The Czech Sociological Review announces a Call for Abstracts for a thematic issue in English:
'Discourses of Economic Behaviour in Times of Instability'
Guest editors: Zsuzsa Gille, University of Illinois, and Martin Hájek, Charles University in Prague
Planned issue: Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 53 (6), 2017
As a response to the enduring economic uncertainty in Europe and elsewhere, we are witnessing the proliferation of public discourses on responsible (both thrifty and pro-growth) economic behaviour. Politicians’, experts’, businessmen and women’s, and ordinary people’s perceptions, opinions and definitions of what is happening are circulating with unprecedented intensity in everyday conversation, in the media, and in institutional communication. While this could simply be looked on as a cacophony of voices, we consider it an experimentation in new ways of talking about individual and corporate economic responsibility linked to current forms of governmentality. In this special issue we want to draw attention to the discursive dimensions of such socioeconomic issues as the moralisation of markets, the responsibilisation of consumers, preventing over-indebtedness, or public collaboration in the implementation of government policies (see, e.g. Boltanski 2011, Holmes 2014, Mautner 2010).
We invite papers that address such questions as:
- How do people and institutions make sense of and participate in discourses of appropriate economic behaviour during times of economic instability? How do they reproduce, resist, or subvert dominant discourses or create alternative ones?
- How do state authorities, including central banks, communicate their economic policies in order to change public expectations, and what discursive means do they use to achieve a broad consensus?
- How has a discourse of austerity emerged and how is it sustained in the public sphere?
- How are the most extreme negative outcomes of economic behaviour, such as bankruptcy, over-indebtedness, and insolvency, introduced and justified in public discourses?
- What new practices of thrift or economising have emerged or what old ones have been revived in response to the financial crisis? How are they legitimised in public and private discourses?
- Do the discourses of responsible economic behaviour strengthen or weaken solidarity in various settings?
Although the concerns listed above are by no means limited to post-socialist societies, we invite papers that deal primarily with societies in Central and Eastern Europe given their specific economic history. However, papers exploring the topic from a comparative perspective or a theoretical perspective are also welcome.
Researching discourses is essentially an interdisciplinary endeavour and thus stimulates the hybridisation of traditional disciplines such as sociology, linguistics, historiography, economics, political science and more. Given the disciplinary focus of the journal sociological approaches will be given priority. Nevertheless, transcending methodological boundaries and applying innovations to standard methods and techniques is of the highest relevance.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts (300–500 words) is 31 January 2016. The abstracts must be submitted directly to the guest editors – gille@illinois.edu and martin.hajek@fsv.cuni.cz – who will inform authors of the selection of their proposed paper abstracts by 20 February 2016. Full-text papers will be expected no later than 31 October 2016. For author guidelines see http://sreview.soc.cas.cz/en/page/4-author-guidelines).
References:
Boltanski, L. (2011). On critique: A sociology of emancipation. Polity.
Holmes, D. R. (2014). Economy of words: communicative imperatives in central banks. University of Chicago Press.
Mautner, G. (2010). Language and the market society: critical reflections on discourse and dominance. Routledge.