My institution, Glasgow Caledonian University, and our closest neighbour, Strathclyde University, hosted the 8th ESA conference in Glasgow. This was the largest ever ESA conference, with a record 1,600 delegates who, in the course of 4 days, wandered about our unremarkable refectory and trod the paths to the seminar rooms and lecture theatres which my colleagues and I tread every day without much reflection. Most of the time we are too rushed to feel enchanted by the ground we cover! However that week, I must admit I did a fair number of double takes every time I saw familiar faces of the international conference circuit, some of whom have become ‘stars’ of Sociology, wandering about my very own campus.

As a member of the Local Organising Committee I won’t comment on the organisation of the conference, only to say that since it finished I have had nothing but compliments about the campus, the facilities and Glasgow from delegates. Even the weather was adequate – on Monday delegates were greeted with blue skies, sunshine and the limpid air that can only be found in Scotland on a dry sunny day in late summer. It rained a bit the next day but things perked up again and on the last day the good weather was returning.

The programme was packed and as sessions were split between two campuses, one had to be fairly strategic about how one tailored one’s individual programme. I split my time between different research networks – ageing, culture, the sociology of health and illness, emotions. The Ageing in Europe Research Network is the largest RN in the ESA. To cope with the number of papers, two sessions ran in parallel and inevitably some difficult choices had to be made. The sessions I attended were strong and some papers had fascinating material. I particularly enjoyed the material which borrowed from mainstream sociological theorising. The joint session with the Biography network was also very fruitful.

The theme of the conference, Conflict, Citizenship and Civil Society, was addressed in the plenaries and semi-plenaries. At these events, speakers reflected on the nature of, and challenges for defining, civil society in an enlarged Europe and a globalising world, on the potential presented by new forms of associations – New Social Movements – insofar as they can be shown to be different, for redrawing the way we relate to each other, the nation-state and ourselves, on the potential for fundamental social change, and in particular the challenge to the dominant gender order, contained in these emergent forms of sociality. There was much greater optimism regarding globalisation in many of these reflections than we have hitherto been accustomed to. In looking for adequate analytical tools to make sense of these new conditions, speakers picked up and dusted down traditional but perhaps old-fashioned sociological concepts. One example was solidarity. Solidarity refers to the emotional consciousness of a common purpose that enables people to work together and ensures social order. It is when solidarity is interrupted that disorder, great acts of violence, and feelings of helplessness prevail.

Do any of these things have any relevance for ageing studies? Some undoubtedly so. They may help us interrogate ageing and old age in a globalising world, a world of greater reflexivity, a world which contains new opportunities for meaningful social participation or with the potential to enrich reflections and practice on longstanding concerns of social gerontology such as caring, health and welfare provision, inequalities and others.