From Sociological Practice to Best Practice — (Re)Defining Research Ethics and (Re)Designing Guidelines for Today's Sociology: AI-Tools, Public Sociology and Participatory Approaches

The everyday practice of sociology is being reshaped from several directions at once. Today artificial-intelligence tools are entering every stage of the research process, from data collection to analysis and writing; the call for a public, engaged sociology is drawing scholars beyond the academy and into closer dialogue with the communities they study; and participatory approaches increasingly invite those communities to become co-authors of the knowledge produced. Each of these shifts carries real promise — and raises questions that the ethical frameworks and professional guidelines of an earlier era were not written to answer. In turbulent times, when the technological, institutional, and social ground keeps shifting, this session asks what responsible research should look like today — and how the field might move from sociological practice to best practice by (re)defining its research ethics and (re)designing its guidelines.

We welcome empirical, theoretical, methodological, and reflective contributions on any facet of the questions we would like to focus on as primary aspects of this session: the ethics of working with AI tools — consent, data governance, transparency, authorship, bias, and the blurring line between assistance and substitution; the responsibilities that come with public and applied sociology; the relations of power, reciprocity, and ownership at the heart of participatory and community-based research; and the codes, norms, and review practices that might guide sociology going forward. Researchers and practitioners from traditions are warmly invited to share their experience and to help shape the ethical foundations of sociology for the years ahead.