Also see our recent post Society and Space Editorial Team Changes
Societyandspace.org is an editor-reviewed companion to the EPD: Society and Space print journal.
In a time where higher education and academic scholarship have become increasingly inaccessible, the site’s aim is to create a forum for scholarly and activist writing that is free and publicly accessible in both content and form. Like the journal, we are committed to projects that foreground social struggles over access to and control over space, place, region, resources, territory, and spatial knowledge production. As such we seek contributions that investigate and challenge spatial configurations of power that differentially shape lives, as well as contributions that aim to bridge struggles across space and social groups. We welcome work that is empirically engaged and furthers critical epistemological approaches, that pushes conceptual boundaries, and puts theory to work in innovative ways within and beyond the academy. In addition, the Society and Space open site seeks to work beyond the paywalls of the publishing industry to make academia’s resources more widely available for knowledge production and social struggles on the ground.
In 2019, we begin our tenure as review and open site editors mindful that our current conjuncture is one that bears witness to turbulence and uncertainty: from mass migration and refugee crises to new ethno-nationalisms, ecological disaster, state-sponsored violence, technological mutations, economic polarization, ongoing Indigenous dispossession and beyond. Yet, amidst these volatilities, we recognize that political possibilities are also alive both within and far beyond the academy. We therefore invite contributions to the open site in the form of essays, interviews, and forums that seek to tap into and nurture these potentialities. Building on the reputation of EPD: Society and Space’s rigorous and cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship, we seek contributions that will expand the journal’s readership to non-specialist and popular audiences. We are well aware that some of the most exciting and important intellectual work is being done not only in the university, but also within movements and communities directly affected by the power modalities explored in the print journal. As such, our chief aims as editors are to foster scholarly conversations on vital political and social issues as well as to facilitate and amplify connections between academic research and grassroots activism. And as a multimedia platform, we welcome works that incorporate photography, video, and other artistic forms that enrich critical knowledge production in ways that academic discourse tends not to typically afford.
We are especially excited to introduce a new section of our open site entitled “Critical Geographies in Action.” We launch this section to call attention to the ways scholars are putting critical geography to use within and outside the academy. In this section, we are looking to publish essays and reflections that focus on scholarly engagement (in terms of research practice, pedagogy, and activism, including campus activism) with social movements, uprisings, artistic interventions, and any other practices that actively seek to transform social and nonhuman environments in more equitable ways. Of particular interest are pieces co-authored between academics and non-academics, works that connect local struggles to broader political questions asked by geographers and movement-workers alike, and essays that highlight the multiple locations of theoretical praxis in scholar-activist work.
Further, we of course continue to welcome submissions of book reviews. Specifically, we aim to curate reviews of exceptional books that further the journal's mission of providing conceptually grounded and empirically rich original scholarship to its readers. Reviews have great potential to identity key new directions in scholarship on society and space, to facilitate productive intellectual exchanges around crucial debates, and to demonstrate interdisciplinary writing in action. We hope to facilitate a robust conversation between texts and their interlocutors, and in so doing, to build on the journal's commitment to building excellent and generative interdisciplinary conversations.Finally, we would like to express our deep gratitude to Lauren Martin and Bobby Benedicto for leaving us a robust review and open site legacy, and look forward to working with the rest of the editorial team and the editorial board to further advance the political commitments and international reputation of EPD:Society and Space. To do so, we need your support. Please send us your suggestions for single book reviews, multi-text review forums, topical essays and forums, interviews, and other interventions in action. We look forward to fruitful exchanges between critical scholars and organizers - and perhaps more importantly, to a world in which there is no distinction between the two.
The Review and Open Site Editors – Charmaine Chua and Brian Jordan Jefferson.
