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This article provides information on the conference on The Sociology of Social Security. Innovation and Change, held by the ISA Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy and the Department of Health and Social Policy Studies, University of Bergen, in collaboration with the International Social Security Association, held in Bergen, Norway in June 1984. Forty-eight people from 15 countries and 4 continents participated. The general aim of the conference was an assessment and comparison across national boundaries as to the present situation of social security research. The specific topic was innovation and change. During the last few years social security systems have been under pressure in most countries. Some of the suggestions represent innovations with great potential for change, while others are merely repetitions of recommendations which have accompanied the social security system from its early days. The conference papers touched on several of these issues. In focus were the distributional effects of different kinds of social security benefits, analyses of decision-making forces within the social security system and their relevance--or lack of such to the administration of the system, and the political forces influencing the future of social security.