Call for papers - "Unchangeability in the process of change"
The Editorial Board of “Przegląd Socjologiczny” invites authors to submit contributions to the special issue on the unchangeability in the process of change.
Unchangeability in the process of change
Few would deny that change is a hallmark of modernity and that the transformations we are experiencing today are unique. Indeed, they are very rapid; they are driven by a profound degree of global interdependence, and it is therefore difficult to pinpoint their causes and consequences. Some of them - such as armed conflicts, mass migrations, the climate crisis, species extinction, and the depletion of natural resources - also reinforce the belief that change is not good, but rather brings us closer to the inevitable end of the world as we know it. At the same time, we continue to place a positive value on what is new and we look forward to innovation, we believe in breakthroughs and turnarounds, we follow ever faster changing fashions, and we are fascinated by new technologies, discoveries and inventions. We also wait for a new turning point that will make the world a better, fairer, friendlier place for human life and other forms of existence. In all these cases, we put change at the forefront of our thinking about social life, even though it only makes sense to talk about it if there is something unchangeable. The latter, relegated to the shadows of the social imagination, also seems to be neglected within sociology. We would therefore like to reflect on this and try to show the cognitive potential of this category. The point, however, is not to deny that change does not take place, but rather to ask what we learn about it when we take into account what is resistant, what persists over time, and what is untransformable despite our efforts. We assume, then, that thinking about change requires taking into account what is not subject to it, while explaining it always involves the question of what remains unmoved, what resists, what is inevitable. This is the only way to stop overestimating human agency, begin to see the far-reaching effects of our actions, expose the limits of possibility and endurance, and to make every change a political issue, and therefore one that has some impact on others. Answering questions about what enables and triggers change, and what inhibits and resists it, also allows us to better define the extent of human agency, both individual and collective, and to consider the ways in which people seek to initiate, inhibit or adapt to change.
Taking as our starting point the question of the relationship between the unchanging and the changing, the sources of contemporary transformations as well as their inhibitors, and the transformable and the untransformable, we would like to invite the submission of scholarly articles that address the following issues:
- The unchangeable as a theoretical category and as a feature of social phenomena.
- Resistance and non-transformability in social life.
- Permanence of change and crisis and strategies of adaptation in an unstable world.
- Causality in the face of change and crisis.
- Resistant matter and matter of resistance.
- Old innovations and their contemporary variants.
- The dynamics of change in social practices.
- Transformations and transitions.
- The politicisation of change and attempts to contain or reverse it.
- Concepts and actions that valorise the reframing of change.
We invite papers both in Polish and English. Guidelines for preparing a manuscript for publication in “Przegląd Socjologiczny” are available on the journal's website:
http://journals.ltn.lodz.pl/Przeglad-Socjologiczny/information/authors
This special issue is planned to be published at the beginning of 2025. The deadline for submissions is September 15th, 2024. Please send your manuscripts to the following email address: przegladsocjologiczny@gmail.com
Editors of the special issue
Marek Krajewski
Marek Czyżewski
