Addressing the most pressing environmental concerns to society—climate change, biodiversity loss, and fresh water access, to name a few—will necessarily involve radical adjustments to global rates of consumption in energy, water, and natural resources.
To foster transdisciplinary exchange on these issues, SSHO is issuing a call for papers to contribute to “Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Consumption”. We seek full-length articles from the social sciences and humanities, and warmly welcome interdisciplinary interventions and novel methodologies. Possible topics in the thematic selection include:
• The possibilities for and limitations of circular economies in the Global South and North
• Research from projects focused on addressing Sustainable Development Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
• Critical perspectives on low-waste movements and consumption, including discussions of neoliberalism, “greenwashing”, gentrification, and inequality
• Impacts of government policies to reduce resource consumption at national, regional, and local levels
• Inequality in consumption-based approaches to sustainability, including perspectives addressing historical emissions and pollution contributions, colonialism, and rights to develop
• Corporate social responsibility research, including emissions accounting, life cycle analysis and supply chain research
• Intersectional analyses on plastic pollution, specifically addressing issues around plastic policy and disability, class, gender, and race
• Media and discursive analyses of the language of sustainability and ethical consumption in academic, political, corporate, and/or popular spheres
• Textile and fashion sustainability with a focus on human rights and environmental impacts
• Sustainability in the arts, including material waste and the environmental impacts of digital art production and consumption (i.e. cryptoart)
Details
This list of possible topics is non-exhaustive and should be considered a prompt to encourage creative and robust scholarship. Articles submitted should be between 7,000 and 10,000 words in length and contribute to academic debates on the chosen topic. We will not be accepting commentary articles or book reviews in this collection.
Articles will be assessed and published on a rolling basis, with the thematic issue closing for new submissions on April 1, 2022. Please submit papers to the section “VSI: CONSUMPTION”.
