Community and Urban Sociology

Digest contents:

1. Call for Editor, City & Community
2. Membership and Voting Note from ASA
3. Call for Submissions
4. New Book Announcement
5. Call for Applications
6. March Issue, City & Community and note from Karen Edwards about print copies of journal 

1. Call for Applications, Editor(s) of City & Community

Individual and team applications are invited for the position of editor of City & Community, the journal of the American Sociological Association’s Community and Urban Sociology Section (CUSS). The official term for the new editor (or co-editors) will begin in January 2021. The editorial transition will begin in late 2020 with the first issue of the new editorial team being the March 2021 issue. The editor’s term is for a minimum of three years, until December 2023, with a possible reappointment of up to an additional two years.

City & Community brings together major work and research in urban and community sociology. It is published four times per year.

Editor’s Role: City & Community receives approximately 200 submissions per year. The current journal impact factor is 1.055. The editor is expected to secure timely and appropriate reviews and make the final decision on manuscripts, informing both the author(s) and reviewers of the final disposition. The editor is also responsible for maintaining the high standards of ASA journals, ensuring that issues are filled within the approved annual page allocation, and preventing a long backlog of articles for either review or publication. The editor must show openness to communicating with scholars about diverse ideas and eagerness to continue building the journal’s reputation.

Candidates must be members of both the ASA and the Community and Urban Sociology Section, and hold a tenured position or equivalent in an academic or a non-academic setting. Applications from members of underrepresented groups are encouraged.

In accordance with ASA’s mission to publish high quality scholarship, the following criteria are considered in selecting editors:

• established record of scholarship,
• evidence of understanding the mission of the journal and its operation, indicated by experience with the journal across any of a wide variety of activities (submission, reviewing, editorial board experience),
• assessment of the present state of the journal, its strengths and challenges, and a vision for the journal’s future,
• openness to different methods, theories, and approaches to sociology,
• record of responsible service to scholarly publishing, and
• evidence of organizational skill and intellectual leadership.

The time demands associated with these responsibilities vary, but in general, require one full day per week. The actual costs associated with editing the journal are covered by the publisher, a dedicated portion of section dues, and the editor’s university. Applicants will provide a letter from the administration of their institution assuring a suitable level of financial and in-kind support for the editor, a managing editor (usually a graduate student), and the editorial office.

Selection Process: To facilitate a fair and inclusive process, the CUSS Publications Committee will consider applications in two phases. We first seek succinct Letters of Interest from all candidates, addressing the items below. We will then invite finalists to discuss with the CUSS Publications Committee the trajectory of the journal as well as candidates’ vision and editorial approach. Finalists will then be asked to submit a full application that will be the basis for the decision by CUSS Council and ASA Publications Committee. 

Letters of Interest should address the following in up to 2 pages: 

• Vision Statement: Set forth your goals and plans for the content of the journal. This may include an assessment of the current strengths, weaknesses, or gaps that you plan to address and how you will carry out your plan.
• Editor/Co-Editor or Deputy Editor(s) Background Information: The name, affiliation, and other important information about the potential editor and, if applicable, co-editors and/or deputy editor(s) is required. Describe the qualifications and experience of each person that supports their inclusion. Please do not include names of individuals that you would like/plan to include on the larger editorial board. Contacting potential editorial board members can be a time-consuming task that should be done only after an editor is selected.
• Institutional Support: It is important for candidates to examine the feasibility of serving as editor in light of the resources provided by the publisher, the section, and the home university.
• CVs for Editors/Co-Editors should accompany the Letter of Interest. 

Letters of Interest are due April 15, 2020. CUSS Publications Committee will interview editorial candidates April 27-30, 2020. 

Full Applications, due May 30, will address the above in greater detail, speak to the criteria provided by ASA (also above), and, regarding institutional support, will also include a preliminary letter of support from a dean or other appropriate institutional official. (Specific negotiations will of course take place after a new editor is selected. This letter must be included for the application to be considered.)

CUSS Publications Committee will submit a ranked list of candidates to the CUSS Council by June 15, 2020.  The CUSS Council will vote and submit their editor selection back to the CUSS Publications Committee. The recommendation is then forwarded to ASA’s Publications Committee by July 15, 2020. ASA’s Publications Committee will review the selection and forward the recommendation to ASA Council.

For questions and further information about the application process, please contact:  Krista Paulsen, Boise State University, kristapaulsen@boisestate.edu or Japonica Brown-Saracino, Boston University, japonica@bu.edu. 

Letters of Interest may be emailed as PDFs to Krista Paulsen, Chair CUSS Publications Committee, kristapaulsen@boisestate.edu.

2. ASA Voting Eligibility Deadline Change

Because of the challenges created by the unprecedented global pandemic, ASA has extended the voting eligibility deadline to join ASA and this section to April 10. This means that anyone who joins ASA on or before April 10 will receive a ballot and be able to participate in the election that opens on April 30. People who also join sections will receive a ballot that includes the candidates for the sections to which they belong.

If you know of any lapsed members, please encourage them to let their vote count and renew online by visiting https://asa.enoah.com. If you encounter any problems, please contact the Membership department at membership@asanet.org.

3. Call for Submissions 

Social Sciences

About the Journal

Social Sciences, an international, open access journal which publishes works from a wide range of fields, including anthropology, criminology, economics, education, geography, history, law, linguistics, political science, psychology, social policy, social work, sociology, etc.

Call for Papers: Special Issue “Research on Gang-Related Violence in the 21st Century”

Conflict, including the threat or fear of potential violence, or being witness to or a victim of physical, violence, constantly surrounds gangs and their communities and is the principal driver sustaining gang life. Much of the conventional gang-related research remains focused on this violence as a neighborhood-based phenomenon that directly impacts local community residents; however, the ubiquity of digital technology, particularly social media platforms, has disrupted this traditional dynamic. Online violence, including threats, taunts, or posting of violent acts that have taken place, is much less understood. This knowledge gap includes the link between the online activities of gang members and how it can manifest into real-world action. This Special Issue will examine the diverse nature of gang-related violence with the goal of better understanding the growing complexities of gang violence over the last two decades to better inform public policy solutions. Given the dynamic nature of gang-related violence today, we aim to include empirical and theoretical research (quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods) with multi/interdisciplinary perspectives from around the world that highlights cutting-edge approaches to examining gang-related violence. All submissions will be considered; however primary consideration will be given to manuscripts that

• Investigate the relationship between online activity and real-world violence;
• Examine the efficacy of gang-related violence interventions;
• Conduct multi-site comparisons of gang-related violence;
• Conduct cross-cultural studies of gang-related violence;
• Describe innovative approaches to advance our understanding of gang-related violence

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Social Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI’s English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions. Deadline for manuscript submissions in September 30, 2020.

For more information about the journal, please check its website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/socsci/special_issues/Gang-Related_Violence_in_the_21st_Century

Special Issue Editors: 

• Matthew Valasik
• Department of Sociology
• Louisiana State University, USA
• Shannon E. Reid
• Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice
• University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA 

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Call for Papers

Poetics, a leading journal of sociology of culture, media, and the arts, is issuing a call for papers for a special issue in 2021. Dedicated to “Catastrophes, Meanings, and Politics in a Global World: Toward a Cultural Sociology of Disasters,” this special issue will be guest edited by Bin Xu, Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University and Ming-Cheng M. Lo, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis.

Natural and technological disasters not only cause chaos and casualties but also compel individual and collective actors to engage in making sense of profound life, death, and suffering. Such meaning-making processes inevitably involve clashes of multiple symbolic systems. While mainstream sociology of disaster has produced abundant and rigorous studies of social aspects of disasters, it has yet to develop a systematic research agenda centered on the cultural aspect of disasters. The overarching goal of this special issue is to explore and established how disasters are fundamentally cultural.

This special issue attempts to advance this agenda by making some new moves. First, this special issue seeks to address multiple dimensions of culture, including public discourses, symbolic practices, institutional cognitive schemata, individual interpretations, and so on. Second, this issue aims to enhance reflexive self-positioning by denaturalizing the lingering Euro-America-centric biases in our discipline. Finally, this issue aims to provide fecund grounds for the cross-fertilization of the sociology of disaster and cultural sociology.

We are looking for papers that advance this agenda through theoretically illuminating and empirically rigorous research. While we welcome various regional foci, topics, and perspectives, we are particularly interested in papers that address the following issues:

• Disasters or related processes with global impacts
• Disasters in the global South, especially Africa and Latin America
• Long-term disasters such as climate change
• Recent and historical pandemics such as the SARS, Ebola, and the ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks

Interested authors need to submit an abstract of about 500 words to the guest editors (Xu and Lo) by May 15, 2020. The guest editors will notify the authors with their decisions by June 1, 2020. The authors whose abstracts are accepted will need to submit the full papers to the guest editors first for internal reviews by September 1, 2020. After addressing the guest editors’ feedback, these authors will submit their revised papers to Poetics through its on-line submission system by December 1, 2020.  These submissions will then be subject to the journal’s anonymous review process for additional revisions and the final editorial decisions.

Please feel free to circulate this call for papers. We are looking forward to reading your submission. Should you have any questions, feel free to email the guest editors Bin Xu (bin.xu@emory.edu) and Ming-Cheng M. Lo (mmlo@ucdavis.edu). 

4.  New Book Announcement

María G. Rendón has published a new book with Russell Sage: Stagnant Dreamers: How the Inner City Shapes the Integration of Second-Generation Latinos

https://www.russellsage.org/publications/stagnant-dreamers

5. Call for Applications

The Urban Studies Institute

Andrew Young School of Policy Studies

Georgia State University

Location: Atlanta, GA

Deadline: April 30, 2020 at 11:59 ET

The Urban Studies Institute is seeking a postdoctoral researcher for a two-year period to begin in the fall of 2020. Area of specialization is open but should align with one or more themes of the Institute’s research agenda on urban inclusive development, economic resilience and environmental sustainability. The candidate should also have the required skills and experience to teach a course in statistics and/or GIS. Willingness and ability to engage with developments and stakeholders in the Atlanta region is a plus. Postdocs at USI work collaboratively with USI faculty while also developing independent research projects based on their interests. They are expected to teach one course per year.

This position is open to early-stage scholars in urban studies with a strong interdisciplinary orientation. Applicants must have completed their PhD in urban studies or a closely related discipline by August 1 of 2020. The applicant must show evidence of interest in interdisciplinary research; have teaching experience; have the ability to conduct independent as well as collaborative research; and should have a minimum of two refereed journal articles.

Instructions to Apply

Applicants must submit:

• Cover letter explaining relevant prior experience and qualifications;
• Curriculum Vitae;
• Statement of research accomplishments and plans;
• Name, phone numbers, addresses, and e-mail addresses of two referees.

To apply, please submit items 1–4 as a single PDF document (saved with Last Name) by email to urban@gsu.edu using Postdoctoral Research Application in the subject line of your email. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled, but those received by March 30, 2020 will be guaranteed full consideration. Multiple hires may be considered.

About the Institute

The Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University conducts top-level urban research, offers an innovative Ph.D. and masters curriculum, and engages with stakeholders in metropolitan Atlanta and other cities around the world. The Institute’s research agenda ranges from local to global, from urban theory to policy research. The Institute was founded in 2017. It is housed in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, and its research and teaching engagements reach across the university. It is presently composed of seven tenured or tenure track faculty, four postdoctoral researchers, and over 25 affiliate faculty from a range of schools and disciplines.

The Andrew Young School of Policy Studies is ranked among the top 20 Best Graduate Schools for Public Affairs in the United States by the U.S. News & World Report, and Urban Policy at GSU is ranked 8^th in the country. Georgia State University is a major urban institution with more than 50,000 students. GSU is recognized as a national leader in student success and in graduating students from diverse backgrounds. In 2019, U.S. News & World Report ranked GSU as the 2nd most innovative school in the nation.

Georgia State University, a Research University of the University System of Georgia, is an AA/EEO employer and does not discriminate against applicants due to race, ethnicity, gender, veteran status, or on the basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class.

6. City & Community

Please find below a message from Dr. Deirdre Oakley,editor of City & Community, which was sent to membership in mid-March: