ASA membership offers you five significant benefits, regardless of your profession—whether you work in research, education, or industry. It keeps you informed about the discipline, supports your professional development, helps you connect with people and opportunities, saves you money, and most importantly, provides you with the opportunity to make a difference.
ASA membership helps you stay up to date on the discipline.
- Receive online access to the full archive of nine ASA journals from inaugural to current issues, plus one print journal subscription of your choice. (International Associate membership does not have the option of an included print journal.)
- Access TRAILS, an online database of nearly 4,000 class activities, assignments, syllabi, and other sociology-specific teaching tools.
- Read ASA’s digital magazine, Footnotes, which offers a fresh, sociological perspective on a focal topic. Recent issues have addressed the potential of community-engaged scholarship; the cost of higher education; sociological careers in practice settings; mental health; environmental challenges; and Russia’s war in Ukraine.
- ASA’s e-newsletter, Member News and Notes, provides an easy-to-scan overview of the latest information from ASA, including funding opportunities, submission deadlines, and new featured articles and teaching resources.
- Receive the monthly ASA e-newsletter, This Month in ASA Journals, which includes links to featured articles from ASA journals and to podcasts with featured article authors, as well as news and announcements related to ASA journals.
ASA membership helps you with professional development.
- Join the live, interactive audience for all of ASA’s professional development webinars for FREE! New webinar topics are regularly announced.
- Get exclusive access to the ASA videos and webinars archive, including recordings of sessions on such timely topics as “Challenges and Opportunities: Teaching Sociology in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” “Advocating for Sociology,” and “Trends in Mixed Methods Research.” The archive also includes ASA’s 10-part video series on academic publishing, providing guidance on how to prepare your manuscript, choose a journal, deal with R&Rs and rejections, and turn your dissertation into a book, among several other topics. ASA’s five-part series on working with the media, developed specifically for sociologists and covering the basics of message, audience, and the rules of media, can also be found in the members-only ASA video and webinars archive.
- Look for a new job in the ASA Career Center, free for ASA members. Browse hundreds of employment positions for sociologists at every professional stage. Whether you are searching for your first job or your dream one, start with the ASA Career Center.
ASA membership helps you connect with people and opportunities.
- ASA members reported in a recent survey that the opportunity to join any of ASA’s 53 special interest sections is one of the most highly valued member benefits. In Sections, sociologists with similar research interests connect. Many Sections offer year-round programming, and Section members receive regular communication through their respective listservs. When you join an ASA Section, you are automatically added to the listserv for that Section.
- ASA Communities provide spaces for connection, belonging, and networking and is free with your membership.
- Are you a student? Student members are automatically added to the Student Forum, which has its own elected leadership. Student Forum members can participate in free virtual graduate student professional seminars which cover topics such as “Demystifying the Writing Process,” “Negotiating a Job Offer,” and “Applying for Jobs in Practice Settings.” The Student Forum leadership sends announcements via the Student Forum listserv and organizes virtual workshops throughout the year in addition to sessions and events at the Annual Meeting. Plus, only Student members can apply to the Student Forum Travel Award, a fund that assists students with the cost of attending the Annual Meeting. The Student Forum Paper Award is also selected from among the papers presented in the Student Forum session at the Annual Meeting.
- Retired members, and those anticipating retirement, can participate in the ASA Retirement Network (ASARN). ASARN maintains a list of retirement resource links, produces a semi-annual electronic newsletter, and holds special sessions at the Annual Meeting, including the annual “A Life in Sociology” distinguished lecture. All ASA members who are in the Retired membership category are automatically included in the ASA Retirement Network listserv.
- ASA’s searchable Member Directory gives you a powerful tool for identifying and connecting with members who share your interests from across your city or across the country.
- All regular ASA members whose membership is, and will remain, active between March 1 and June 1 of a given year are eligible to run for ASA elected office in that year’s election.
- All regular ASA members whose membership is, and will remain, active between April 1 and June 1 of a given year can vote in that year’s election.
- As an ASA member, you are eligible to apply for an ASA editorship and to serve on an ASA journal editorial board.
ASA membership saves you money.
- Receive discounted ASA Annual Meeting registration.
- Enjoy discounts on ASA publications and merchandise in the ASA Store.
- Get free access to ASA’s journals in JSTOR, as well as the 1,500 other journals in the collection for a 50% discount ($99 instead of $199). Log in to the member portal and click on the Journals/Newsletters dashboard icon and then on the links under Other Links. When you get to the JPASS site, click on “Chose My Plan.” You will see that the annual rate will have been discounted to $99.
- ASA members receive a 20% discount on SAGE books. Use promotion code S21ASA when ordering online or by phone (800) 818-7243 from SAGE.
ASA membership gives you an opportunity to make a difference.
- ASA works to bring relevant, timely sociological research findings to policy makers. Through your support, we take positions on issues related to public policy for which there is consensus in the sociological literature or related to matters concerning the well-being of the discipline and profession. Read more about our advocacy efforts here.
- We also work to bring sociology to the general public, through the Sociological Insights video series, by helping sociologists develop their capacity for sharing scholarship with the public through traditional media and other outlets, and through ASA’s Sociology Action Network, which connects sociologists interested in volunteering with not-for-profit organizations in need of technical expertise.
