From 2013 onwards, Global Discourse will be published quarterly by Taylor and Francis. The new website, which will contain an archive of all previously published material, is here: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rgld20
Call for Papers: ‘Precariat’
Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought
Volume 3: Issue 3: January/February 2014
In his recent work, Guy Standing has identified a new class which has emerged from neo-liberal restructuring with, he argues, the revolutionary potential to change the world: the precariat. This is ‘a class-in-the-making, internally divided into angry and bitter factions’ consisting of ‘a multitude of insecure people, living bits-and-pieces lives, in and out of short-term jobs, without a narrative of occupational development, including millions of frustrated educated youth who do not like what they see before them, millions of women abused in oppressive labour, growing numbers of criminalised tagged for life, millions being categorised as “disabled” and migrants in their hundreds of millions around the world. They are denizens; they have a more restricted range of social, cultural, political and economic rights than citizens around them’.
In this issue, we wish to explore the nature, shape and context of precariat, evaluating the internal consistency and applications of the concept. Among others, we welcome submissions examining the following topics in relation to precariat:
- changes in the sociology of social classes
- the relationship between precariat and multitude
- means by which precariat might become a ‘class for itself’
- cultural diversity and conflict (including through engagement with Samuel Huntington and Dieter Senghaas)
- place, migration and globalization
- forms of resistance
- intergenerational transmission of poverty and the making of the precariat
- Universal Basic Income
- democracy, participation and representation
Building upon previous symposia with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Andrew Linklater and Cynthia Weber, the issue will contain review symposium with Guy Standing, who will respond to reviews of his recent The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, and Mark Purcell, who will respond to reviews of his The Down-Deep Delight of Democracy.
Submission deadlines
Abstracts: May 20th 2013
Full articles of around 8,000 words (solicited on the basis of review of abstracts): August 18th 2013
Publication: January/February 2014
UK REF Considerations: Papers can appear online as soon as they are accepted and processed. However, we will be able to accommodate the wishes of authors to delay publication until the beginning of 2014 because they wish their papers to be included in the 2014- REF.
Instructions for authors:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rgld20&page=instructions#.UX-WG8qSJHo
Further details: http://www.tandfonline.com/rgld (previous website: http://global-discourse.com)
Editor contact details: matthew.johnson@york.ac.uk
Journal Aims and Scope
Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented journal of applied contemporary thought operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The journal’s scope is broad, encouraging interrogation of current affairs with regard to core questions of distributive justice, wellbeing, cultural diversity, autonomy, sovereignty, security and recognition. Rejecting the notion that publication is the final stage in the research process, Global Discourse seeks to foster discussion and debate between often artificially isolated disciplines and paradigms, with responses to articles encouraged and conversations continued across issues. The journal features a mix of full-length articles, each accompanied by one or more replies, shorter essays, rapid replies, discussion pieces and book review symposia, typically consisting of three reviews and a reply by the author/s. With an international advisory editorial board consisting of experienced, highly-cited academics, Global Discourse welcomes submissions from and on any region. Authors are encouraged to explore the international dimensions and implications of their work. With a mix of themed and general issues, symposia are periodically deployed to examine topics as they emerge.
Call for Papers: ‘Protest’
Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought
Volume 3: Issue 4: January/February 2014
Food riots, anti-war protests, anti-government tirades, anti-blasphemy marches, anti-austerity demonstrations, anti-authoritarian movements, and anti-capitalist occupations: the politics of the twenty-first century is marked by dissent, tumult and calls for radical change. Contemporary political protests have emerged as a key tool for the expression of dissent, are born of both the Right and the Left and are staged in both the global North and the global South. In marked contrast to the triumphalism of neoliberal ideology, different instantiations of protest all over the world have drawn attention to the deep fissures that are papered over by the idea of the global market place. Given the diversity of justice claims and political persuasions that are expressed in protests today, a key task of political inquiry is to understand the convergences and divergences between them, and whether these protests are a precursor of profound global social change. There have been numerous theoretical engagements with the questions of global social change in recent years: Hardt and Negri have engaged directly the notion of inherent crisis in the capitalist system; David Graeber has raised questions about anarchism, debt and democracy in recent work; neo-Gramscians have enquired into the role of hegemony in the global political economy, and postcolonial theorists have explored the enduring legacy of the colonial encounter in the present.
In this issue of Global Discourse, we wish to explore the nature and context of protest, seeking to evaluate the notion of links between different protests. Among others, we welcome submissions examining the following broad topics:
- locations, sites and spaces of protest
- forms of resistance, assembly and protest
- local, national, international and transnational solidarity in protest
- questions of universality and difference
- development and modernity in protest
Building upon previous symposia with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Andrew Linklater and Cynthia Weber, the issue will contain review symposium with David Graeber, who will respond to reviews of his recent The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement, and Teivo Teivainen, who will respond to reviews of his forthcoming Democracy in Movement.
Submission deadlines
Abstracts: May 20th 2013
Full articles of around 8,000 words (solicited on the basis of review of abstracts): August 18th 2013
Publication: January 2014
UK REF Considerations: Papers can appear online as soon as they are accepted and processed. However, we will be able to accommodate the wishes of authors to delay publication until the beginning of 2014 because they wish their papers to be included in the 2014- REF.
Instructions for authors: http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rgld20&page=instructions#.UX-WG8qSJHo
Further details: http://www.tandfonline.com/rgld (previous website: http://global-discourse.com)
Editor contact details: s.suliman@uq.edu.au, s.brincat@uq.edu.au and matthew.johnson@york.ac.uk
Journal Aims and Scope
Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented journal of applied contemporary thought operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The journal’s scope is broad, encouraging interrogation of current affairs with regard to core questions of distributive justice, wellbeing, cultural diversity, autonomy, sovereignty, security and recognition. Rejecting the notion that publication is the final stage in the research process, Global Discourse seeks to foster discussion and debate between often artificially isolated disciplines and paradigms, with responses to articles encouraged and conversations continued across issues. The journal features a mix of full-length articles, each accompanied by one or more replies, shorter essays, rapid replies, discussion pieces and book review symposia, typically consisting of three reviews and a reply by the author/s. With an international advisory editorial board consisting of experienced, highly-cited academics, Global Discourse welcomes submissions from and on any region. Authors are encouraged to explore the international dimensions and implications of their work. With a mix of themed and general issues, symposia are periodically deployed to examine topics as they emerge.
Call for Papers: ‘Recognition, Conflict and the Problem of Global Ethical Community’
Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought
Volume 4: Issue 2: June 2014
Recognition refers to those sociological processes whereby two or more entities (such as states), groups (such as ethnic or cultural communities) or individuals interact with one another and come to understand themselves, and the other, as mutually free individuals: as social agents whose identities, interests and outlooks are equally bound together. Without the foundational act of recognition, relations can become unequal and antagonistic, leading to social pathologies, denigration and even open conflict.
Recognition processes are manifested at every level of political life. States are acutely aware of the importance of their recognition as sovereign entities by others in the international community and what the absence of such recognition can mean for their own legitimacy and security. Similarly, recognition processes are also central to the level of cosmopolitan social-relations in world politics, that is, at the level of groups and individuals across different states and communities. One can think here of the recognition acts performed by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) to the more ‘everyday’ acts of recognition in trade, commerce, travel and migration. One can also think of the negative corollaries of misrecognition or denigration in IR by which genocides and mass atrocities are typically committed.
Recognition then, plays a foundational role in International Relations because it is only through recognition that states establish their sovereign legitimacy in international society, and, it is only through recognition in interpersonal interactions at the cosmopolitan level that humans can begin to interact with distant others amicably. Yet, despite the centrality of recognition in world politics, we know very little about how recognition processes operate in the sphere of world politics. This issue of Global Discourse will examine the implications of recognition theory in helping to understand the problem of conflict and the possibilities for forging a form of global ethical community. Bringing together leading international scholars of recognition theory in world politics and containing two review symposia on recently published monographs on the topic, the issue will discuss the potential for recognition to pacify relations between states, groups and individuals and to develop recognition processes in the global community. Generally, submissions can be based around the following:
- processes and politics of recognition in world politics
- state forms of recognition, non-recognition and misrecognition
- linkages between conflict (local, national and interstate), violence, security and recognition
- linkages between peacebuilding, reconciliation and recognition
- forms of recognition above and between states in world politics
- the relation between recognition and international solidarity and the expansion of rights
Building upon previous symposia with the likes of Noam Chomsky, Andrew Linklater, Guy Standing, David Graeber and Michael Shapiro, the issue will contain a review symposium with Erik Ringmar and Thomas Lindemann, who will respond to reviews of their The Struggle for Recognition in International Relations.
Submission deadlines
Abstracts: August 1st 2013
Full articles of around 8,000 words (solicited on the basis of review of abstracts): December 1st 2013
Publication: June 2014
Instructions for authors:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rgld20&page=instructions#.UX-WG8qSJHo
Further details: http://www.tandfonline.com/rgld (previous website: http://global-discourse.com)
Editor contact details: s.brincat@uq.edu.au and matthew.johnson@york.ac.uk
Journal Aims and Scope
Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented journal of applied contemporary thought operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The journal’s scope is broad, encouraging interrogation of current affairs with regard to core questions of distributive justice, wellbeing, cultural diversity, autonomy, sovereignty, security and recognition. Rejecting the notion that publication is the final stage in the research process, Global Discourse seeks to foster discussion and debate between often artificially isolated disciplines and paradigms, with responses to articles encouraged and conversations continued across issues. The journal features a mix of full-length articles, each accompanied by one or more replies, shorter essays, rapid replies, discussion pieces and book review symposia, typically consisting of three reviews and a reply by the author/s. With an international advisory editorial board consisting of experienced, highly-cited academics, Global Discourse welcomes submissions from and on any region. Authors are encouraged to explore the international dimensions and implications of their work. With a mix of themed and general issues, symposia are periodically deployed to examine topics as they emerge.
Call for Papers: ‘Conservatism and Ideology’
Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought
Volume 4: Issue 3: September 2014
Michael Oakshott described conservatism as a non-ideological preference for the familiar, tried, actual, limited, near, sufficient, convenient and present. Historically, conservatives have been associated with attempts to sustain social harmony between classes and groups within an organic, hierarchical order grounded in collective history and cultural values. Yet, in recent decades, conservatism throughout the English-speaking world has been associated with radical social and economic policy, often championing free-market models which substitute the free movement of labour and forms of competition and social mobility for organic hierarchy and noblesse oblige. The radical changes associated with such policies call into question the extent to which contemporary conservatism is conservative, rather than ideological.
This issue of Global Discourse seeks to explore contemporary conservative political thought with regard to topics such as the following:
- ‘One Nation’ politics and Big Society,
- sovereignty, multiculturalism and international blocs
- paternalism and negative liberty with regard to narcotics, pornography and education
- regional and international development
- public faith, establishment and religious diversity
The issue will include a review symposium with Richard Hayton, who will respond to reviews of ‘Reconstructing Conservatism? The Conservative party in opposition, 1997–2010’.
Submission deadlines
Abstracts: October 1st 2013
Full articles of around 8,000 words (solicited on the basis of review of abstracts): March 1st 2014
Publication: September 2014 – all articles will appear as online firsts as soon as they are accepted and processed
Instructions for authors:
http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rgld20&page=instructions#.UX-WG8qSJHo
Further details: http://www.tandfonline.com/rgld (previous website: http://global-discourse.com)
Editor contact details: matthew.johnson@york.ac.uk
Journal Aims and Scope
Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented journal of applied contemporary thought operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The journal’s scope is broad, encouraging interrogation of current affairs with regard to core questions of distributive justice, wellbeing, cultural diversity, autonomy, sovereignty, security and recognition. Rejecting the notion that publication is the final stage in the research process, Global Discourse seeks to foster discussion and debate between often artificially isolated disciplines and paradigms, with responses to articles encouraged and conversations continued across issues. The journal features a mix of full-length articles, each accompanied by one or more replies, shorter essays, rapid replies, discussion pieces and book review symposia, typically consisting of three reviews and a reply by the author/s. With an international advisory editorial board consisting of experienced, highly-cited academics, Global Discourse welcomes submissions from and on any region. Authors are encouraged to explore the international dimensions and implications of their work. With a mix of themed and general issues, symposia are periodically deployed to examine topics as they emerge.
The second special issue on examining the contemporary relevance of Marxism has been released. The issue contains articles on Post-Marxism, Derrida and the Communist Manifesto, Cambodia and development, criminology and a symposium on imperialism and the neo-national bourgeoisie, including analysis of ‘Turkey’s turn to the East’ and ‘the changing formations of the power bloc in Iran’. There are substantive replies by Mark Devenney, Simon Choat, James Tyner, Kristian Lasslett and Farhang Morady, and book review symposia on ‘Left in the Past: Radicalism and the Politics of Nostalgia by Alastair Bonnett’, ‘Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies by Kevin B. Anderson’ and ‘The International Political Economy of Work and Employability by Phoebe V. Moore-Carter’. Full contents are available at: http://global-discourse.com/contents/.
Call for Papers for issue of Global Discourse
Issue title: Circumcision, Public Health, Genital Autonomy and Cultural Rights
Deadlines
Initial submission of 300-500 word abstracts: 15th November 2011
Submission of 6,000-8,000 word articles on invitation: 1st March 2012
Date of issue publication: 1st July 2012
About the title
Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, issue-oriented journal, operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The journal aims to lead discussions and debates on current affairs by promoting intensive, discursive evaluation of ideas, tenets and practices. The core tenet is that key issues in current affairs can be addressed only through the creation of forums in which to apply theoretical approaches developed in artificially isolated disciplines. Each issue of the journal is themed, containing six 6,000-8,000 word articles, each accompanied by a 1,500-3,000 reply from an established figure in the field (to which authors can also reply), and two book review symposia, each containing three 1,500 word reviews and one reply from the author. Full details of the publication are available at http://global-discourse.com/about/. At present, papers are solicited for the issue outlined below.
Outline
Circumcision is one of the oldest and most common surgical practices, being practised, for a range of perceived medical, social and religious reasons, on up to 30% of males worldwide. At present, circumcision is being promoted by a range of international health bodies, such as the World Health Organisation, as a means of tackling HIV in developing countries. Yet, there is significant concern, both, about sexual, physiological and psychological effects and complications and the prophylactic effectiveness of the practice. In Western countries, in particular, a range of ‘intactivist’ organisations and campaign groups have emerged, drawing qualitative parallels with female genital cutting. For these groups, genital autonomy, or the right of individuals to be protected from invasive surgery conducted during minority, is seen to be of paramount importance to respect for persons. This movement has emerged at a time in which circumcision rates in states such as the US have declined and many medical bodies have sought either to exercise caution on claims of medical benefits while deferring to parental choice in non-therapeutic instances, such as the BMA, or to reject the practice in all but the most essential medical cases, such as the Dutch KNMG. Simultaneously, though, international public health bodies, such as the WHO, have increasingly sought to re-invigorate the practice overseas, particularly in the African continent. While the core concerns of genital autonomy appear to be of persisting relevance to these efforts, there is also scope for concern regarding potential implications of imposing a practice on non-circumcising peoples. Whereas attempts to challenge female genital cutting in areas of Africa were met with criticism by multiculturalist thinkers, such as Yael Tamir, for their imperialist implications, there has been little by way of opposition to the infliction of a practice by Western bodies. The apparent contradictions and complications of the contemporary status and deployment of circumcision raise serious, wide-reaching questions:
- Should gender be of significance in considering claims for genital autonomy?
- In the context of widespread prohibition of FGC and recent attempts in San Francisco to prohibit the infliction of circumcision on minors, to what extent can law assist in challenging apparently invasive cultural practices?
- Which values should be of importance when considering the status of invasive practices? Community? Solidarity? Autonomy? What costs are involved in reforming or eradicating practices?
- Are there any particular interests that motivate the promotion of the practice, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa?
- Is there reason to view the promotion of circumcision in the developing world as imperialistic? Is there a clash of values implicit in promoting circumcision among non-circumcising groups? Why is there little opposition to the practice among those who opposed as imperialistic attempts by Western activists to tackle female genital cutting?
The aim of this issue of Global Discourse is to examine the apparent complications and contradictions above. In order to achieve this, we invite submissions of abstracts for papers addressing the sorts of questions outlined above. In particular, we encourage the submission of papers which transcend disciplinary boundaries. The journal has no fixed ideological affiliation and we seek to encourage diversity of thought, especially on normative questions.
Process
Deadlines are listed at the beginning of this flyer. Abstracts should be between 300-500 words for initial assessment. The editors will invite full article submissions from those papers deemed most suitable for the issue. Articles will be subject to double-blind review. The two-stage review process in Global Discourse, in which a final, 3,000 word substantive reply to the paper is published alongside the article, differs from that in other journals. Full details are available at http://global-discourse.com/referees/. A style guide and submission guidelines are provided at http://global-discourse.com/submissions.
Please submit all abstracts and address all enquiries to Matthew Johnson at editor@global-discourse.com.
Date of publication: summer 2012
