Each year, ASA’s president chooses a theme on which to focus some of the programming for the ASA Annual Meeting—a tradition that ensures our meetings reflect the rich diversity of perspectives and subject matter in our discipline. President-Elect Shelley J. Correll has chosen the theme “Disrupting the Status Quo: Putting Sociology to Work for a More Equitable Society.”
Disrupting the Status Quo: Putting Sociology to Work for a More Equitable Society
In our discipline’s long history, sociologists have produced an extensive body of research to understand why social problems exist and persist. Yet, we have far less research dedicated to understanding how to tackle the urgent issues we collectively face from widening economic divides to political polarization to the persistence of gender and racial inequalities. In this reactionary era, characterized by attacks on democracy and science, including attacks on sociology, our discipline’s ability to name and explain social problems uniquely positions us to meet this moment. However, to have the greatest impact, we need a sociology that is focused on solutions, prioritizes externally engaged research, and is unapologetic in its ambition to create a more equitable world.
The 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association will bring together sociologists from both inside and outside of the academy and across sub-disciplines and methodological approaches in a determined effort to answer the question: How can we put sociology to work to create a better, more equitable world? How do we best leverage existing and new methods, data sources, and approaches to develop and evaluate theories of change – theories that articulate how to change the status quo? How might changes to organizational practices, improved education, and other interventions work in tandem with national polices and larger social movements to create sustained change? How can we prioritize a research agenda that moves beyond explaining social problems to providing solutions to overcome them?
Making headway in this research endeavor will require upending status quos within sociology itself. Historically, we have centered research agendas on how social problems are reproduced, which leaves us with less to say about how to ameliorate them. Moreover, knowledge developed by sociologists outside the academy has frequently been discounted and ignored for being too applied while insights derived from everyday people’s lived experience have been deemed to be inferior. How can we enhance our research infrastructures, including our funding agencies, journals, and tenure committees to better value and support solutions-focused research? How can we embrace sociological knowledge in all its forms so that the discipline can have impact in the world beyond our campuses? And how can we practice a public sociology that actively engages and partners with policy makers, organizations, and communities in two-way, mutual learning that advances our theoretical and empirical understandings about social change?
To put sociology to work to create a more equitable world, we need to disrupt the status quo in both society and sociology. The 2026 Annual Meeting will explore what we need to build upon, upend, and do differently to foster a sociology that not only examines social problems but also offers evidence-based solutions for social progress.
