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Journal of Sociology

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS

Special Issue:

Decolonising Truth Globally: Challenges and Possibilities

Guest Editors: Yin Paradies, Vanessa Barolsky and Laura Rodriguez Castro
(Scheduled for publication in 2024)

Image credit: sebastianbourges via iStock by Getty Images

Dear ~~first_name~~,

There have been few critical conversations locating the recent calls and actions for truth-telling in Australia within global engagements of Indigenous and decolonial scholarship. This is despite sociology’s increasing concern with Indigenous knowledges and governance and decoloniality. This special issue builds on a sustained engagement with the call for truth-telling in Australia during a seminar series run by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies between 2020 and 2022 entitled ‘Decolonising Truth Globally’, which included critical discussions on truth-telling in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Timor Leste, and the Solomon Islands. The special issue will draw and expand on these international dialogues to ask: What might ‘decolonising’ truth-telling mean and how could it be practised?

The historical experiences of Indigenous people in settler societies such as Australia, New Zealand and North America have largely remained outside the framework of traditional transitional justice analyses which ‘renders consideration of colonial power outside of the remit of transitional justice, both in theory and in practice’ (Balint, Evans and McMillan 2014: 254). In this context of unaddressed historical and contemporary injustice there has been increasing attention to how the ‘transition’ to new states and forms of ‘justice’ could be re-shaped and unsettled within Indigenous paradigms and decolonial epistemologies.

We approach decoloniality as profoundly concerned with the ongoing articulation of colonial power, even where formal structural change or decolonisation has taken place. Decoloniality proposes a process of ‘delinking’ from hegemonic forms of Western knowledge in order to open up the possibility of ‘other ways of knowing’, alternative epistemologies that resist the disembodied universalism of Western political thought and which is attentive to difference. Thus, we seek to discuss truth-telling processes that are intrinsically grounded in ‘epistemological disobedience’ (Mignolo 2009) that seeks to assert the validity of Indigenous and racialised ways of knowing and living that dispute and disrupt contemporary settler ‘common sense’ (Rifkin 2013).

The contributions to this special issue will discuss explicitly the entanglements between truth-telling, decoloniality and Indigenous knowledges. Articles will advance conceptual, methodological and empirical studies that bring debates about recognition and reconciliation in the global north and south into critical interaction with each other, focusing specifically on the role of truth-telling and exploring the possibilities offered by decoloniality to think ‘beyond’ disciplinary and geographical boundaries across these contexts. Thus, interdisciplinary contributions and collaborations with practitioners are encouraged.

Submission guidelines:

Please email your abstract (150 words) of the proposed paper with your name and affiliation to Laura Rodriguez Castro at laura.rodriguezcastro@deakin.edu.au by 28 October 2022.

Guest editors will advise authors on the suitability and acceptance of their submissions by 25 November 2022. Full articles for blind peer-review will be due by 18 July 2023 via the Journal of Sociology submission site: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jos.

Full paper submission guidelines can be found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/JOS

Publication timeline:

● 28 October 2022: Abstracts due (150 words)
● 25 November 2022: Abstract decision made
● 1st quarter of 2023: Virtual workshop with contributors
● 28 July 2023: Full manuscripts due
● 2nd half of 2023: Peer review process
● 2024: Publication of Special Issue

For queries contact:

Vanessa Barolsky vanessa.barolsky@deakin.edu.au
Laura Rodriguez Castro laura.rodriguezcastro@deakin.edu.au

To share this call for abstracts, please use this link.

Editor in Chief

Helen Forbes-Mewett

Monash University

Managing Editor

Allegra Schermuly

Monash University

About the Journal of Sociology

Journal of Sociology features high quality sociological scholarship in all its forms. We are dedicated to showcasing theory as well as applied sociology, quantitative and qualitative research. Interdisciplinary pieces are welcome, as are submissions from outside the academy. Based in the Southern Hemisphere and committed to intellectual works from the Asia-Pacific region, including Indigenous scholarship, we also encourage submissions from across the globe.

You can read more about the Journal of Sociology here and keep up-to-date via Twitter: @JSociology

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