SAANZ 2011: Asking the big questions about our future

Some of the top minds in sociology will gather at Victoria next month to ask the big questions that face humanity after a tumultuous start to the 21st century.

The 2011 Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (SAANZ) Conference from 7-9 December will ask where to from here after the changes and upheavals of the last decade.

One of the conference organisers, Victoria Professor of Sociology Kevin Dew, says that Sociology was born out of the dramatic social transformations of the 19th century, and so the conference theme of "looking forward: trends, horizons and utopias" is fitting.

"The conference is an opportunity for the sociological community to consider our responses to these transformative and precarious times and to the opportunities they afford us."

Professor Dew notes that the context for this conference is recent natural and financial disasters, nuclear and economic meltdown and momentous geo-political changes.

"We face the prospect of the end of 'cheap' oil and increasing competition over food, water and the resources that have sustained our quality of life. Where to from here? What possibilities are open to us? What kind of communities can we envisage?"

Keynote addresses will be given by some of the top international researchers in sociology, politics, communication, gender and cultural studies.

Timothy W. Luke is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. He writes extensively on the politics of museums, technologies, and the environment from the perspectives of media politics, international affairs, and social theory.

Anna Marie Reading is Professor of Communication at the University of Western Sydney and is Head of the Centre of Media and Cultural Research at London South Bank University, UK. She has published a number of books on gender, memory and culture and her research interests include social memories of genocide, gender, memory and culture, the uses of new communications technologies and cultural policy.

For more information about the conference and a full programme, visit http://web.me.com/saanz/SAANZ/Conference.html