The University of California Press launches Global Perspectives (GP), an online-only, peer-reviewed, transdisciplinary journal seeking to advance social science research and debates in a globalizing world, specifically in terms of concepts, theories, methodologies, and evidence bases. Taking advantage of the multi-media publishing opportunities presented for academic journals today, works published in the journal are enriched by invited commentaries and annotations.
GP sets out to help overcome the national and disciplinary fragmentation and isolation of the social sciences. GP starts from the premise that the world that gave rise to the social sciences in their present form is no more. The national and disciplinary approaches that developed over the last century are increasingly insufficient to capture the complexities of the global realities of a world that has changed significantly. New concepts, approaches and forms of academic discourse may be called for.
GP will be organized by subject sections informed by major conceptual or empirical issues or grounded in traditionaldisciplines, while alwaysinviting significant interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. Initially, GP will have eight subject sections, each curated by a dedicated section editor:
- Helmut K. Anheier, Hertie School of Governance, Germany, and Luskin School of Public Affairs UCLA—Culture, values, and identities
- Payal Arora, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands—Communication and media
- Thomas J. Biersteker, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva—Security and cooperation, international institutions and relations
- Miguel Centeno, Princeton University, NJ, USA—Global epistemologies: concepts, methodologies, and data systems
- Sara Curran, University of Washington, WA, USA—Social institutions, organizations, and relations
- Dirk Messner, United Nations University, Bonn—Global change and sustainability transformations: technology-society interface
- Vijayendra Rao, World Bank, Washington DC, USA—Political economy, markets, and institutions
- Hagen Schulz-Forberg, University of Aarhus, Denmark—Politics, governance, and the law
Digitalization, big data, artificial intelligence, autonomous technical systems, biotechnologies and nanotechnology will transform societies and economies profoundly –an in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. A cornerstone of global sustainability transformations is the reconfiguration of the global order: The world is economically, technologically, and ecologically highly integrated and interconnected, but socially, culturally, and politically fragmented. The impact of technological drivers on societies and the global order are ill understood: new power patterns and different inequality mechanism can emerge, and democracy and privacy might be challenged. Transferring the authority to make decisions to technical systems offers opportunities for problem solving based on machine learning, but also involves the risk of losing control over societal processes. Global Perspectives welcomes contributions that speak to these issues.
Global Change and Sustainability Transformations: Technology-Society Interface Section Board:
- Siddharth Mallavarapu, Shiv Nadar University, India
- Katherine Richardson, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Denmark
- Nebojsa Nakicenovic, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Austria
- Heide Hackmann, International Science Council, France
Contact details
Section Editor: Dirk Messner, United Nations University, Bonn (messner@ehs.unu.edu)
University of California Press, 155 Grand Avenue, Suite 400, Oakland, CA, USA; Liba Hladik, Managing Editor (lhladik@ucpress.edu)
Source: Call for Papers United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), July 2019