Annual Finnish Sociology Conference, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland
May 7-8, 2026
The theme of the 2026 Annual Finnish Sociology Conference is Community Futures. The concept of community invites us to return to foundational questions, the core concerns of sociology, how we live together. The conference explores communities in their diverse and complex forms and opens up different research approaches to how communities are imagined and reimagined—both now and in the future.
The question how directs attention to the fact that communities are not singular, stable entities, but constantly in motion. Communities do not merely exist—they are made. Maintaining communities requires ongoing work, negotiation, and coordination. Hence, communities should not be seen as fixed in their current form but as emerging and open to change.
The boundaries of communities are flexible. One joins communities and disengages from them. Moreover, we do not live together only with other people, but always also with and mediated by non-human beings and entities. Communities, therefore, involve power and inequalities: the question of how we live together quickly expands into a question of with whom and with what we live together—and whom and what we exclude.
For contemporary sociology, the concept of community is challenging due to its theoretical vagueness and the idealized connotations it carries in everyday language. In uncertain times, imaginaries of community lure with promises of belonging and security. The positive connotations of community often overlook the fact that communities can also be dangerous and oppressing. That is why a critical, sociological understanding of communities and their futures is especially relevant right now.
Keynote speakers: Vanessa May, Michelle Murphy, Tero Toivanen, Juhana Venäläinen, Pieta Savinotko, Tuomo Alhojärvi and Ella Lillqvist
