiry
• Political discourse analysis
• Ethnography of everyday life
• Grounded theory in studying everyday life
• Social aspects of the body—a research workshop

Exhibitions for the general public

• The history of social worlds in photography and material artifacts. The example of the social world of climbing, Anna Kacperczyk
• Photographed symbols of wedding rituals. The social bond representations beyond everyday life, Kamil Głowacki
• Physical objects that objectify my identity. Postmodern society without privacy? (exhibition of material objects), Łucja Lange
• Sociological photography of the de-industrialized city. City of Lodz, Waldemar Dymarczyk
• Visualization of gentrification and poverty. Symbols of social positions in postmodern society
• Poster session for PhD students