Call for papers
The reception of manuscripts is open permanently.
The reception of dossier proposals is temporarily closed.
Next special issues (see CfP below):
1. Age biases and deliberative democracy: new challenges (Deadline Nov 15, 2023) (See CFP below)
2. Critical approaches to work in the neoliberal era: social suffering, politics of bodies and new democratic imaginaries (Deadline May 15, 2024). (See CFP below)
3. Towards a Contemporary Theory of Populism. Debates and Reformulations 20 Years After On Populist Reason by Ernesto Laclau (Deadline Nov 15, 2024). (See CFP below)
4. Current validity of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Deadline May 15, 2025). (See CFP below)
5. Materialism and culture. Itineraries, tensions and ambivalences of Marxism (Deadline November 15, 2025). (See CFP below)
6. Privileges and unequal societies. (Deadline May 15, 2026). (See CFP below)
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers)
Title: "Age biases and deliberative democracy: new challenges."
Guest editors: Mar Cabezas and María G. Navarro (University of Salamanca).
In 2024, 44 years of studies on one of the most important models of democracy, deliberative democracy, will be completed. Studies on deliberative democracy have increased significantly in recent years and acquire special relevance in the contemporary political horizon and its challenges. Among these, this issue intends to analyze the impact that the demographic variable has on the model of deliberative democracy understood as a dialogical practice involved in the process of forming a public reason (James Bohman, 1996), that is, a form of political cooperation. present in participatory conceptions of deliberative democracy such as the one recently defended by Cristina Lafont (2021).
In order to do so, this issue intends to explore the impact of the age bias on the translation and materialization of the rights of the most vulnerable population groups to the age bias from the theoretical framework of deliberative democracies. Thus, works from Political Philosophy are welcome, in dialogue with disciplines such as Moral Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Sociology or Political Science. The following topics are proposed in a non-exclusive way:
-The age biases in the conceptions of deliberative democracy;
-Age biases in the testimonies and narratives on political participation;
-Age biases in social movements;
-Age biases in methodologies such as mini-publics (e.g., consensus conferences, deliberative polls, citizen panels, assemblies, etc.);
-Age biases and deliberative behavior;
-Age biases and online deliberation;
-Age biases and deliberative negotiation;
-Age biases and deliberative democracy in Latin America;
-Age biases and democratic innovation;
-Age bias and epistemocracy.
Submissions are welcome in English, Spanish, or French.
Guidelines for authors: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/LTDL/about/submissions
Manuscript reception deadline: November 15, 2023.
Issue publication date: July 2024.
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers)
Title: Critical approaches to work in the neoliberal era: social suffering, politics of bodies and new democratic imaginaries
Guest editors: Alessandro Pinzani, Laura Quintana y Alfredo Sánchez Santiago.
For a long time, now, different authors have suggested –from different theoretical perspectives– that we might soon enter a time in which work will lose its centrality both in guaranteeing social reproduction and in defining individual personality. This “end of work” thesis has been rekindled every time that a new economic crisis or a new step in automation seemed to upset capitalism. In fact, in contemporary capitalist societies, an increasing number of potential workers are deemed to be “useless” for the functioning of the economic system, while those who still have a job face exacting demands, as well as constant forms of bodily exploitation that provoke different effects of suffering, both physical and psychical. It has become impossible to think of the world of work without referring to pathologies like burnout, weariness, stress, and even depression. These effects are accentuated alongside a growing sense of a closed-off future in an increasingly unequal world, confronted with the resurgence of undemocratic political visions, and more and more affected by the consequences of the environmental catastrophe. All of these phenomena are linked to an economic model anchored in the logic of growth and accumulation, which has ended up being devastating for both bodies and territories.
The discourses on the 'end of work,' as well as those announcing the advent of the 'immaterial labor' era, tend to underestimate the ecological impact of work, the centrality of this activity in the social structure, and its negative impact on the body and psychological economy of the contemporary individual. Let us not forget that work is an activity to which we devote one-third of our adult lives and that it constitutes the primary environment for socialization in advanced capitalist societies. Despite this, social and political philosophy has lagged behind in discussions of the social and subjective significance of work compared to other disciplines in the social sciences, such as labor sociology, organizational sociology, labor law, or the political theory of the firm. In recent years, however, various critical theory approaches are rethinking work, alongside renewed reflections on economic practices that are more sustainable and equitable (such as degrowth models, ecological economics, new proposals of non-growth-based socialism, and post-capitalist economies). This horizon of reflection has guided a significant portion of the work of the Complutense GINEDIS research group through several funded research projects, among which the national R&D project Precarious Employment, Body, and Damaged Life stands out. A Social Philosophy Investigation (PID2019-105803GB-I0/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), an interdisciplinary research coordinated by Nuria Sánchez Madrid and Pablo López Álvarez at the Complutense University of Madrid since 2020. This project, whose team includes the editors of this special issue, has been promoting intense collective reflection on the contemporary experience of work in the tension between exploitation and emancipation: its aim is to study the psycho-physical, epistemic, ecological, and moral impact of labor activity, but also the possible margin of autonomy that workers can conquer through concerted action or through the reform of current institutional and constitutional frameworks.
In this sense, Spanish-language thought has been a pioneer in providing a diagnosis of the structural dysfunctions affecting labor environments in current societies and the social pathologies they provoke, especially in Global South societies, where the effects of neoliberal governance techniques are more deleterious (Quintana & Sánchez Madrid, 2023). High levels of unemployment, the proliferation of informal and non-salaried work, impoverished workers, deregulation of labor relations, fragmentation of professional trajectories, the development of the debt economy: these and other manifestations of contemporary precarity, exacerbated after the Great Recession of 2008, take on an alarming dimension in these geographies and place social philosophy under the demand to offer new conceptual formulations and institutional designs sensitive to the sources of social suffering in contemporary society (Sánchez Madrid, 2021).
This special issue is born with the vocation of giving new impetus to this line of reflection by adding new critical approaches to the discussion of work experience in advanced capitalist societies. Among the various paradigms that can be considered, the approach of critical theory and the psychopathology of work (Dejours, Déranty, Renault & Smith, 2018) is particularly relevant to illuminate the pernicious subjective effects generated by the new models of work organization in the neoliberal era, based on constant monitoring of the worker's activity, the blurring of the boundaries between life and work, the imperative of constant retraining of professional skills, and a demand for performance that transgresses all material, as well as legal, limits of individual corporality (López Álvarez, 2016).
The concept of alienation, so relevant in the Marxist tradition, has also been used to articulate a specific critique of labor relations in contemporary society, especially in studies focused on determining the emotional dimension that work implies and the impact of this activity on an individual's self-esteem. Research on "meaningful work" (Yeoman 2014) develops this reflection in a particularly relevant direction. Work can indeed be a source of personal fulfillment, a tool for the development of an individual's physical and intellectual capacities, and a powerful device for social inclusion. However, it can easily degenerate into the opposite when job insecurity or poverty relegate populations considered superfluous or surplus to the margins of the community (Pinzani, 2020; Fasolino, Sánchez Santiago & López Álvarez, 2021), or when the workplace becomes a hostile environment where inequality relations that exist in other spheres of social life, such as those based on gender, economic position, class, cultural capital, and even erotic capital, are reproduced and amplified: in these cases, work becomes a focus of worrisome cognitive and bodily pathologies (Moreno Pestaña, 2016).
On the other hand, other approaches have recently emphasized the need to democratize labor relations. The development of democratic habits in the workplace has been seen as a powerful antidote to depersonalize labor discomfort and reestablish the solidarities dissolved by neoliberal management (Sánchez Madrid, 2018), while also being a necessary condition to address three of the most pressing challenges facing our societies today: the dramatic increase in social inequalities (Piketty, 2013), the rise of reactionary populism (Levitsky. & Ziblatt, 2018), and the exacerbation of the climate crisis (Klein, 2014). In this line of thought, we find proposals formulated from paradigms as diverse as the neo-republican tradition or political epistemology: the democratization of work has been conceptualized as an indispensable tool to ensure the effective freedom of the worker against despotic practices of authority (González Ricoy, 2014), as a social and political right intimately linked to justice and equality (Ferreras, 2018), as a lever for social democratization (Cukier, 2023), or even as a more efficient model of work organization (in economic and ecological terms) than alternative oligarchic forms (Landemore & Ferreras, 2016). This special issue aims to present, discuss, and connect these critical approaches regarding the role of work in a social world that demands alternatives to dominant capitalism. The research community is invited to submit papers within the framework of social and political philosophy, engaging in dialogue with disciplines such as moral philosophy, philosophy of law, sociology, or political science. The special dossier will prioritize the following areas of reflection:
- Work, body and exploitation
- Work and processes of subjectivation
- Fordism, post-Fordism and new neoliberal management
- Work, poverty and citizenship
- Precarious labor and vulnerability
- Labor and care
- Work, social exclusion and epistemic injustice
- Social, sexual and racial division of labor
- Autonomy, identity and self-fulfillment at work
- Work and affects
- Work and emancipation
- Labor democracy
- Work and recognition
- Political centrality of work vs. the end of work
- Work and political ecology
- Domestic work
- Migrant labor
- Productivism vs. degrowth
- Feminist economies
- Popular economies
- New perspectives in labor law
- Trade unionism and new political struggles around work
Bibliography
Cukier, Alexis (2023). Democratic Work. Radical Democracy and the Future of Labour. Palgrave. Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27856-3_3
Dejours, Christophe; Deranty, Jean-Philippe; Renault, Emmanuel y Smith, Nicholas H. (2018). The return of work in critical theory. Columbia University.
Fasolino, Rubén, López Álvarez, Pablo y Sánchez Santiago, Alfredo (Eds.) (2019). Pertenencias/Exclusiones. Estudios sobre la comunidad y sus límites. La Cebra.
Ferreras, I. (2018). Le droit du travail parmi les droits civils et politiques ? Réflexions à propos de la participation des travailleurs au gouvernement de l'entreprise. Revue de droit comparé du travail et de la sécurité sociale, 3, 28-37. https://doi.org/10.4000/rdctss.1879
Ferreras, I. (2017). Firms as Political Entities. Saving Democracy through Economic Bicameralism. Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108235495
González Ricoy, Íñigo (2014). The republican case for workplace democracy. Social Theory and Practice, 40(2), 232-254. https://doi.org/10.5840/soctheorpract201440215
Klein, Naomi (2014). This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. Simon & Schuster.
Landemore, Hélène (2017). Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. Princeton University.
Levitsky, Steven y Ziblatt, Daniel (2018). How Democracies Die. Crown.
López Álvarez, Pablo (2016). La plasticidad forzada. Cuerpo y trabajo. Daimon. Revista Internacional de Filosofía, suplemento 5, 679-688. https://doi.org/10.6018/daimon/268751
Moreno Pestaña, José Luis (2018). La cara oscura del capital erótico. Capitalización del cuerpo y trastornos alimentarios. Akal.
Piketty, Thomas (2013). Le Capital au XXIe siècle. Seuil.
Pinzani, Alessandro (2020). Migración, pobreza y estigma social. Bajo Palabra, 23, 239–260. https://doi.org/10.15366/bp.2020.23.009
Quintana, Laura y Sánchez Madrid, Nuria (2023). Neoliberal Techniques of Social Suffering: Political Resistance and Critical Theory from Latin America and Spain. Lexington Books.
Sánchez Madrid, Nuria (Ed.). (2021). La filosofía social ante la precariedad. Genealogías, resistencias, diagnósticos. La Catarata.
Sánchez Madrid, Nuria (2018). “La verdad pasa a ser algo privado”: Algunas consecuencias políticas del silenciamiento del malestar laboral. Ideas y valores: Revista Colombiana de Filosofía, 67(168), 219-241. https://doi.org/10.15446/ideasyvalores.v67n168.74133
Yeoman, Ruth (2014). Meaningful Work and Workplace Democracy. A Philosophy of Work and a Politics of Meaningfulness. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137370587
Manuscript reception deadline: May 15, 2024.
Issue publication date: January 2025.
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers)
Towards a Contemporary Theory of Populism. Debates and Reformulations 20 Years After On Populist Reason by Ernesto Laclau
Guest Editors: Cristian Acosta Olaya (Escuela IDAES-UNSAM/CONICET, Argentina), Grigoris Markou (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Sebastián Ronderos (Fundação Getulio Vargas, Brazil), Antonis Galanopoulos (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki)
Summary and objectives:
Despite being scorned in the public arena and constantly marginalized within both political theory and philosophy, populism remains today a central category to understand contemporary political events. Over the past two decades, the term has re-emerged as a pervasive concept in political debates across the world, with scholars from different theoretical traditions and distinctive methodological standpoints striving to analyze its core features and untangle its relationship with other prominent discourses and phenomena.
One key force behind that debate is undeniably the work of Ernesto Laclau, whose reflections on populism have transformed thoroughly the understanding of this concept. In particular, 2025 marks the 20th anniversary of his most renowned work, On Populist Reason (Verso). In this book, Laclau advances a comprehensive and rigorous theory of populism, combining a suggestive theoretical analysis with empirical references from different socio-political contexts. Shifting its focus from content to form, Laclau’s work not only tried to circumvent the normative bias of most mainstream approaches but also allowed approaching populism as a political logic inherent to the hegemonic and contingent configuration of political identities at large.
The publication of On Populist Reason swiftly attracted the attention of various thinkers hailing from diverse academic backgrounds and theoretical perspectives. Nevertheless, Laclau’s perspective also gave rise to a number of elaborations and criticisms at both the theoretical and the empirical levels. Amongst others, questions regarding Laclau’s work were raised regarding hegemony, the preeminence of antagonism, the overlooking of populist institutionalization, the role of the leader, the affective dimension of populism, the rhetorical and psychosocial dynamics involved in the formation of collective identities and the influence of psychoanalysis in his theory.
Without pretending to summarize or rehearse these debates, the present Dossier seeks to reinvigorate them, expanding a series of contemporary theoretical orientations in populism studies that have evolved through the discussion stimulated by Laclau’s book during the two decades since its publication. Along with Laclau’s broader body of work, we see On Populist Reason as an introductory point from which diverse critical perspectives converge to discuss, rethink and advance upon his reflections.
Therefore, papers from Political Theory, Philosophy and Sociology, as well as from other disciplines related to Social, Political and Humanitarian Sciences are welcome. In addition, unpublished translations into Spanish of relevant texts, as well as review of recent books related to the topic of the dossier, are accepted.
As a general guide for the authors, we provide an indicative, but certainly not exhaustive, list of recommended topics:
-Tensions between the Ontological and the Ontic in the study of populism. Double hermeneutics and normative bias.
-Configuration of political identities. The distinction between “the popular” and “the populist”.
-Populism beyond the rupture. Order and institutionalization.
-Psychoanalysis and populism. Affects, psychosocial dynamics and the negative horizon.
-Populism and nationalism. Empirical and theoretical reflections.
-National State, republicanism and trans-national populism.
-Feminism and populism. The gender factor.
-Constructing the people. Leadership and political representation
-Populism and anti-populism in Latin America and Europe.
-Hegemony or post-hegemony. Political articulation and pluralism.
-Populism, hegemony and politics. Synonymy or contamination.
Submission deadline: November 15, 2024,
Publication: July 2025.
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers)
Title: Current validity of the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes
Guest editors: María Liliana Lukac de Stier (UCA – Argentina) and Andrés Di Leo Razuk (UBA/UNLaM – Argentina).
Summary and objectives:
There is no doubt that any valuable recovery of a classical thinker is mainly motivated by a problem pertaining to the historical moment in which it is being carried out. In the specific case of Thomas Hobbes, since the critical recovery of his work carried out at the beginning of the 20th century by thinkers such as Strauss or Schmitt, the texts of the British philosopher have not stopped being consulted to think about topics of various kinds. At the same time, the richness of Hobbes's thinking is observed not only in the different interpretations that have been developed about his philosophy, but also in the fact that they often even become antagonistic. Thus, we find within Hobbesian hermeneutics liberal, totalitarian, statist, anarchist, theistic, atheistic, conservative, or progressive positions, just to mention some influential currents and, within each of them, the internal divisions that are appreciated show the fertility and versatility of Hobbes's writings even more, providing useful theoretical tools to reflect on different problems.
This dossier attempts to be part of that intellectual maneuver, proposing to link Hobbes’s doctrine with current and concrete problems that challenge us today and that only in recent years have begun to form part of Hobbesian studies. The intention, then, is to bring together in this special issue different treatments that still emerge in isolation. It is worth clarifying that, even though current themes are privileged, submissions to this dossier are required to apply all the academic rigor so as not to mischaracterize the work of a classic philosopher such as Hobbes.
The current problems described below, treated in the light of Hobbesian thought, will be included in this dossier.
The aim is to demonstrate how the 17th century philosopher can be highly relevant today and provide creative ideas for the resolution of extremely urgent ethical-political conflicts:
- Feminisms
- Drug trafficking
- Terrorism
- Artificial intelligence
- Dissolution of the State and sovereignty
- Crowd/Multitude as a political category
- Neopunitivism and criminal law
- Anarchisms
- Consumption and addictions
- Privatization of wars
- New political enemies
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers dossier 2026b)
Title: Materialism and culture. Itineraries, tensions and ambivalences of Marxism
Guest editors: Anxo Garrido (UCM), Germán Cano (UCM), Manuel Romero (UCM)
Abstract:
Our present does not cease to raise again and again the question of what Antonio Gramsci had defined as the fundamental problem of historical materialism: in what way, under what presuppositions and by virtue of what determinations the material structure of society and the affective and symbolic elements of the world of culture are related to each other. After Marx formulated the well-known topical metaphor distinguishing between the "base and the superstructure" as integral parts of society, attempts to settle its meaning have given rise to numerous contrasting positions among the fundamental authors of twentieth-century social theory. In this myriad of positions, analyses of the processes of mediation, subjectification and social objectification concerning the role of the arts and the media in the different stages of capitalism stand out.
The transformations of the current economic system, and the exponential growth of information and communication networks in a global market and culture, give the problem of the determinations of base and superstructure a new centrality. For this reason, the issue defined here proposes a revision and updating of the problematic with a double purpose. On the one hand, to rescue and update the thinking of some of the theoretical currents that emerged as a result of this encounter between historical materialism and the analysis of cultural processes, the critical theory elaborated by the Frankfurt School and/or the work developed at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, as well as that of its cardinal figures: Georg Lukács, Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams, among others. On the other hand, the aim would be to analyse this problematic in the light of our historical present, either through the diagnosis of the thinkers who have continued and expanded these traditions: Fredric Jameson, Wendy Brown, Mark Fisher or Nancy Fraser; or by suggesting new connections, mediations and points of view within the theoretical framework of materialism and theories of culture.
To this end, we invite researchers in the social sciences and humanities to explore these issues:
- The status of culture, aesthetics or ideology in the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
- Encounters and misunderstandings between the critique of political economy and theories of the processes of subjectivation.
- The theory of hegemony in Antonio Gramsci and its developments
- Theories of mediation
- Reification and the problem of class consciousness
- The cultural transformations of capitalism
Manuscript reception deadline: November 15, 2025.
Issue publication date: July 2026.
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Special Issue Las Torres de Lucca (Call for papers dossier 2027a)
Title: Privileges and unequal societies
Guest editor: Juan Carlos Velasco (Instituto de Filosofía, CSIC)
Abstract:
After being for decades a marginalized subject for the human and social sciences, the increase in social and economic inequality, both at local and national as well as European and global level, has become in recent years the focus of heated debates that go beyond the confines of the scientific community. Indignation has grown in broad sectors of the population in the same proportion as tolerance against the different manifestations of injustice, particularly in the form of extreme economic inequality and blatant social and gender discrimination, has diminished. Of course, this is also related to the global systemic crisis that exploded in 2008 and has since wreaked havoc on the world economy and on the daily lives of so many people. The global polycrisis has not only affected the economic sphere and widened inequality gaps, but has also managed to profoundly alter some well-established consensuses in democratic public spheres related to social justice. In the last decade, in particular, debates on the analysis of inequalities considered legitimate and, likewise, of spurious privileges, have gained prominence.
This proposal is aimed at gathering contributions that, from the various subdisciplines of practical philosophy, investigate the causes of inequality and detect the different faces that privileges adopt in contemporary societies - understood in a double sense: as exemption from a general obligation and as an exclusive or special advantage enjoyed by someone thanks to a concession from a superior or due to certain circumstances, as stated in the RAE - and to explore their harmful effects from the perspective of a normative oriented critical theory of society. Thus, as a starting point, the notion of privilege is assumed to directly contravene the universalist logic of rights. However, it will also be studied, as a hypothesis, whether there are other forms of privileges outside the legal and institutional formulas and, if so, what impact they have.
While debates on inequality have been intense, there has been surprisingly little theoretical engagement with the concept of privilege, the critique of privilege, and the political struggles associated with it. This monographic issue will therefore address in depth a crucial question: what does this controversial concept contribute? On that basis, a whole range of problems and issues can be considered, and various aspects of the privilege debate will be highlighted along the following research questions:
1. History of ideas: How can the term be located and traced in theoretical debates? Where exactly does it come from? What concepts is it related to? Is there an intrinsic relationship between inequality and privilege? And between merit and privilege? Does it need to be complemented with other perspectives? And what role does it play in critical theories, such as intersectionality, feminist or anti-racist theories? And how does it link with the critique of capitalism?
2. Dissenting voices: There is a great deal of outrage from conservatives, libertarians, and neoliberals at the critique of privilege from one part of the left spectrum. How does this critique of privilege work? Can these positions and the used vocabulary be described as a defense of privilege? What is the historical and the contemporary theoretical-political genesis of this type of critique? And how does it relate to other terms of struggle such as "identity politics" and "political correctness"?
3. From the epistemic point of view: Can different forms of inequality be explained through the lens of privilege? How can we distinguish between "privileged", "subaltern" and "discriminated"? From what political or scientific position can this distinction be made? In this respect, hegemony theory, feminist and post- or decolonial traditions offer fruitful insights; however, there are hardly any general and systematic approaches to these central questions.
4. Empirical: What insights can be drawn from social struggles in order to critique privilege? What forms of critique of privilege are practiced in social movements, for example, and how can these forms be translated into theory? What forms of inequality are not subsumable under the notion of privilege?
5. Normativity and practical consequences: what exactly should follow from the critique of privilege? Should the privileged renounce privilege, or should the unprivileged be "empowered"? Or is this opposition itself problematic, even if or precisely because it seems to be implicit in the paradigm and semantics of privilege?
The theoretical and normative approaches to these questions could possibly be organized in four thematic areas:
- Meritocracy and privilege.
- Nationality, international mobility and privileges.
- Socioeconomic inequality and borders.
- Environment crisis and inequality.
Manuscript reception deadline: may 15, 2026.
Issue publication date: January 2027.
