Dear colleagues,

We invite articles, research notes, essays, and book reviews that discuss how the phenomenon of social inequality is created and recreated in the context of accelerated social changes and critical junctures. We welcome texts from multiple disciplines and genres.

Deadline for manuscript submissions: November 30th, 2022

Send manuscripts to compaso@compaso.eu.

We live in a time when the social landscape is changing rapidly and more and more issues call for public consideration. Digital transformations have produced shifts in political power, which is reflected in the economic, social, cultural, and political spheres. In this context, the phenomenon of social inequality is taking new forms that are intertwined with various aspects of human experience, including values, relations, interests, identities, and aspirations. Therefore, the notion of social inequality must be revisited and brought into line with recent theoretical advances and current practical challenges.

Papers may address questions such as (but not limited to):

1. How is social inequality manifested in the actual global world? How do hierarchies of social class overlap with those of race, gender, age, sexuality, religion hence giving rise to new forms of power and domination? How does the micropolitics of identity formation participate in the consolidation of a highly constraining and coercive stratification system? How is social status continuously shaped and reshaped under the influence of transient political and cultural institutions? How are people socialized to perceive and experience the phenomena of social inequality in their common life?
2. What are the most adequate measures that could be applied to study social inequality at a structural level? Are the classical indicators adequate to account for social inequality in the present-day world, or should we search for alternative models that could increase the spectrum of reasoning and bring added value to the knowledge production process? What kind of methodological innovations could be implemented to explore the multifaceted phenomenon of social inequality? How are the characteristics of social inequality shaped by the very nature of the instruments used to measure differences in access to resources, opportunities, and rights?
3. How can policymakers address social inequality in the context of global challenges (pandemics, wars, climate changes, etc)? What are the institutional causes of inequality and how are they distributed across cultural backgrounds and social categories? How does economic inequality relate to various forms of political inequality? How does the modern notion of citizenship contribute to economic, educational, and health disparity? What are the unintended consequences of the egalitarian drive that animates current campaigns and activist actions? How can we recalibrate public priorities in a responsible, sustainable, and ethical manner?
4. How is social inequality reproduced through discursive practices, metaphorical constructions, and performative vocabularies? How do political ideologies integrate various conceptions of inequality in support of their authoritative and rhetorical claims? What is the proper way to talk about social inequalities in public? How is social inequality approached in literary fictions, artistic projects, and architectural aesthetics? What is the proper way to teach inequality to university students as to raise their awareness of social issues and promote constructive dialogues about cultural diversity?
5. What are the prospects of social inequality in a hyper-technologized world? How do new technologies change the old forms of social inequality? What types of social inequality take shape in the emerging digital capitalist markets? How can we design empowering interventions by considering the role of social media in the formation of new reputation criteria and status systems? How can we deal with social inequality when relevant dynamics of social life are evolving under hidden algorithms? What role does technology play in providing innovative solutions to social exclusion, discrimination, and poverty?

We invite long papers (6000-9000 words) or short papers (3000-6000 words), in accordance with the Guidelines for authors - http://compaso.eu/instructions-for-authors/.

Kind regards,
Simona Vulpe
University of Bucharest