Meaning, Solidarity, and Civil Society: New Directions In East Asian Cultural Sociology

This session explores how cultural meanings, symbolic codes, collective memories, and public narratives shape solidarity and conflict in contemporary East Asian societies. Over the past several decades, East Asia has experienced profound social transformations, including democratization, political polarization, digital communication, demographic change, and struggles over historical memory and national identity. These developments have generated new questions about how societies construct shared meanings, maintain civic solidarity, respond to experiences of crisis and trauma, and navigate moments of social division.

Drawing inspiration from cultural sociology and the Strong Program, this session examines culture as a relatively autonomous force in shaping collective identities, public discourse, and democratic life. We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions that investigate how cultural processes shape civil society and solidarity, while considering how East Asian experiences can challenge, refine, and extend the Strong Program and contemporary cultural sociology.

We invite submissions addressing the following dimensions:

1. Civil Society and Democratic Life: Civic solidarity, citizenship, democratic legitimacy, and the cultural foundations of civil society.
2. Cultural Trauma and Collective Memory: Trauma, memory politics, historical reconciliation, and the formation of collective identities.
3. Symbolic Codes and Public Discourse: Moral classifications, symbolic boundaries, narratives, and the cultural dynamics of public conflicts.
4. Media, Technology, and Cultural Meaning: Artificial intelligence, digital media, communication technologies, and their roles in shaping public narratives and collective understandings of society.
5. East Asian Contributions to Cultural Sociology: Theoretical and empirical studies that challenge, refine, and extend the Strong Program and contemporary cultural sociology.