Call for Papers

The Berkeley Journal of Sociology Call for Papers
Volume 56: The Popular

The 56th volume of the Berkeley Journal of Sociology invites submissions that interrogate the political, cultural, social, and technological facets of “the popular.” What are the relationships between the popular, appeals to the popular, and social and economic conditions or structures? What key lines of difference emerge within the popular? How might the concept of “the popular” itself work to obscure important divisions or fissures? How do various sites of inquiry illuminate or problematize the very notion of “the popular” as a meaningful descriptor? How might popular phenomena be distinguished, and what is the significance of this distinction?

We welcome submissions that speak to the following topics:

• Public opinion
• Mass mobilization
• Populist politics
• Sociology of left-wing and right-wing movements
• Social or mass media technologies
• Fads and fashion of popular culture
• Political economy of consumption
• Critical approaches to “the popular”
• Taste
• Religion and religious movements
• Politics of representation and identity
• Historical transformation of the popular
• Global circulation of cultural products
• Sociology of the arts
• Nationalist movements

The Berkeley Journal of Sociology seeks original, empirical approaches to these themes that, through their analysis of the social world, offer new insights on such questions. Studies of social movements, political sociology, media and communications studies, and cultural studies have all addressed these issues in ways that advance our understanding of the popular. These issues have new urgency in the context of new forms of popular political participation, mass media, and changing cultures of global consumption.

The Berkeley Journal of Sociology is a graduate student-run journal that has been in publication since 1955. Articles published in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology are now available through JSTOR (subject to a three-year moving wall). We make a special effort to publish the work of graduate students and untenured faculty. In addition to submitted articles, each year’s volume also includes a transcription of the keynote address from the Berkeley Journal of Sociology’s annual conference on our journal theme.

Submissions for Volume 56 are due January 13, 2012. Please see the Guide for Contributors below for details on submission format.

Guide for Contributors

Submissions may be sent as an email attachment to bjssubmissions@gmail.com (preferred) or two paper copies may be mailed to The Berkeley Journal of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 410 Barrows Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-1980. Each submission will be read by at least two members of the editorial board, and every effort is made to return substantive comments to the author, whether the work is accepted or not.

All submissions should include a cover page listing authorship, institutional affiliation, article title, acknowledgements, and the date of submission. Since manuscripts are reviewed anonymously, the author should be identified only on the cover page, and not in the manuscript itself. All manuscripts must be typed and double spaced with ample margins on all sides. All text, including titles, headings, and footnotes, should be in Times New Roman, and mixed-case where appropriate. All submissions must be accompanied by an abstract (150 to 200 words).

Footnotes should be used for concise supplementary comments, not citations. Any long or especially complicated supplementary material should be included in appendices rather than footnotes, or made available from the author on request. In the text, all references should be identified by author’s last name, year of publication, and pagination where needed. References come at the end of the paper and should be prefaced with the heading “References” in 12-point boldface type, left justified, three lines after the end of the article body.

Reference entries should be formatted in accordance with the fourteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which is also used by the American Sociological Review. (Note that prior to Volume 44 in 2000, the BJS used a different reference format.