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Imagining the political/The politics of imagination
The Sociological Review
100th Anniversary Conference
1-3 June 2009
Call for Papers 
The political and its relation to sociology is a source of profound debate, with ideas 
about politics setting up both possibilities and limits for sociological knowledge. If 
class has long counted, along with resistance and activism, writings on religion, the 
body and gender are already imagining the political in novel ways. And in opening 
up everyday life to issues of power and technology, the political comes centre stage. 
The aim of this conference is to bring together sociologists from around the globe 
with high quality papers developing the sociological enterprise or questioning its 
boundaries. Over the last century our journal has opened up sociological debates 
and published papers on the widest range of topics. All submissions welcome. 
Abstracts less than 450 words to [log in to unmask]  by 22 February 2009. 

Imagining the political 
The conference asks how we imagine the political in our work and thought. The aim is to bring the
political into ‘the open’, questioning what divisions does our work make us think? Or not think!
What, for example, severs ‘the cultural’ from ‘the economic’? Why do debates on ‘the technical’ and
‘the social’ rarely qualify as political? Why might the tempo of lives be as political as claims
on territory? Or the visual matter as much as talk? Or money mean more than ethos? What though is
the political? How possible is it to answer this question today? Are theories about, 
say, power and domination outdone by the complexity of contemporary events? Are markets too global,
too pervasive for democracy to work? Or again, what is left of Otherness when social actors become
individuated and mobile? Have the gates of social sanctions, for example, been burst open by the
violence of choice? If so, who is to be the fence, the ‘stop’ on others? How then to think the
political? And when? This is the challenge set by C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination,
the 50th anniversary of which we also celebrate. It is a challenge that crosses the diaspora that is
sociology today; in anthropology, criminology education, geography, law, medicine, management,
nursing and psychology. Here questions are about how institutions are made political, yet seem
rendered silent in the name of equality, transparency and relevance? 

The politics of imagination 
Is imagination something to be tamed? If so, then politics enters over what kind of thought is to be
stimulated and which abandoned; about which vision is to count as real, and what is to be dismissed
as dreams. And it is about arguing – sometimes with force - where we can live with difference and
where we can’t. Or about deciding – often for others - when we are to seek change; and when we
succumb to the ‘temptation of permanence’. And so politics involves who, or what, is to do this
thinking. For imagination is about boundaries of thought, about conditions of possibility and the
very shaping of representation. Things have to be produced in particular ways to be named as
‘imaginative’. Or they get thrown aside as merely imaginative. So that the politics of
imagination runs with a division of labour in which discovery is the province of the entrepreneur
more than the scientist; explication the field of market research more than the scholar; and ‘vision’
is appropriated by managers in the name of policy and strategy. Yet isn’t imagination more than
thought? Is it not also the touchstone of life? Imagination implies a quickening of the lifeblood, a
prospect of everything about to change. Affect. Empathy. Regard. The ability to pick up on someone
else and immediately the world feels the same. And different. Laws of intellectual property insist
on invention being original, but imagination is surely also a mimetic impulse? One that ensures a
renewal fi
rst in its own powers of creation and re-circulation. If imagielicited, is it not also always in process of being formed? 

Conference Organisation 
Randall Collins will give the main address. Other plenary speakers are being drawn from panels to
ensure a close integration of conference themes. Proposals for panels are welcome and should be
submitted to one of the conference organisers by 22 February 2008: 

Nickie Charles 
    [log in to unmask]   
Rolland Munro 
   [log in to unmask]   
Mike Savage 
	[log in to unmask] 

Topics for panels may include: 
• Activism, parties and mobilization 
• The politics of the exception 
• Ethics, identities and materiality 
• Feminist thinking 
• Knowledge & document networks 
• Managing as politics 
• Media, narrative and alternatives 
• Ontological politics 
• Political institutions 
• Rethinking ‘difference’ (e.g. class, gender, race) 
• Securities and government 
• Theorising culture and economy with politics 
• Unfencing ‘the Open’ 
• Visual sociologies 

Location and cost 
The conference will take place at Billesley Manor, a premium country hotel located in the
Shakespeare country near Stratford-upon-Avon. The nearest airports are Birmingham International and
Heathrow, London. Details for rail and car will follow. Participation is limited to 100 delegates
and cost is expected to be £335, including two nights in the hotel (£125 without dinner and
accommodation; some subsidies available for doctoral students). 

Publication 
Since publication began 100 years ago The Sociological Review has sought to encourage
interdisciplinary thought as well as stay at the forefront of sociological writing and research.
Publication of two special issues of The Sociological Review from the conference is anticipated as
well as two Sociological Review Monographs. 

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