Ladislav Rabusic (NPD of EVS Czechia) and Zuzana Kusá (Member of the Slovakian team of EVS) are the Guest Editors of the Special issue of The Czech Sociological Review on Value Change, Solidarity, and Identity Issues in a Changing World.
The Czech Sociological Review is announcing a Call for Papers for this thematic issue in English. The deadline for the abstract submission is 31 March 2019.
· Editors: Ladislav Rabušic (Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies MU) and Zuzana Kusá (Institute for Sociology, Slovak Academy of Science)
· Planned issue: Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 6/2020
The idea that core values are shifting in response to economic, political, cultural, and social development resonates widely in current public and academic discussions. In recent years Europe has been exposed to important dynamic forces that have challenged its geography, politics, cultures, and social fabric. While the economic crisis of 2008 and its aftermath called into question European and country solidarity, increasing immigration from outside Europe has challenged the ‘old continent’ and raised questions about security and responsibility for border controls and for the distribution of wealth. The most recent developments have affected the social structure within states as well as the relationships between them. They tend to deepen existing inequalities and lead to structural changes and rapid social transformations that challenge social cohesion not only within individual countries but also at the Europe level. They endanger the already modest sense of European identity and thus raise the question of what holds Europe together.
While the prevailing consensus is that something is happening, there is no agreement over exactly what and why this may be (see, e.g., R. Inglehart and C. Welzel, 2005, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. The Human Development Sequence, Cambridge University Press; P. Bréchon and P. Gonthier, eds, 2017, European Values. Trends and Divides Over Thirty Years, Brill Publishers; and R. Dalton and C. Welzel, eds, 2014, The Civic Culture Transformed from Allegiant to Assertive Citizens, Cambridge University Press). The main goal of this thematic issue is to gain a better theoretically grounded and empirically supported understanding of the phenomenon of value changes, solidarity, and identity in a changing Europe using the European and World Values Surveys, which provide reliable data on the value orientations of Europeans and on their group affiliations, identities, and understandings of solidarity. We welcome papers on the following issues (among others):
- Where do countries stand in terms of the trends in individualism and collectivism in the light of cross-cultural research on values?
- What values and attitudes concerning work and employment do people hold? Did any substantial change occur between 1991 and 2017?
- How do values and attitudes differ between various social strata and between different cultures?
- How have attitudes towards immigrants and immigration changed since 1990 in Central and Eastern Europe?
- Has there been a cohort shift with respect to the meaning of partnership, family, and parenthood?
- Has there been a gender ‘value revolution’ in European countries and what patterns can be seen in this area?
Contributors do not, however, have to limit themselves to these topics and may explore others, as long as the submitted papers are based on EVS/WVS data. Preferably the papers should also deal with value shifts observed by comparing different waves of the EVS/WVS (i.e. a time dimension should be included in the paper’s analysis). We expect the primary focus of papers to be on European countries.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts (300–500 words) is 31 March 2019. The abstracts are to be submitted directly to the guest editor – rabu@fss.muni.cz – who will inform authors as to whether their abstract has been selected by 15 April 2019.
Full-text papers must be submitted no later than 30 November 2019.
