Up to five articles will be selected for inclusion in the yearbook, with the remainder posted on the transform! yearbook’s website.
Throughout the decades of neoliberal ideological hegemony, the ‘disappearance of the state’ has frequently been proclaimed in academic and political discussion. However, the state, in fact, has never gone away, even if ‘globalisation’ has reduced its significance in managing most countries’ economies in favour of the ‘markets’. This has become evident during the recent Covid-19 pandemic, when, by contrast, the governments of most countries in the developed world ‘froze’ economic activity through lockdowns, provided subsidies to companies and individuals, and managed various vaccination programmes. All this, together with the colonial patent system’s exclusion of the Global South from the benefits of the vaccines, and the always present authoritarianism, has reignited debates on the state and its role in contemporary societies.
Over the years, the left has ‘faced’ the state in its various forms many times, and it has produced many theoretical and political tools for analysing, understanding, and approaching it politically.
It appears, however, that new conditions require new tools and ideas. Facing the state nowadays means asking new questions about its form, its role, how the 21st-century left is positioned in relation to it, in terms both of theory and of strategy and praxis.
The transform! yearbook, the annual journal of transform! europe – a network of 39 member and observer organisations from 23 countries – wishes to provide a platform for the articulation of such questions as well as a space in which they can be tackled in creative and politically engaging ways. It is in this spirit that we are issuing a call for papers on topics related to the contemporary state for the 2023 yearbook entitled ‘The Left Facing the State’. Up to five articles will be selected for inclusion in the yearbook, with the remainder posted on the transform! yearbook’s website.
We are particularly, but not exclusively, interested in the following subject areas:
· New Marxist readings of the state;
· the new urgent need for the welfare state;
· the changing nature of state-controlled repressive apparatuses (army, police, etc.);
· feminist approaches to the state;
· states and climate change.
Deadline for submission of article proposals: 15 February 2022
Response to article proposals will be sent by 28 February 2022
Deadline for submission of articles: 15 September 2022
The length should be between 25,000 and 30,000 characters (including spaces) and the language English. Please include in the proposal the article’s title, your CV, a list of publications (optional), and an abstract.
The proposals, along with any questions related to this call, should be addressed to:
Haris Golemis, golemis[at]transform-network.net, and
Kimon Markatos, kimonmarkatos[at]hotmail.com
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