Conversations in Michigan Sociology - The Fate of Social Class in Contemporary American Sociology

The keynote event of the department's annual graduate recruiting event, "Conversations" is a chance for the Michigan sociology department to talk amongst itself about critical issues facing the field.

The keynote event of the department's annual graduate recruiting event, "Conversations" is a chance for the Michigan sociology department to talk amongst itself about critical issues facing the field.  This year's Conversations is organized around the recognition of the importance of social class as a concept for analysis and argument.  However, its importance in sociology has not allowed the term to serve as the basis for a formally crystallized subfield of the sociology class.   Indeed, what many regard as the other two central concepts in the discipline, race and gender, have become bases for the creation of formidable and distinct subfields.  Social class, in contrast, remains a topic of extreme concern and focus for sociological inquiry without having been situated so precisely in the discipline.  This year's panel will initiate a conversation on their perspective on the state of social class in sociology.