The 2010 TASA conference is dedicated to the reassertion of sociology as an engaged, critical discipline. Individual responsibility has become the dominant economic and political program, and for many an internalised fact of life. Sociology needs to vigorously reassert its core tasks: to contextualise private lives in the social conditions and cultural temper of the times; and so to confidently take a critical position vis-à-vis economic, political and cultural processes in its own social environment and various domains.