Compaso

We invite articles, research notes, essays and book reviews that discuss how the phenomenon of social inequality is created and recreated in the context of accelerated social changes and critical junctures. We welcome texts from multiple disciplines and genres.

Deadline for manuscript submissions: November 30^th, 2022

Send manuscripts at compaso@compaso.eu.

We live in a time when the social landscape is changing rapidly and more and more issues call for public consideration. Digital transformations have produced shifts in political power, which is reflected in the economic, social, cultural and political spheres. In this context, the phenomenon of social inequality is taking new forms that are intertwined with various aspects of human experience, including values, relations, interests, identities, and aspirations. Therefore, the notion of social inequality must be revisited and brought into line with recent theoretical advances and current practical challenges.

Papers may address questions such as (but not limited to):

1. How is social inequality manifested in the actual global world? How do hierarchies of social class overlap with those of race, gender, age, sexuality, religion hence giving rise to new forms of power and domination? How does the micropolitics of identity formation participate in the consolidation of a highly constraining and coercive stratification system? How is social status continuously shaped and reshaped under the influence of transient political and cultural institutions? How are people socialized to perceive and experience the phenomena of social inequality in their common life?
2. What are the most adequate measures that could be applied to study social inequality at a structural level? Are the classical indicators adequate to account for social inequality in the present-day world, or should we search for alternative models that could increase the spectrum of reasoning and bring added value in the knowledge production process? What kind of methodological innovations could be implemented to explore the multifaceted phenomenon of social inequality? How are the characteristics of social inequality shaped by the very nature of the instruments used to measure differences in access to resources, opportunities and rights?
3. How can policy-makers address social inequality in the context of global challenges (pandemics, wars, climate changes, etc)? What are the institutional causes of inequality and how are they distributed across cultural backgrounds and social categories? How does economic inequality relate to various forms of political inequality? How does the modern notion of citizenship contribute to economic, educational and health disparity? What are the unintended consequences of the egalitarian drive that animates current campaigns and activist actions? How can we recalibrate public priorities in a responsible, sustainable and ethical manner?
4. How is social inequality reproduced through discursive practices, metaphorical constructions and performative vocabularies? How do political ideologies integrate various conceptions of inequality in support of their authoritative and rhetorical claims? What is the proper way to talk about social inequalities in public? How is social inequality approached in literary fictions, artistic projects and architectural aesthetics? What is the proper way to teach inequality to university students as to raise their awareness of social issues and promote constructive dialogues about cultural diversity?
5. What are the prospects of social inequality in a hyper-technologized world? How do new technologies change the old forms of social inequality? What types of social inequality take shape in the emerging digital capitalist markets? How can we design empowering interventions by considering the role of social media in the formation of new reputation criteria and status systems? How can we deal with social inequality when relevant dynamics of social life are evolving under hidden algorithms? What role does technology play in providing innovative solutions to social exclusion, discrimination and poverty?

We invite long papers (6000-9000 words) or short papers (3000-6000 words), in accordance with Guidelines for authors.

We invite articles, research notes, essays and book reviews that discuss how public discourses on vaccination are shaped and structured at the intersection of scientific rationalities, social institutions, cultural imaginaries, and political ideologies. We welcome texts from multiple disciplines and genres.

Deadline for manuscript submissions: October 9^th, 2021

Send manuscripts at compaso@compaso.eu.

Public discourses on vaccination produce social norms through their rhetorical and performative nature. Therefore, they shape the relation between citizens and democratic institutions, while expanding the space of political capitalism and its associated cultural manifestations. The situation brought about by the pandemic indicates that vaccines are not simple immunization tools or neutral outcomes of medical advancement, but active cultural objects that shape complex relations between knowledge, subjectivities and power.

Papers may address questions such as (but not limited to):

1. What is changing and what is stable in vaccine-skeptical and vaccine-confident discourses and social movements in the Covid-19 pandemic context? What are the main drivers of vaccine hesitancy and vaccine confidence in various cultures and social spaces?
2. What kinds of epistemic communities are consolidated around discourses on vaccination? How do experts’ voices, personal narratives, media reports, and academic studies function as sites of knowledge production within different communities of practice? How do these communities become powerful social actors that shape the public agenda?
3. What methods of inquiry are used to produce knowledge about vaccines in scientific, pseudoscientific and antiscientific communities? What roles do institutional norms play in legitimizing the knowledge about vaccination in its various forms? How does a general understanding of health and illness take shape through discourses on vaccination?
4. How do (pro- or anti-) vaccination advertising campaigns rely on visual forms, symbols and signs to enforce and reinforce belief systems? How is a philosophy of healthy citizenship produced through multiple and competing discourses distributed across public and private media landscapes? How do targeted audiences understand and perceive the messages of governmental campaigns that encourage vaccination?
5. How do people internalize a discourse on vaccination to make sense of their health status? How do various discourses on vaccination produce subjectivities and identities that are instrumental in the government of individual actions and behaviors? How does the discursive construction of the “(un)vaccinated person” shape moral subjectivities and define people’s identities in relation to their bodies?
6. How does a policy of public health transform the state apparatus of government, and how does a commitment to collective immunization reconfigure the boundary between private and public realms? What kind of challenges do policymakers and health professionals face in an ever-changing world characterized by conflict, controversy and polarization? What role do scientists play in advocating for vaccination within authoritative and trustworthy frameworks?
7. What kind of assumptions underline different legal and regulatory frameworks for vaccination, and how do they reflect notions of safety, freedom, and public good? What kind of ideological messages are mobilized in the political rhetoric of vaccination, and how do they structure power relations by addressing issues of personal choice, collective responsibility, human rights, etc.?

We invite long papers (6000-9000 words) or short papers (3000-6000 words), in accordance with Guidelines for authors.

We invite articles, research notes, essays and book reviews that discuss how social realities are structured, constructed and experienced under the logic of post-industrial capitalism. We welcome texts from multiple disciplines and genres.

Deadline for manuscript submissions: August 17^th, 2020

Send manuscripts at compaso@compaso.eu.

Business models are not culturally neutral; instead, they significantly shape various aspects of economic and social life. In light of the current transformations that are taking place in many industries, we invite contributions on how to understand the intricate connection between economic regimes, social institutions, cultural practices, political ideologies, and moral values.

Papers may address broader questions such as:

1. How do entrepreneurial discourses contribute to the persistence and legitimation of economic relations? What kind of vocabularies and metrics are used to foster a culture of innovation in research and business?
2. What are the social, cultural, economic and political consequences of digital capitalism? How are power relations shaped in the context of surveillance capitalism? How does peer-to-peer capitalism redefine property rights, supply and demand chains, opportunity costs, etc.?
3. What is the relation between politics and economic outcomes in contemporary society? What challenges do governments face in implementing public policies to address the innovation-driven economic growth? How do the current political and social institutions respond to the acceleration of change through disruptive technological advancements?
4. How are the value creation circles affected by the new corporate relations established in remote working environments? How are the new business models changing the nature of labor and the circuits of capital? What is the social meaning of economic tokens and how do they participate in the distribution of profits?
5. How does the performativity of economic concepts play a role in the production and reproduction of culture? How could current economic theories explain the formation and the further consolidation of newly emerged markets?
6. What is the moral order of economic life in post-industrial capitalism? How do the digital economies shape moral subjectivities? In what sense could we discuss about an ethics of digital markets? What are the ethical dilemmas and challenges of doing business in a global society?

We invite long papers (6000-9000 words) or short papers (3000-6000 words), in accordance with Guidelines for authors.

How do we navigate the increasingly interdisciplinary and multivocal literature on any given topic of interest, when examining reality through the lens of social theory? How do we collect, identify and assemble the body of knowledge produced across both past and present, representing voices that are unequally represented?

We invite literature reviews that highlight a sociological or anthropological perspective in dialogue with other disciplines, or in dialogue with other fields of knowledge-making, such as journalism or collaborative lay expertise.

We also invite authors to reflect, in a Discussion section, on their experience of writing a literature review from a sociological perspective, tackling topics such as:

• Accessing published literature beyond pay walls, in the era of academic social networks and search engines;
• Finding one’s disciplinary position and voice among voices in the wide disciplinary spectrum of social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences;
• Integrating voices from other knowledge fields into a literature review.

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Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2018

Send manuscripts at compaso@compaso.eu

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We invite long papers (6000-9000 words) or short papers (3000-6000 words), in accordance with Guidelines for authors.

Extended deadline for manuscript submission: June 7th, 2018

We invite research notes, articles, essays and book reviews that explore make visible and intelligible emerging practices of surveillance, their impact on privacy, and the roles of algorithms in social life. We welcome texts from multiple disciplines and genres.

Send manuscripts at compaso@compaso.eu

In light of persistent debates and recent revelations on the life of personal data beyond common intuitions and knowledge, we invite reflections on how to understand new ways of generating, harvesting, protecting and using personal data in the online and physical environments.

Papers may address broader questions such as:

1. How can we notice and understand the circuits of our personal data?
2. What have we learned from specific, personal incidents involving our digital traces, and from our experiences of dealing with settings and policies?
3. What tools and approaches can we use to gain control or, if we so choose, deliberately relinquish control over our data?
4. What concepts highlight and model emerging practices of surveillance and users’ resistance?
5. How do digital technologies and online media shape our understanding of privacy? What role do designers play in developing an ethics of privacy or surveillance?
6. How is privacy socially stratified on various lines of inequality – including gender, age, race and social class?
7. From China to the US and Europe, how do various governments, corporations and social actors enforce different regimes of surveillance & privacy for their citizens, consumers and users?

We also invite reviews and critical discussions of books dedicated to digital selves, surveillance and privacy, and algorithmic regulation – including, but not limited to the following:

1. Brunton, F. and Nissenbaum, H., 2015. Obfuscation: A user’s guide for privacy and protest. MIT Press.
2. Cheney-Lippold, J., 2017. We are data: Algorithms and the making of our digital selves. NYU Press.
3. Eubanks, V., 2018. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police and Punish the Poor. St. Martin’s Press.
4. O’Neil, C., 2017. Weapons of math destruction: How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. Broadway Books.
5. Schneier, B., 2015. Data and Goliath: The hidden battles to collect your data and control your world. WW Norton & Company.
6. Turow, J., 2017. The aisles have eyes: How retailers track your shopping, strip your privacy, and define your power. Yale University Press.