ASA 2026 · New York

Theory Section Sessions & Roundtables

The Theory Section program at the 2026 ASA Annual Meeting in New York.

Sunday, August 9

10:00–11:30 AM

Social Theory and Environmental Change

Presider: Jordan Fox — SUNY Buffalo
Discussant: Chris M. Rea — Brown University
Session Organizer: Jordan Fox — SUNY Buffalo

• Adjacent Ecologies: Social Worlds and Environmental Change in a French Marshland (Marais Poitevin)
  Romain Cazaux, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales
• No Return: Refractive Materialism and New Ecology
  Laird Gallagher, Brown University
• Overshoot Urbanization: Endless Growth, Excess Carbon, and Houston’s Planetary Reach
  Joshua Silver, The University of Chicago
• The Corporation and White Settler Subject: Environmental Harm as Racial Colonial Betrayal
  Lauren Richter, University of Toronto
• The Intervention Cascade: Environmental Problems in Differentiated Society
  Caleb Scoville, Tufts University

12:00–1:30 PM

Rethinking Theories of Gender, Race, and Sexuality from Anti-, De-, and Postcolonial Perspectives

Session Organizer: Veda Hyunjin Kim — Ohio Wesleyan University; Minwoo Jung — Loyola University Chicago

Virtual session. For the Zoom link, email the Webmaster.

• Bringing Empire In: Reading Black Reconstruction through the Lens of Darkwater
  Julia Bates, Sacred Heart University
• Decolonizing Gender: Applying the Relational Framework to Gender Structures in the Dominican Republic and [South] Korea
  Isabella Carolina Rivera Volquez — UCLA; Dasom Nah Gonzalez — UCLA
• On the Abolition of Sociology
  Devin Z. Williams, Yale University
• Reconceptualizing Freedom: Analyzing Enslaved Women’s Resistance in 18th-century Santo Domingo
  Eliana M. Mercedes, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Unpacking “Race” and “Modernity”: Portuguese Expansion and Difference-Making at the Beginning of the Atlantic Slave Trade
  Luisa Farah Schwartzman, University of Toronto

2:00–3:30 PM

Theorizing Capitalist Crisis & Middle-Class Politics

Presider: Mona Khneisser — University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
Session Organizer: Mona Khneisser — University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign; Matt Dawson — University of Glasgow

• Between Autonomy and Constraint: Habitus, Field Structure, and the Limits of Political Articulation in India
  Hera Shakil, University of Chicago
• Crises in the Midst of Welfare: State-Capital-Labor Relations in the Indian Apparel Industry
  Aabid Firdausi, Johns Hopkins University
• Hollow Bargains: How Middle-Class Professionals Sign a One-Sided Contract with American Elites
  Taylor Laemmli, Baylor University
• Leaving, but Not Escaping: Corporate Residue and the Limits of Exit
  Ruiling Li, Cornell University
• Public Education: The Making and Unmaking of Middle Class Subjectivities
  Hakan Yilmaz, CUNY Graduate Center

Monday, August 10

8:00–9:30 AM

Theorizing the Populist Moment

Presider: Anthony Vincent Albanese — Georgia Southern University–East Georgia
Session Organizer: Anthony Vincent Albanese — Georgia Southern University–East Georgia

• A Theory of Late Populism: Popularism
  Michael A. McCarthy, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Pious Populism: Theorizing Religion as an Embodied Practice in Rightwing Populist Politics
  Umair Rasheed, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign
• Populist Authority Beyond Weber: Democratic Legitimacy, Institutional Erosion, and the Crisis of Rationality
  Sang Kyung Lee — Sogang University; Je eun Yook — Sogang University
• Populist Expertise: New Forms of Knowledge Production in Anti-Intellectualism Regimes
  Hector Vera, UNAM

10:00–11:30 AM

Marxism and Anti-Colonialism

Presider: Udeepta Chakravarty — New School for Social Research
Session Organizer: Udeepta Chakravarty — New School for Social Research
Co-sponsor: Marxist Sociology Section

• Anticolonialism and the Woman Question
  Elisabeth Armstrong, Smith College
• Mapping the Late Marx: Gender, Race, Colonialism, Indigeneity, and Revolution
  Kevin B. Anderson, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Marx, Lenin and the Theoretical Struggle in the Web of Life
  Jason W. Moore, Binghamton University
• Political Blackness against Identity Politics: Race and Resistance in South Africa’s Black Consciousness Movement
  Zachary Levenson — Florida International University; Marcel Paret — University of Utah

2:00–3:30 PM

Social Theory and Complexity Science: New Research Directions

Presider: Jorge Fontdevila — California State University Fullerton
Discussant: Jorge Fontdevila — California State University Fullerton
Session Organizer: Jorge Fontdevila — California State University Fullerton
Co-sponsor: Mathematical Sociology Section

• Charting Categories as Sociology’s Dark Matter
  Kaylee de la Motte — University of Arizona; Charles Jonathan Gomez — University of Arizona
• Complicating Social Network Analysis: Toward a Multi-Order Ontology and Methodology
  Chuyin Zhang — Monash University; Yuan “Simon” Xi — University of Virginia
• Theory of Acyclic Nested Sets
  Nikita Basov — University of Manchester; Philip Leifeld — University of Manchester; Jürgen Lerner — University of Konstanz
• Tragedy and Complexity
  Emily Erikson, Yale University

4:00–5:30 PM

Coser Salon and Lecture

Presider: Dolores Trevizo — UCLA
Session Organizer: Rebecca Jean Emigh — UCLA

• Cultural Entropy and the Limits of Meaning
  Terence Emmett McDonnell, University of Notre Dame

Tuesday, August 11

8:00–9:00 AM

Theory Section Refereed Roundtables

Session Organizer: E.J. Odell Nèel

Table 2 (AI, Climate, Modernity)

Presider: Daphne Katharina Fietz

• Between User and Developer: How Science Actors Navigate the AI Ecosystem
  Ricky C. Leung, University of Memphis
• Demons of Modernity: Dostoyevsky and the Idols of Fossil Capitalism
  Emily Katherine Swanson Bustamante, University of Florida
• In the Long Run We Are All in Equilibrium
  Matthew Soener, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

Table 3 (Meta-Theory, Citizenship, Bourdieu)

Presider: Moon-Kie Jung

• Meta-metapragmatics of (Inter)Action
  Mahbubeh Moqadam & Farzad Karimzad
• Social Capital, Monitoring Habitus, and Social Power
  Lester H. Andrist, Sharan Sharma, Sonalde Desai
• Theorizing Citizenship
  Ana Velitchkova
• Toward a Good Society
  Lauren Langman

Table 4 (Marxism, State Theory, Platform Labor)

Presiders: Anna K.M. Skarpelis; S. L. Crawley

• Beyond the Spectacle
  Nabil Mohamed
• Dividuals at Work
  Mariana Manriquez
• Du Bois and M. N. Roy
  Devparna Roy
• Long Arms of the Leviathan
  Sherman Tai
• Queering Environmental Violence
  Julie Patarin-Jossec

Table 5 (Capitalism, Macro-Theory)

Presiders: Ioana Sendroiu; Zine Magubane

• Discretion Displaced
  Wenhao Song
• Rightholder Theory
  Rashedur Chowdhury
• Civilizational Interactional Theory
  Daryl W. Scott
• On the Analytical Use of Capitalism
  Tad Skotnicki

Table 6 (Populism)

Presiders: Monica Prasad; Freeden Blume Oeur

• Civil Disruption and the Populist Moment
  Dean R. Ray & Reece Peck
• Populism as a Technology of Power
  Charles Simon Berthelet
• Negation—The Tie that Binds
  Robert M. Orrange
• Position Taking
  Stephanie Sanders-Smith et al

Table 7 (Culture, Love, General Theory)

Presiders: Claire Laurier Decoteau; Omar A. Lizardo; Gilad Wenig

• Beyond Romance to Radical Love
  Jocelyn Bell
• Big-Fish-in-a-Small-Pond Effect
  Leo Paul Henry
• What Is Sociology?
  Robert Freeland
• What [Scale of Case] Is Taylor Swift?
  Hokyu Hwang & Jeannette Colyvas

Table 8 (Marxism, Testimony, Race)

Presider: Eralp Kaan Karduz

• Abject Sociology and the Social Life of Testimony
  Ibtesam Al-Atiyat
• Making Alienation Visible
  Laura Hart
• Model Majority
  Yen-Yu Lin
• The Tale of Two Ramadans
  Samuel Dinger

Table 9 (Critical Theory)

Presiders: Ali Meghji; Kevin B. Anderson

• Solidarity in Gender Non-conforming Marginalized Groups
  Prapti Anandita
• Social Stability in Radically Pluralistic Fields
  Balaraju Battu
• Toward Critical Theory of Social Movements
  Lauren Langman & Judith Richman
• Why Did Du Bois Oppose Monetary Reparations?
  Tyler Leeds

Table 10 (Process Theory)

Presiders: Vrushali Patil; Katrina Wang

• Creative Structuration as Recursive Generative Constraint
  Jason Paul Bonham
• How Collectives Absorb Their Members
  Colter Uscola, Kate Feldstein, Seth Abrutyn
• Hypermobility and Expressive Life
  Khalil James Martin
• Targeting and Orienting
  Erika Summers-Effler & Matthew Carl Coetzee

Table 11 (Culture and Meta-Theory)

Presider: Jonah Stuart Brundage

• Civil Sphere Normativity
  Andrea M. Voyer
• Beyond Distinction
  Kyle Puetz
• Towards a Theory of Temporal Adjustment
  Lyusen Wang

Table 14

Presiders: Tyler Leeds; Jun Zhou; Emily Tingle

• Culture and Cognition as Habit
  Jo Ann Brooks
• Theorizing the Racecraft of Health
  Maxine K. Wright
• Water Materialities and Infrastructures
  Yomna ElSharony

9:00–9:30 AM

Theory Section Business Meeting

Meeting Chair: Fiona Greenland, University of Virginia

Participants include Claire Laurier Decoteau, Michael McCarthy, Fiona Greenland, Monica Prasad, Ali Meghji, Omar Lizardo, Zine Magubane, Moon-Kie Jung, Kevin B. Anderson, Katrina Wang, Umair Rasheed, and others.

10:00–11:30 AM

Theory Section Open Call Paper Session

Presider: Elizaveta Sheremet — Columbia University
Session Organizer: Angelina Grigoryeva — University of Toronto

• Between Science and Politics: Three Functions of Normativity in Social Theory
  Jan Gilles & Carla Rivera
• Bourdieu and Grand Theory
  George Steinmetz
• Modern Enchantment and the Ambivalent Sacred
  Dmitry Kurakin
• Money-Talk and Situational Power in the Milgram Obedience Experiments
  Iddo Tavory, Jason Turowetz, Matthew McGovern Hollander

12:00–1:30 PM

Critical Epistemologies of the Global South

Presider: Angela Elena Fillingim — San Francisco State University
Co-sponsor: Global and Transnational Sociology Section

• Decolonizing Climate Change from the Ground Up
  Surabhi Pant & Raka Sen
• Meaning as Cause: Critical Realism, Ubuntu, and Theorizing from the Global South
  Matthew Carl Coetzee
• Rooting Social Research in Indigenous and Participatory Ethos
  Laurent Reyes, Lorraine Torres Colon, Samantha Keaulana-Scott

2:00–3:30 PM

Microsociologies, Mezosociologies, and Macrosociologies: Scale, Level, Integration

Session Organizer: Youbin Kang — City College of New York

• A Relational and Multi-Scalar Analysis of Neoliberal Philanthropy and Think Tank Advocacy in Latin America
  Tomas Gold
• Between Global and Grassroots
  Hanee Choi
• Dilemma Based Ethnography
  Neil Gong
• Reflexive Methods Across Micro- and Macro-Scales
  Rishi Awatramani & Corey Payne
• Spatial Inequality
  Linda Lobao & Gregory Hooks