ASA Theory Section

💭 ASA 2026 Theory Session Highlight: Marxism and Anti-Colonialism (joint with Marxist Sociology) 💭

Read more below, or visit our website (asatheory.com/asa-sessions/) for full description and submit your work! 📚

🔔CFP for @sociologicaltheory.bsky.social “Special Issue on Sociological Theorizing
from the Global South” due next week (12/15)!

Learn more and submit your work ⬇️

www.asanet.org/wp-content/u...

Weekend reading: check out Josh Pacewicz's (@joshpacewicz.bsky.social) analysis of the relationship between liberal democracy and populist rhetoric based on research across the American Rust Belt during Obama years:
journals-sagepub-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/share/QJDABU...

New in Social Movement Studies 🔔 Check out Nathan Katz's (@nathankatz.bsky.social) "Anti-leftism as an aesthetic in white power punk": www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

New recording 🎥
If you've missed the talk, watch now at: asatheory.com

Gray poster with black text describing a planned session for the theory section at the ASA 2026 Meeting. Description reads: Critical Epistemologies of the Global South It is now commonplace knowledge that sociological theorizing, especially in the United States is mostly shaped by Western thought, creating Eurocentric theories and analysis. In turn, this recognition leads to calls for the “recovery” of theorists not represented in the canon and a turn towards theorists from the Global South (understood as a political and social, rather than a geographical, category). In this panel, we use the second tactic, asking for papers that are critically grounded in the Global South, or more generally, non-Western frameworks either as theoretical development or empirical analysis. In submitting this joint call from the Theory and GATS section, we build on the strength of both sections and draw papers from across them. In this way, we hope to spur the growth of truly balanced sociological theories: afterall, sociological theories are not generalizable if they are based on only a small slice of the world.

💭 ASA 2026 Theory Session Highlight: Critical Epistemologies of the Global South (joint with GATS) 💭

Read more below, and submit your work! 📚

Poster - CBSM virtual event

Please join us ! Online Panel on Global Youth Mobilization in Times of Polycrisis December 8th (Monday), 11 am Central/ 12.00 EST
Register at [http://bit.ly/3K1ZUIi].
We will discuss youth mobilization across diverse political contexts—including Indonesia, Morocco, and the United States.

ASA 2026 Sessions Theory Section Sessions at ASA 2026 in New York Submit Here Coser Salon and Lecture The annually organized Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda-Setting recognizes a mid-career sociologist wh…

Every week, we're going to be highlighting a Theory session planned for @asanews.bsky.social 2026 in NYC. Submissions are open now, and the deadline to submit is Feb. 25, 2026 @ 9pm EST. ✨📖💭

Stay tuned for our first highlight tomorrow! In the meantime, learn more below:

asatheory.com/asa-sessions/

ASA Theory Section - Graduate Student Programming Thank you for completing this short survey. We look forward to developing relevant programming that meets the needs of graduate students in the Theory Section. Your input will be invaluable in helping...

🔔Grad Students!

The section is seeking your feedback! Your input will help us design programming that reflects the needs and priorities of the section's wonderful graduate student community, and allow you to indicate interest in volunteering.

Survey link: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Happy Monday! Check out what we’re reading today:

📚 “Order and Potentiality in Interaction Ritual Theory” by Iddo Tavory and Nicholas Hoynes

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Weekend reading: Check out Cameron Day's (@texastentialism.bsky.social) paper on what postpositivist sociology stands to gain from Frankfurt School critical theory:
#Dialectics, #Epistemology, and #CriticalSociology...
(journals-sagepub-com.proxy2.library.illinois.edu/doi/full/10....)

New in @sociologicaltheory.bsky.social 🔔
Luna Vincent’s “Specifying Race: The Colonial Constitution of Race in a Set-Theoretic Framework."
doi.org/10.1177/0735...

Toward a Sociology of Democratic Truth-Telling - Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup, 2025 The erosion of truth-telling is central to discussions of democratic decline. However, these discussions often gloss over how democratic truth-telling is consti...

Over the coming weeks, we'll be sharing articles in previous issues of @sociologicaltheory.bsky.social! First up:

📘Toward a Sociology of Democratic Truth-Telling, by Johan Gøtzsche-Astrup

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Happening soon!!!

Medical Sociology on the Move This 2nd edition identifies and discusses the latest directions in theory in medical or health sociology and shows how to apply theory to health problems.

Celebrating William Cockerham’s Medical Sociology on the Move, Revised Edition: Including New Directions in Theory! The volume honors the late Kathy Charmaz and Peter Conrad and includes their original chapters, plus updated and expanded work from leading scholars.

link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Join us on Friday for the next talk in our How to Write and Publish Theory series, featuring Dr. Yuchen Yang (@dr-yang.bsky.social) on the development and publication of his award-winning ST article, “Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender.”

Sign up: ucla.zoom.us/j/91370822602

New in @sociologicaltheory.bsky.social 🔔
James Rosenberg’s “Steps Toward an Ecology of Markets: Markets as Evolving Computational Algorithms."
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

⚡️Coming soon: a special symposium on Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction at 90 organized by @alimeghji.bsky.social & Jose Itzigsohn! Early look at my piece here:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

📣 The call for ASA Theory Section Prizes is open!
Submit your nominations by March 2, 2026 🏆

Learn more and celebrate outstanding work in theory: asatheory.com/theory-award...

Anticolonialism and Social Thought Cambridge Core - Social Theory - Anticolonialism and Social Thought

🎉Check out Anaheed Al-Hardan and @juliango.bsky.social's new book "Anticolonialism and Social Thought." @universitypress.cambridge.org
doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Planning for ASA 2026 in New York City? The Theory Section Sessions are now available!
🗓️ Submissions just opened.
⏰ Deadline: Feb 25, 2026
Check out session details here 👉 asatheory.com/asa-sessions/

🔔 How to Write Theory with Dr. Yuchen Yang
On Nov 21st, Dr Yang (@dr-yang.bsky.social) will share the backstory of his article, "Gender Uptake: Theorizing the Semiotics of (Un)Doing Gender", which received the 2025 Junior Theorist Award.
Please sign up at this Zoom link: ucla.zoom.us/j/91370822602

Theorizing White Ignorance From Du Bois to Mills: Narrative and Consumptive Innocence Starting with Du Bois, scholars of race have investigated the role of White ignorance as it perpetuates White supremacy. Today, Charles Mills and scholars continue this inquiry by expanding the impor...

🔔New in @bjsociology.bsky.social!

Miguel Montalva Barba & Camille Petersen in Theorizing White Ignorance From Du Bois to Mills:
Narrative and Consumptive Innocence — push on the role and types of White innocence in upholding global White supremacy.
doi.org/10.1111/1468...

New recording 🎥
If you've missed the talk, watch now at: asatheory.com

Global Political Dimensions of the Turn to the Right — exploring contemporary right-wing movements and their theoretical implications.

Assemblages and Identitarian Articulations - Subjectivity The article advances our understanding of “identifications,” such as race, class, gender, familial, and religious, which are seen as active processes continuously reconstituted through interactions (with objects, technologies, discourses, and bodies) in assemblages. “Identitarian articulations” represent the unique entanglements of these identifications within different assemblages. This concept highlights how identifications interact dynamically within a given assemblage, creating distinct articulations that reflect the particular assemblage’s characteristics. The text emphasizes that assemblages are not static but ongoing processes shaped by desires and interactions among their components (people, objects, technologies, discourses, and emotions). These interactions affect the capacities of the identifications involved. We understand capacities as potential actions stemming from identifications, suggesting that while properties define entities, their capacities reveal what they can do in relation to others. In summary, the article investigates how identifications, through their entanglement, trigger specific identitarian articulations within varying assemblages and the role of capacities in these processes.

Assemblages and Identitarian Articulations. Original article advancing our understanding of “identifications,” such as race, class, gender, familial, and religious, by Pablo Vila and Edward Avery-Natale. #OpenAccess

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

New in ST!🔔For a Strabismic Sociology: A View from the Southern Cone - Claudio E. Benzecry, 2025 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The Social Psychology of Morality ‘Issues of morality are ever-present in society, with renewed resonance in current political and cultural debates. This work spans sociology, psychology and social theory to provide a comprehensive ou...

🎉 Check out "The Social Psychology of Morality" by Neil J. MacKinnon, out now! www.e-elgar.com/shop/usd/the...

What Is Social Science? A Comparison with Biology - Tim Newton, 2025 What is social science? This article examines this perennial question by addressing the relation between human biology and social science, exploring whether soc...

🔔 New in Sociological Theory from Tim Newton! "What Is Social Science? A Comparison with Biology"

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

The Sociological Quarterly Queer Nightlife. Volume 66, Issue 4 of The Sociological Quarterly

New publication by Amin Ghaziani (@aminghaziani.bsky.social) in (@socquarterly.bsky.social). “The Sociology of Queer Nightlife.” The Sociological Quarterly 66(4): 661-674. Available here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/utsq20/6....
The article provides a sociological perspective on queer nightlife.

🗞️🗞️ Call for submissions - Theory newsletter 🗞️🗞️
We welcome publication announcements, pitches for essays/interviews, or any other non-time-sensitive announcements. Send materials by Oct 26 to Youbin Kang (ykang2@ccny.cuny.edu), Jun Zhou (zhouxjun@umich.edu), or Katrina Wang (katrina.wang@wisc.edu).