EPW Publication Call For Papers: -Revisiting Debates on Marxism and Ecology: Towards a new paradigm in Political Ecology

 

Revisiting Debates on Marxism and Ecology: Towards a new paradigm in Political Ecology

CALL FOR PAPERS and PHOTO ESSAYS

EPW Engage invites papers on the theme concerning debates on Marxism and Ecology. Marxian corpus on this question has remained untouched for a long time. It was only after the intervention of John Bellamy Foster in early 2000 that this debate was reinvigorated. In contemporary times this question has been framed in the light of the recent climate crisis.  Certain strands within Marxism due to an adherence to crude forms of economic determinism has somewhat ignored the pertinent question of ecology. This is despite the fact that categories or terms like economics and ecology share a common genealogy and roots.

The perceptive debate initiated by Engels in Dialectics of Nature; in which he sees the existence of nature and society as one metabolic process which exists in continuity. In other words, the processes unfolding in the social setting have a parallel in nature. This guides the course of social and natural evolution which can be explored in the light of contemporary understanding of ecology and society.  According to Marx, “capitalist production…disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil”. It can thus be argued that a certain sort of ecological understanding was inherent in Marx's original frame as is seen in the concept of metabolic rift and social ecology and as highlighted by Marxist naturalists like Richard Lewontin and scholars from Monthly Review School like John Bellamy Foster. Metabolic rift largely propounds the irrevocable damage inflicted on nature and agriculture by industrial capitalist development. According to Foster Marx’s “entire dialectical framework rested on what would today be called an ecological (or socioecological) systems theory, connecting the materialist conception of history to that of nature—and requiring continuing study not only of changing developments in human history, but also in natural history (which in Marx’s work took the form of extensive inquiries into geology, agronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, physiology, mathematics, and more).”

Now, the question that ensues from this discourse is that can this have a bearing on the questions germane to the Indian context like that of ecology and caste or different environmental conceptions and their link with caste and class in the Indian context? Can this Marxist discourse fundamentally deal with the complex question of caste, class and its interplay with ecology? Lastly, it would be an attempt to explore the theoretical debates and their implications on environmental policies. 

Sub-Themes

1.    Discourse on Political ecology: Understanding different paradigms on Nature/Value and Ethics. This particular sub-theme will explore different approaches to Political Ecology and the accompanying questions regarding ethics/morality and its interplay with nature.

2.  Revisiting Debates on Marxism, Ecology and Development.  This sub-theme would highlight the nuanced debates within the Marxian oeuvre, concerning ecology and its complex interaction with social and economic domains. It will specifically revisit the debate on the Marxian concept of metabolic rift.

3.   Understanding the complexities of Caste/Class and Environment. This section covers the complex interaction between castes/class dynamics and environment. It will further accentuate the common assertion of different environmentalism based on caste/class stratification.

4.    Philosophical underpinnings of Environmental Policies: Towards a New Framework. This section will explore the limitations of the contemporary environmental policy framework, especially its lack of engagement with the theoretical and philosophical debates concerning the environment.

5.  Conceptualizing Alternative Futures: Towards a Radical Ecological Democracy in India.  This sub-theme will focus on envisioning a future that radically departs from the contemporary dualistic thinking(which reifies nature and denaturalizes culture), that gets manifested in obsolete environmental policies and paradigms in India, in which the spheres of nature, social, political and economic are seen as separated from each other.

Important Information

Word limit: 2500-3500 words 

Deadline: 21st February 2022

Please refer to the submission guidelines here: https://www.epw.in/notes-contributors-epw-engage 

Send your articles to edit@epw.in with ‘EPW-Engage- Marxism and Ecology’ in the subject line.

 

Contact Info: 

Divya Jyoti- divya@epw.in   +918447301470

Priyam Mathur- priyam@epw.in

Contact Email: divya@epw.in

Call For Papers: The Girl in the Hijab : An Interdisciplinary Journal-Girlhood Studies

An Interdisciplinary Journal

The Girl in the Hijab

Call for Papers

Although hijab has long been a Western cultural fixation, in the past few years the girl in the hijab has been in the sociopolitical spotlight. With the hijab being the most visible way to identify and be identified as Muslim, those who wear it experience the world in unique ways. The experiences of girls and young women in hijab are undoubtedly shaped by intersectional experiences (Collins 2015) under interlocking systems of domination (hooks 2015).

 

In part enacted by Islamophobia that operates as a global meta-narrative and through localized discourses, laws, and systems (Bakali 2016), violence against women and girls in hijab is further entangled in being gendered; it operates through power and discourse institutionalized by laws such as Bill 21 in Quebec and similar measures in France. Such institutional acts wed “save the Muslim girl” narratives that position Muslim girls and women as oppressed victims in need of rescue, to the controlling images of the suspicious Other in the form of the “save us from the Muslim girl” (Saleh 2021: 2) narratives. Violence has also been enacted overtly through hate crimes, evidenced most recently in the Canadian attacks on mainly young Black hijabi women in Alberta and the murder of a Muslim family in Ontario, as well as through violence in schools such as happened in Virginia, US, when a peer, in assaulting a Muslim girl, pulled off her hijab. Research on Islamophobia to date has been heavily focused on experiences of Muslim youth in the contexts of imperialism and white supremacy, while intersectional perspectives that consider the unique and nuanced experiences of hijabi girlhood are scarcer. Although the hijabi girl is often the location whereon white supremacist, imperialist, and patriarchal violence is enacted, she is also a possible site of resistance in her countering expressions of power through everyday actions and activist engagement.

 

In this special issue of Girlhood Studies, we invite articles based on a range of methodological approaches to investigate the multidimensional, interdisciplinary, and intersectional experiences of girls and young women who wear the hijab and/ or identify as hijabi. We particularly encourage articles that investigate hijabi girls as political actors who practice resistance to systemic domination. Articles may include empirical research, case studies, autoethnographic experiences, and artistic representations in addition to theoretical or methodological insights. Along with conventional articles and visual essays, alternative contributions such as a very short screenplay or piece of fiction, poetry, or lyrics will be considered, as will material produced by those who identify as girls and young women.

 

Articles are invited to respond to questions such as:

• How do the intersections of gender and race shape girls’ experiences of wearing the hijab in various contexts?
• How do dominant political forces (patriarchy, white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism) and their intersections shape the Muslim and hijabi girl experience?
• What are the complex “controlling images” (see the title of Patricia Hill Collins’s (1991) work) of hijabi girls that operate in the social world, and what are the implications for Muslim girls and women?
• How do Muslim and hijabi girls practice resistance and broadly defined activism (Vanner and Dugal 2020)?
• How do Muslim and hijabi girls experience and resist gender-based and sexual violence?
• How does the narrative of the “good Muslim” (Saleh 2019: 243) affect hijabi girls’ lives?
• How are Muslim girls (hijabi and non-hijabi) at various intersecting identities portrayed across different media (social, TV, film) platforms?
• What types of images and narratives of hijabi girls dominate in influencer culture across various social media platforms?
• What are the unique experiences of girls who wear the hijab in education systems and/or in health systems?

 

This special issue is to be guest edited by Salsabel Almanssori and Muna Saleh. Please direct inquiries to Salsabel Almanssori at thegirlinthehijab.gsj@gmail.com.

 

Salsabel Almanssori, who has worked as a middle-school teacher for the past seven years, is a doctoral candidate and instructor at the Faculty of Education and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Windsor. In her interdisciplinary dissertation research, she uses narrative inquiry to investigate the intersections between and among feminist theory, teacher education, and gender-based and sexual violence. Her most recent peer-reviewed articles shed light on girls’ use of digital public pedagogy as a medium of resistance to rape culture in a post #MeToo world, and student perspectives on gender-based violence in education. Hijabi girlhood is an integral part of her personal lived experience.

 

Muna Saleh is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE), former elementary and secondary school teacher, and the author of Stories We Live and Grow By: (Re)Telling Our Experiences as Muslim Mothers and Daughters (2019). Drawing on her experiences as an intergenerational survivor of violent Palestinian displacement and as a caregiver to a child with a dis/ability, her most recent research includes a narrative inquiry alongside Muslim mothers of children with dis/abilities who arrived in Canada with refugee experiences.

 

Article Submission

Abstracts are due by 15 June 2022 and should be sent to thegirlinthehijab.gsj@gmail.com.

 

Full manuscripts are due by 15 November 2022. Authors should provide a cover page giving brief biographical details (up to 100 words), institutional affiliation(s) and full contact information, including an email address.

 

Articles may be no longer than 6,500 words including the abstract (up to 125 words), keywords (6 to 8 in alphabetical order), notes, captions and tables, acknowledgments (if any), biographical details (taken from the cover page), and references. Images in a text count for 200 words each. Authors are responsible for securing copyright for any images used.

 

Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, follows Berghahn’s preferred house style, a modified Chicago Style. Please refer to the Style Guide online: journals.berghahnbooks.com/_uploads/ghs/girlhood-studies_style_guide.pdf

 

For more information, please see www.berghahnjournals.com/girlhood-studies.

 

Call For Publications: COLLECTED VOLUME “THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL EMERGENCE: BIOSEMIOTICS, SEMIOTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES”

“THE COMPLEXITY OF SOCIAL-CULTURAL EMERGENCE:

BIOSEMIOTICS, SEMIOTICS AND TRANSLATION STUDIES”

Editors:

Kobus Marais

Reine Meylaerts

Maud Gonne

1. Conceptualization

Since the emergence of complexity thinking, scholars from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities are renewing efforts to construct a unified framework that would unite all scholarly activity.  The work of Terrence Deacon (2013), at the interface of (at least) physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, cognitive science, semiotics, anthropology and philosophy, is a great, though not the only, example of this kind of work. It is becoming clear that this paradigm of complex relational and process thinking means, among others, that the relationships between fields of study are more important than the differences between them. Deacon’s contribution, for instance, lies not (only) in original findings in any of the fields in which he works but (also) in the ways in which he relates bodies of knowledge to one another. An example would be his links between a theory of work (physics) and a theory of information (cybernetics) by means of a theory of meaning (semiotics). This line of thinking indeed situates semiotics and biosemiotics in the center of the abovementioned debate(also see Hoffmeyer, 2008; Kauffman, 2012).

In semiotics, Susan Petrilli’s (2003) thought-provoking collection covers a wide variety of chapters focused on translation, which she conceptualizes as semiotic process. Her work made it possible to link biosemiotics and semiotics through the notion of “translation”, which is what we aim to explore further in this book.  Michael Cronin’s work in translation studies links up with the above through his use of the notion of  “ecology”. To apprehend interconnectedness and vulnerability in the age of the Anthropocene, his work challenges text-oriented and linear approaches while engaging in eco-translational thinking. He calls tradosphere all translation systems on the planet, all the ways in which information circulates between living and non-living organisms and is translated into a language or a code that can be processed or understood by the receiving entity (Cronin, 2017, p. 71). The aptness of Cronin’s work on ecology finds a partner in that of Bruno Latour, whose development of a sociology of translation (2005) responds to the need to reconnect the social and natural worlds and to account for the multiple connections that make what he calls the ‘social’.

In an effort further to work out the implications of this new way of thinking, Marais (2019, p. 120)

conceptualized translation in terms of “negentropic semiotic work performed by the application of

constraints on the semiotic process” (see also Kress 2013). Building on Peirce, namely that the meaning of a sign is its translation into another sign, translation is defined as a process that entails semiotic work done by constraining semiotic possibilities. This conceptualization allows for the study of all forms of meaning making, i.e. translation, under a single conceptual framework, but it also allows for a unified ecological view for both the sciences and the humanities. “The long standing distinction between the human and social sciences and the natural and physical sciences is no longer tenable in a world where we cannot remain indifferent to the more than human” (Cronin, 2017, p. 3).

These kind of approaches open ample possibilities for a dialogue between Translation Studies, Semiotics and Biosemiotics, exploring translation not only in linguistic and anthropocentric terms, but as a semiotic

process that can take place in and between all (living) organisms – human and non-human organic and

inorganic, material and immaterial alike. Not only the translation of Hamlet into French, or of oral speech into subtitles, but also communication between dolphins or between a dog and its master, or moving a statue from one place to another, or rewatching a film are translation processes. However, many of the implications of this line of thinking still need to be explored, and if the references to Deacon, Petrilli and Cronin holds, this should be done in an interdisciplinary way that tests, transgresses and transforms scholarly boundaries. Based on the conference that took place in August 2021, we call for papers for an edited volume in which we hope to draw together biosemioticians, semioticians and translation studies scholars to discuss the interdisciplinary relations between these fields and the implications of these relations for the study of social and cultural reality as emerging from both matter and mind. We invite colleagues who presented at the conference as well as those who did not to submit either theoretical or data-driven or mixed proposals, reflecting on the complexity of social-cultural emergence as a translation process. 

Some of the Topics that

colleagues could consider would be the following:

• Is translation, as semiotic work and process, indeed able to link all of the biological world,

including humans, with the non-living world in one ecology, and if so how?

• What conceptual constructs in each of the three fields are relevant for the other fields, and how?

• Could the fields learn methodological and epistemological lessons from one another? If so, what

would these entail?

• Could collaborative scholarship enhance an understanding of social-cultural emergence, and if so,

what would this scholarship entail?

• How, if at all, does entropy and negentropy play out differently in social-cultural systems

compared to biological and/or physical systems?

• How does social-cultural emergence differ from biological and even physical emergence? Systems

thinking tends to ignore differences like the intentionality of biological agents in contrast to

physical agents. Thus, if one were to consider the possibility that intention has causal effect, how

does one factor intention into thinking about complex adaptive systems?

References

Cronin, M., 2017. Eco-translation: Translation and ecology in the age of the anthropocene. New York:Routledge.

Deacon, T. W., 2013. Incomplete nature: How mind emerged from matter. New York: WW Norman & Company.

Hoffmeyer, J., 2008. Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. London:University of Scranton Press.

Kauffman, S., 2012. From physics to semiotics. In: S. Rattasepp & T. Bennet, eds. Biosemiotic gatherings.Tartu: University of Tartu Press, pp. 30-46.

Kress, G., 2013. Multimodal discourse analysis. In: J. P. Gee & M. Handford, eds. The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis. New York: Routledge, pp. 35-50.

Latour, B., 2005. Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Marais, K., 2019. A (bio)semiotic theory of translation: The emergence of social-cultural reality. New York: Routledge.

Petrilli, S., ed., 2003. Translation Translation. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

2. Timeline

We are currently in negotiations with a pre-eminent publisher who is interested in this proposal, but we need to submit a list of abstracts with the proposal. In order to achieve this, we foresee the following timeline:

Submission of abstracts: 1 April 2022

Decision on abstracts: 15 April 2022

Submission of papers for peer review (if proposal is accepted): 1 December 2022

Feedback from peer reviewers: 1 February 2023

Submission of reworked papers: 1 April 2023

Submission of manuscript: 1 June 2023

Publication: End of 2023

Contact: 

Kobus Marais

Professor and Head of Department: Linguistics and Language Practice
Faculty: The Humanities
PO Box 339, Bloemfontein 9300, Republic of South Africa
 JMarais@ufs.ac.za

Call for Chapters: The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison

The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison

Editor:  Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem, CUNY

 Call for Chapters:

This is the final draft of the call for chapter proposals for a volume I was commissioned to edit, The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison. (I posted an earlier draft; it is now, here, finalized.) This companion text is intended for a scholarly audience and as support for newer Morrison scholars as they approach their research.

Different from some companions, the Routledge Research Companion series publishes cutting-edge research rather than mostly or entirely secondary material. The secondary nature of a companion—that it informs readers about scholarly trends and history or generally accepted understandings of an author and her work—is to be built into each chapter. Each chapter is to point the way forward in terms of new directions in the study, interpretation, and theorization of Morrison’s oeuvre and they are to review, in a thoroughgoing manner, existing scholarship on their topic area or theme, to fill out the picture in terms of where and what Morrison studies has been, what scholars have been thinking, writing, and arguing for since she started publishing.

Largely what we want to accomplish here is to tell the history of Morrison studies, through those reviews, and importantly to create a vision for it going forward or for the 21st Century. That is, to think beyond some of the more or less entrenched, perhaps restrictive, borders surrounding the reception and interpretation of Morrison, some of the givens that “live” in the knowledge produced to date on this oeuvre. The research on Morrison has, to a certain extent, been controlled, one might say, or too much “owned” by too few voices and perspectives. Going forward, how do we think beyond those limits or outside accustomed responses to Morrison? How create new and fruitful passages, meanings, readings, interpretive leaps and new knowledges inspired by the work of this Black woman writer and thinker, this universally celebrated Nobel Laureate?

If this is helpful to know in developing your proposal, I’ve already received excellent proposals on the following general topics:

--(homoerotic) colonial desire and carcerality

--queerness, fugitivity, and futurity

--a study in the recently opened archive, The Toni Morrison Papers, and projected impacts

--a chapter taking on the gargantuan area of mothers and mothering

--and, a chapter on the figure of the daughter

--I’m likely to have a chapter on the character “Beloved” in multiple guises across multiple novels

I hope to see several additional responses, mostly from today’s Morrison scholars—that is, for the book to be comprised of their work, though not entirely. I say “not entirely” in that this call is open to junior scholars, perhaps “dissertators” working on Morrison and doing excellent, innovative thinking. Importantly, too, the volume is to feature work from a diverse group of scholars around the world, to be international and varied both in terms of approach and in terms of contributor-authors. Routledge is known for its strength as a scholarly publisher with a remarkably (race, gender, geographic, and otherwise) ranging global authorship; this collection continues that legacy within the context of Toni Morrison studies.

Lastly, any chapter of this collection will be eligible for Open Access, for those interested in that or whose universities encourage it. Open Access can mean greater exposure, both for the book and for the individual scholar's contribution.

A one- or two-page proposal, including clear direction re: methodology and a bio, is due by 4/30/22. Email it to:  mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu  (In terms of methodology: where, how, in what ways your chapter enters or fits into the conversation in progress, what you are innovating or primarily responding to, these should be clear as well as the theoretical scaffolding for the analysis. This can be achieved either through a separate statement, a working bibliography, or simply across/through the content of your proposal.)

In the meantime, questions or suggestions, if there is anything you would like to discuss, please don’t hesitate to reach out: mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu  (My own bio is copied, below, if helpful.)

Bio:  Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her) completed a Ph.D. in English at The Graduate Center-CUNY under the mentorship of Wayne Koestenbaum. She is Professor of English at Kingsborough-CUNY and has taught at The Graduate Center-CUNY, Drew University, Hunter College-CUNY, and Eugene Lang. She is a postcolonial scholar working on Anglophone writing of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Maureen specializes in historical literature, particularly that of Ireland and African America, as well as the wider literatures of partition. Her research looks at imperial borders, like those imposed through partition schemes, at political justice, especially reparations, at social justice of race, class, and gender, and at the poetics, in poetry and prose, of conflict, trauma, and silence. Maureen’s first book The Literature of Northern Ireland appeared from Palgrave in 2015. In 2019, a second book-length study titled Silence and Articulacy in the Poetry of Medbh McGuckian was brought out by Rowman and Littlefield. In 2020, Routledge published Maureen’s third monograph, Objects and Intertexts in Toni Morrison’s ‘Beloved’: The Case for Reparations, and a collection she co-edited and for which she wrote the introduction, The Economics of Empire. The article “Architecting the Carceral State: The Fragment in Medbh McGuckian’s Diaries and Walter Benjamin’s ‘Theses’” appeared in a special issue of Review of Irish Studies in Europe (RISE), Vol. 4, no. 2 (Dec. 2021), along with an interview with McGuckian. Other recent articles include “A Consciousness of Streets: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Partition” (Synthesis, 2016) and “Drawing the Border, Queering the Nation: Nation Trouble in Breakfast on Pluto and The Crying Game” (Gender Forum, 2016). Maureen is at work on three monographs: the collection Imperial Debt, on reparations for empire; she was commissioned to edit The Routledge Research Companion to Toni Morrison; and, she’s writing a single-author volume, Poetics of the Fragment. Also under development is a chapter on Joyce’s “The Dead” and other postcolonial fiction (Coetzee, Pamuk, Naipaul, Beckett) that uses the triptych: snow, silence, and sleep as central allegory. Maureen is now serving a three-year term on the MLA Committee on Academic Freedom and Professional Rights and Responsibilities (CAFPRR). 

[end]

Contact Info: 

mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu

Contact Email: 

mfadem@kbcc.cuny.edu

URL: 

https://maureeneruprechtfadem.academia.edu/

Publication -Call For Papers on Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis-2022

Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis

Call For Papers :

All About Ambedkar: A Journal on Theory and Praxis invites original and previously unpublished articles for its upcoming general issue to be published in 2022. 

​

The suggested topics are follows:

• ​Critical reading of Ambedkar’s texts

• Reviews of recent books on Ambedkar and Caste Studies

• Analysis of caste-related discrimination and violence

• Exploration of the theme of caste in literature, cinema, music, painting, photography and social media

• Reflections on caste and contemporary Indian politics

• Exploring the intersectionality of caste, class, gender, race, and religion

• Rethinking leftist politics

• Interviews with anti-caste activists and intellectuals

• Reviews of books and films

• Any other relevant topics.

​

​Basic information for prospective authors:

• Abstract (with a title & four keywords): 150-200 words

• Word limit of full papers: 5000-7000 words 

• Style of citation: MLA 9th Edition (Sample citation instructions are available at  Purdue Online Writing Lab.) 

• All submissions have to be drafted as per the Formatting Rules of AAA.

• Deadline of submission: 30 March 2022

• Email your submissions at ambedkarintouch@gmail.com.

Contact Info: ambedkarintouch@gmail.com

Contact Email: ambedkarintouch@gmail.com

URL: https://www.allaboutambedkaronline.com/