5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Covid-19 has renewed sociological interest in vaccines and vaccination, overseeing a number of studies so far largely focused on the utilization side (e.g., vaccine hesitancy). This session hopes to expand this interest by identifying the remaining, unanswered key questions requiring further exploration in the sociology of vaccines, not only recounting the recent experiences of Covid-19 vaccination where global urgency heightened the sociological concerns unprecedentedly but also revisiting experiences in the past. We invite studies on vaccines not only against the risk of viruses but vaccines themselves as risk and uncertainty that need to be lived out. Studies may adopt the theoretical perspectives of risk/uncertainties, conflicts of interest, power, and inequality in vaccine production, allocation/utilization, and post-vaccination responses (e.g., reparation for the controversial side-effects among vaccine-takers). Who is paying for the costs at these varying stages? What are the (il)legitimate ways to do so? These are only a few questions that the due sociology of vaccines needs to address.