Call: Special Issue of 'Social Inclusion'

CALL FOR PAPERS: 'On the Role of Space, Place and Social Networks in Social Participation'

Special issue of Social Inclusion (JCR Q2; Peer-reviewed Open Access journal)

You can also find the CfP here: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/pages/view/nextissues#SocialNetworks

Social Inclusion, Volume 10, Issue 3

Title: On the Role of Space, Place and Social Networks in Social Participation

Editor(s): Gil Viry (University of Edinburgh, UK), Christoph van Dülmen (Thünen Institute of Rural Studies, Germany), Marion Maisonobe (CNRS–UMR Géographie-cités, France) and Andreas Klärner (Thünen Institute of Rural Studies, Germany)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 June 2021
Submission of Full Papers: 15-30 January 2022
Publication of the Issue: July/September 2022

Information: Research has highlighted the critical role of social networks in facilitating people’s social participation. It has also shown that social ties and networks exist in and across geographical spaces. Individuals, families, diasporas, workers, activists, among others, can develop their relationships and networks over large distances, while places and spatial proximity continue to strongly shape tie formation and social participation.

While the importance of places in research on social inclusion is widely recognised, for example in neighbourhood and community studies, social network research has, however, not fully taken up issues of space, place and spatial mobility. The role of space in tie formation and maintenance, for example, has often been analysed through the unique lens of physical distance—usually as something ‘from the outside’ to overcome, rather than as an inherent characteristic of relationships and networks. But the spatial aspects of social networks are more than a set of locations and distances on a map. They are about how social and geographical contexts intersect, for example through the processes by which spatial environments affect opportunities for social interactions. They are also about the meaning individuals attach to both places and relationships, how individuals and groups experience places and spatial mobility, and how these experiences, in turn, shape their social relationships and social participation. Key network concepts such as homophily or clusters are best understood with reference to place and place attachment.

For this thematic issue we invite contributions that investigate more deeply the intersection of space, place and social networks, and address conceptual and methodological issues in this field. For example, what spatial granularity should be used to capture the spatial embeddedness of social networks? How to visualise social relationships and networks in geographical space? How to analyse similarities and differences between the relational and lived spaces? Articles can use a variety of data, approaches and methods of collecting, analysing and visualizing social relationships and networks in space. The thematic issue welcomes theoretical contributions from different disciplines (e.g., geography, sociology, urban and rural planning) as well as empirical studies using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods.

Instructions for Authors: Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Social Inclusion is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Open Access: The journal has an article publication fee to cover its costs and guarantee that the article can be accessed free of charge by any reader, anywhere in the world, regardless of affiliation. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and advise them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication fees. Institutions can also join Cogitatio's Membership Program at a very affordable rate and enable all affiliated authors to publish without incurring any fees. Further information about the journal's open access charges and institutional members can be found here.