Special issue on “Consuming Intimacies: Bodies, Labour, Care, and Social Justice” — Studies in Social Justice
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The Journal Studies in Social Justice announces a call for papers for a special issue:
Consuming Intimacies: Bodies, Labour, Care, and Social Justice
The journal Studies in Social Justice (SSJ) publishes articles on social, cultural, economic, political, and philosophical problems associated with struggles for social justice. This interdisciplinary journal aims to publish work that links theory to social change and the analysis of substantive issues. The journal welcomes heterodox contributions that are critical of established paradigms of inquiry. Studies in Social Justice is an Open Access journal; it has recently moved to Brock University’s Social Justice Research Institute with a new editorial team. More information about the journal can be found at:
http://brock.scholarsportal.info/journals/index.php/SSJ.
This special issue of SSJ aims to re-think concepts and practices of intimacy and embodied care through a wide spectrum of twenty-first-century intimate labours and their associated economies. It will focus on intimacies and embodiment, including exchanges involving organs, body tissues, and body fluids (e.g., milk, sperm, and blood); entanglements of care, work, consumption, and commodification; varied forms of “global-intimate pairings” (Wilson, 2012, p. 31); and gender, class, and racial inequalities. It also explores intimate labours as forms of care work that fuse production, social reproduction, consumption, commodification, and social justice issues.
Papers are invited on (but not limited to) the following themes:
Care, work, and consumption
Transnational care giving and care work
New forms of intimate labours
Queer intimacies and the queering of practices of care
Social reproduction and intimate labours
Commodification of intimate life
Commercialization and commodification of bodily exchanges
Assisted human reproduction
Organ donation and sale
Human tissue and fluids donation, sale, and banking
Methodological and epistemological issues in researching intimacies
This special issue of SSJ emerges from an international symposium that was held at Brock University in October 2015. We plan to publish a small selection of papers that were presented at the conference as well as new papers that address the themes listed above.
We encourage contributions from across the humanities and social sciences, as well as interventions from artists and activists.
Submissions are welcomed in the following categories:
Articles (6 – 8,000 words): original, previously-unpublished, and fully-referenced research contributions that significantly extend knowledge in the broad field of social justice along substantive, theoretical or methodological lines, and which are likely to be of interest to researchers and practitioners. Articles will be blind peer-reviewed.
Review Essays (< 6,000 words): critical and evaluative overviews of particular literatures, theoretical traditions, debates, activist experiences, etc., relating to social justice. Review essays are intended as expert overviews for the benefit of activists and researchers who are unfamiliar with the area. Review essays will be blind peer-reviewed. Book reviews (1 – 2,000 words): reviews of important theoretical, political and research works relating to social justice issues. Book reviews are vetted by the editors, but are not subject to peer review. Dispatches (< 4,000 words): reports or commentaries from the non-academic and academic spaces of social justice practice, discourse and contestation. Dispatches may report on research activities, methodological innovations, movement experiences, mobilization efforts, educational practices, social justice events and actions, etc. They need not employ an academic writing style or speaking position. Dispatches are reviewed and vetted by the editorial team, which will work with authors as necessary to help shape submissions for publication. They are not exposed to a blind review process. Creative Interventions: visual, aural or textual products that reflect on social justice issues using an aesthetic or evocative mode of address. Creative interventions are reviewed and vetted by members of the editorial team or others with competence in the relevant areas of creative practice. They are not exposed to a blind review process. Please send submissions via email to consumingintimacies@gmail.com by February 15, 2016. Please feel free to consult the editors on possible submissions: Dr. Robyn Lee at rlee2@brocku.ca or Professor Andrea Doucet at adoucet@brocku.ca.
