Current Sociology and the challenges of inequality in academia: 65 years forging spaces of intelligibility

Abstract

Spanish

French

Current Sociology was founded in 1952 and since then has developed into an internationalized and pluralistic journal while always pursuing its mission of sharing sociological works across the globe. Over the past 65 years, Current Sociology has played a major role in both discussions surrounding the field of production of sociological knowledge and debates on its limits and challenges. And at the same time, it has drawn up strategies to overcome these limits and challenges. Meeting these goals has been puzzling at times because within the global academic community, the very production of knowledge entails inequalities derived from a specific geopolitics inherent to the international division of academic work. This article analyses some of the main editorial policies developed over the past seven years in an attempt to face the challenges of inequality in academia and carve out spaces of intelligibility.

Keywords

Academic writing core academia inequality international division of academic work international publication peripheral academia underrepresented academia

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Abreu

ARP

(2003) A (strong?) voice from the South: Latin American sociology today. Current Sociology 51(1): 51–72.

Alatas

(2003) Academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences. Current Sociology 51(6): 599–613.

Albrow

(1991) Internationalism as a publication project: Experience in editing an international sociological journal. Current Sociology 39(1): 101–118.

Baber

(2003) Provincial universalism: The landscape of knowledge production in an era of globalization. Current Sociology 51(6): 615–623.

Descarries

(2003) The hegemony of the English language in the academy: The damaging impact of the sociocultural and linguistic barriers on the development of feminist sociological knowledge, theories and strategies. Current Sociology 51(6): 625–636.

Gingras

Mosbah-Natanson

(2010) Where are social sciences produced? In: UNESCO (ed.) World Social Science Report: Knowledge Divides. Paris: UNESCO, pp. 149–153.

Hanafi

(2011) University systems in the Arab East: Publish globally and perish locally vs publish locally and perish globally. Current Sociology 59(3): 291–309.

Hanafi

Arvanitis

(2014) The marginalization of the Arab language in social science: Structural constraints and dependency by choice. Current Sociology 62(5): 723–742.

McDaniel

(2003) Introduction: The currents of sociology internationally – preponderance, diversity and division of labour. Current Sociology 51(6): 593–597.

10.

McDaniel

(2012) Currents of sociology: Tradition, renewal and challenge. Current Sociology 60(6): 824–827.

11.

Martín

(2011) Editorial: Continuities and challenges. Current Sociology 59(1): 3–4.

12.

Martín

(2012) Making sociology current through international publication: A collective task. Current Sociology 60(6): 832–837.

13.

Martín

(2014) How to write a good article. Current Sociology 62(7): 949–955.

14.

Martín

(2016) How double-blind peer review works and what it takes to be a good referee. Current Sociology 64(5): 691–698.

15.

Mosbah-Natanson

Gingras

(2014) The globalization of social sciences? Evidence from a quantitative analysis of 30 years of production, collaboration and citations in the social sciences (1980–2009). Current Sociology 62(5): 626–646.

16.

Ngobeni

(2010) Scholarly Publishing in Africa: Opportunities and Impediments. South Africa: Africa Institute of South Africa.

17.

Omobowale

Akanle

Adeniran

Adegboyega

(2014) Peripheral scholarship and the context of foreign paid publishing in Nigeria. Current Sociology 62(5): 666–684.

18.

Oomen

(1991) Internationalization of sociology: A view from developing countries. Current Sociology 39(1): 67–84.

19.

Oomen

(2016) Asian presence in the International Sociological Association. Current Sociology 64(6): 833–852.

20.

Smith

(2012) Dialogue and discipline: Editing Current Sociology 2002–2010. Current Sociology 60(6): 828–831.

21.

Vessuri

(2015) Global social science discourse: A Southern perspective on the world. Current Sociology 63(2): 297–313.