CALL FOR PAPERS
Symposium of the Forum for Social Economics—FSE
a Journal of the Association for Social Economics—ASE
Working Title:
SOCIAL REPRODUCTION AND BIOPOLITICS
Guest Editors:
Alicia Girón
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
Karol Gil Vásquez
Nichols College/Boston University
The Forum for Social Economics (FSE) is pleased to invite submission to a symposium on social reproduction and biopolitics. We particularly welcome submission from different disciplines that complement the social-economic perspective and encourage the utilization of different theoretical perspectives and the application of a wide variety of methodological approaches (qualitative, quantitative, and mixed method). Both conceptual and empirical contributions are welcome.
Notes for Prospective Authors:
If you are interested in submitting an abstract or have any questions, please email Professor Alicia Girón at: alicia@unam.mx and/or Prof. Karol Gil Vásquez at: karol.gil-vasquez@nichols.edu and confirm your interest. We will be happy to receive your suggestions and/or answer your queries regarding the suitability of your tiopic. The first step is to submit an abstract. Please email paper title and abstract (300 words) to the guest editors no later than 31 August 2022.
All papers will be subject to double-blind peer review. All papers must be submitted online through the journal’s website at Taylor and Francis/Routledge. Please read the submission guidelines, and for more information, also please see the Forum for Social Economics’ instructions for authors provided in the journal’s webpage: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rfse20/current
The symposium will address research questions related to social reproduction and biopolitics. Social reproduction is understood as the duplication of social structures and systems, an analytical approach that places at center stage the role of women in wider structures, as individuals who prioritize and provide lives to social, political, and economic institutions. Biopolitics is defined as the study of the political relations between regulators of life (that is, political, social, and cultural organizations) and populations at large, where specific institutions evaluate life based on the binary of perceived commonalities and perceived threats.
In face of escalating turmoil around the world, a comprehensive approach that analyzes the violent institutional changes experienced by populations at large is necessary. As the capacity of societies to ensure life survival is under challenge, it is of paramount importance to discern the crucial role neoliberal policies play in incrusting market principles into the social reproduction sphere, a sector previously protected by community principles and/or the safety-net of welfare states.
Activities of social reproduction take place in the indirectly market-mediated sphere, not entirely excluded from the market’s logic; however, the unwaged time required for reproductive labor may mean there is less time to do waged work. Hence, as the contemporary wave of commodification continues to rise, the demands on waged labor can exert pressure on other activities by strengthening patriarchal and sexist practices while weakening the principles of cooperation and solidarity that traditionally guided social upbringing.
Analyses that relate violence to the sphere of reproduction are required to connect contemporary social issues with neoliberalism’s recent empowerment, which now adopts the biopolitical binary. Discerning the linkages between the instability and continuity of the institutions that guarantee life’s procreation and the institutions that protect or deter processes of social reproduction promises to amplify a research agenda. This involves identifying the informal and formal institutions that, through the market’s biopolitics, limit the capacity of societies to reproduce themselves.
Contemporary issues related to social reproduction and biopolitics illustrate some of the factual features of the socioeconomic problems of our age. From this angle, violence is seen as an embedded factor of the economy. Its uprise connects to a crisis in the sphere of social reproduction, included but not limited to political, social, cultural, environmental, ethical, religious, and epidemic dislocations triggered by capitalism’s evolving strategies to extract surplus. In this sense, current conflicts are rooted in the invisible structure that either legitimizes, embraces, reinterprets, or devalues, contests, and defies neoliberalism. The symposium’s main objective is to provide a space of reflection about these issues while reconsidering the conditions that either push or impede the Great Transformations of our times, thereby threatening or protecting the sphere of reproduction’s core, that is, life itself.
Topical Areas for Subject Research:
Social reproduction and violence: transformation of social welfare policies and its relationship with domestic violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault, feminicides, the sex industry, changing family dynamics, women rights’ issues, LGTB’s rights, abortion rights, childcare policy/industry, obstetric violence, and elderly care
Social reproduction and the economy: transformations on the market and/or labor market as they relate to women and food security, female labor force participation in formal and informal economies, correlation between violence and increasing female labor force participation, the wage gap, the glass ceiling, the care economy, micro-financing and debt, female immigrant workers’ labor force participation, the ‘crisis of work as the crisis of home,’ contemporary cultures of work, automation/digitalization’s impact on female labor force participation and the care economy.
Social reproduction and biopolitics: transformation of social welfare policies and its relationship with female incarceration and the prison industry, women and war, female vulnerable populations (immigrants/refugees), women and environmental issues, women and the War on Drugs, women and the War on Terrorism, female immigrant detention centers and children’s care/detention centers.
Social reproduction and the COVID-19 pandemic: COVID-19 pandemic’s gendered analysis and its impact on regulating women’s bodies, on the care economy, on female labor force participation, on the wage gap, and on women’s rights.
Other areas related to the theme of this symposium
The special issue is scheduled to be published in late 2023 or early 2024.
Important Dates
Paper title and abstract (e-mail): 31 August 2022.
First version of the manuscript due 31 January 2023
Final paper due: 31 March 2023.