Reassembling Ethnography/ Call for Papers

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CALL FOR PAPERS for Qualitative Sociology

Reassembling Ethnography: ANT beyond the Laboratory

Deadline for Submissions: August 31^st 2012

Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) was literally developed in the laboratory, but it is an approach that proclaims usefulness to all arenas of social life. In recent years, ANT has been actively taken up in neighboring fields, such as Anthropology and Geography, but has only experienced slow and uneven interest within sociology. An upcoming edition of Qualitative Sociology aims to discuss ANT in relation to sociological ethnographic and qualitative methodologies. ANT’s call to ‘follow actors,’ its principle of symmetry, and its skepticism toward taken-for-granted categories in some way harkens to revered sociological traditions of ethnography, but at the same time challenges some of our existing conceptualizations and traditions of ethnographic research. This Special Issue brings together cutting-edge empirical articles that deploy/expand and dialogue with ANT’s ‘sociology of associations’ in various arenas of the social world.

The edition will be published in 2013. Edition articles will explore the usefulness of ANT as a method and as a theory to inform qualitative research, and ethnography in particular. We are interested in articles that will examine how ANT enriches our theoretical and empirical understandings of social phenomena, beyond its familiar domains in science and technology. Contributions are welcomed on a range of themes. The list below is not meant to be exhaustive and we encourage contributors to be creative in their application and engagement with ANT.

• Civil Society and civic associations
• Cities and urban life
• Policy-making and statecraft
• Sociology of knowledge
• Race, ethnicity, gender, and class identities
• Politics and social movements
• Inequality and stratification

In keeping with the tradition of Qualitative Sociology, we seek theoretically-rich, high-quality empirical studies that will push us to reflect on the limits of ANT, and devise ways to harness its benefits.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURES

The Special Issue will be edited by Gianpaolo Baiocchi, Diana Graizbord, and Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Brown University).  The Editors welcome contributions engaged from doctoral or early career to established academics. The papers will undergo the usual peer-review procedure as established by QS.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Deadline for submissions: August  31, 2012 submitted directly to the journal.

Word Limits: 10,000 words (maximum) including bibliography

Queries: Gianpaolo Baiocchi (Gianpaolo_Baiocchi@Brown.edu), Diana Graizbord (Diana_Graizbord@Brown.edu), and Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz (Michael_Rodriguez@Brown.edu).

Full submission instructions are available on the QS website (http://www.springer.com/social+sciences/journal/11133), on the ‘Instructions for Authors’ page. All manuscripts will be subject to the normal double-blind peer review process, but potential authors are welcome to discuss their ideas in advance with the Editors.

This Special Issue will be published in 2013