Editors: Erick da Luz Scherf, BA, MS, PhD student (The University of Alabama School of Social Work); Dr. Rajendra Baikady, PhD (Central University of Kerala).
Tentative Description: The world is faced with severe crises such as climate change, food insecurity, pandemics, inequality, the increased cost of living, terrorism, and war that often intersect at complex levels: social, economic, environmental, and political. Many if not all the challenges we are facing today affect us all, albeit in different ways, and are not constricted to geopolitical borders. Yet, the Global South has been historically marginalized in the global knowledge society, which means that our contributions to solving the fundamental problems that humanity is facing are more often than not disregarded in Western academia and world politics. This book is a modest attempt at flipping this mindset and positioning Southern knowledge and our often-marginalized epistemologies at the center of the debate on global social problems. As a result of epistemological racism and injustice, the knowledge produced in the South is commonly seen as ‘local’, while the North’s is seen as ‘universal’; this view hinders the efforts to construct a true globalecology of knowledges aimed at advancing our common good. Global South Solutions to Global Social Problems will bring together authors from different parts of the world to discuss their views of both old and new societal challenges and possible solutions to address them. The goal of this project is not to invalidate the knowledge produced by the Global North but to showcase how the Global South, with its incredible diversity in knowledge base and traditions, can also contribute meaningfully to solving the problems of people and planet. This book will cover the most pressing social issues of our time from an interdisciplinary perspective, bringing together authors from different backgrounds and disciplines, to provide solutions and alternatives to the current state of emergency we are living in.
Ideally, this book would be divided into five thematic areas: (I). Global Inequality and Social Justice; (II). Climate Change and Environmental Problems; (III). Unsafe and Irregular Migration; (IV). Peace, conflict and Violence; (V). Negative Impacts of Technology.
We are now accepting submissions of ideas for chapters. Abstracts should be limited to 250 words, with a descriptive title (please try to keep it short), and 5 keywords. Pending approval of the abstract and tentative title, full manuscript submissions will vary from a minimum of 6000 words to 8000 maximum (including references).
Important: Abstracts should be emailed to both editors at erickscherf@gmail.com and rajendra.baikady@mail.huji.ac.il; please do try to identify which of the 5 thematic areas described above your work would fit better in. In the email subject, you can write “Abstract submission to Global South Solutions book”. Please provide us with a short biography (100 words max.) as well as your current institutional affiliation and contact information.
Disclaimer: We accept submissions from authors in the Global North as long as they were born in or spent a considerable amount of time in the Global South and their research is related to the social issues in the Global South societies. We also encourage authors to collaborate from Global South and Global North. We will give preference to authors currently based in institutions in the Global South. Authors are encouraged to cite knowledges and practices in/from the South, if you are not sure what that would look like, kindly refer to this definition: https://southernperspectives.net/south-ways/southern-theory.
Deadline for abstracts: 25/November /2023.
Deadline for full manuscripts: 25/June/2024.
This book will be commissioned under a major academic publisher, such as Routledge or Springer Nature. We kindly appreciate your participation and we look forward to receiving your contributions!
Sincerely,
The Editors.
