Community Organizing
Call for Papers updated September 2023
Overview
Community Organizing is a new journal dedicated to advancing the scholarship and practice of community organizing around the globe. Reflecting the core commitments of community organizing at all levels, this journal has a special focus on the importance of democratic and relational work that enables leadership development, community power, and structural change. We recognize that community organizing exists in many different contexts and settings around the world, taking on a wide variety of forms. The journal therefore prioritizes careful reflection and critical analysis, grounded in a range of traditions and approaches.
The journal seeks to engage scholars and practitioners together in analyzing and reflecting on the diversity of approaches and definitions in the field. We aim to center less prominent and non-dominant perspectives, voices, and ways of knowing, emphasizing the importance of the voices of those most affected by oppression, injustice, and inequality. Specifically, we invite co-authorship between university-based scholars and community-based practitioners. Single-author publications from scholars and/or practitioners are, of course, welcome as well. As we encourage collaborations across the continuum of scholar-practitioners, we emphasize that knowledge and effective action emerge from a dialogue that includes ground-up, co-creative processes, and multidisciplinary theoretical and political perspectives.
Defining Scope
Papers published in Community Organizing will come from a variety of practitioners, community experts, and academic writers. Contributors will examine contexts around the globe, and contributions will be grounded in an understanding of organizing as a locally rooted source of power. Community Organizing acknowledges that much writing about organizing has been U.S. centric, and we aim to expand the examples, contexts, applications, and analyses of organizing around the globe. We welcome submissions from organizers, leaders, funders, community partners and allies, academic and independent scholars, teachers, and others. We see community organizing as a place-based practice of building power that is occurring globally. We strive to provide insights into organizing throughout the world.
The following core components of organizing are intended to guide authors in understanding the journal’s scope and the boundaries within which we envision authors will analyze and reflect on the traditions, histories, and contemporary practices of organizing. Given our commitment to acknowledging a diversity of approaches, many contributions will fit the mission of the journal without addressing all of these components:
Organizing provides a pathway for building power through collective, community action.
Organizing connects with enduring social movements, short-term mobilizations, electoral politics, community capacity building, and other forms of social and political work. It is distinct in its consistent emphasis on:
Developing durable, sustainable, democratic organizations that build and project power. This distinguishes organizing from short-term mobilizing.
Building a web of intentional relationships.
Identifying, training, and bringing together leaders rooted in communities, with a focus on leadership development.
Cutting concrete issues out of general problems, as identified by community members, and acting collectively to achieve substantive wins and changes.
Intentional and ongoing reorganization of existing communities as well as the development of new forms of community within and beyond organizations.
Inaugural Issues
The newly formed Editorial Team invites contributions for the first three issues of Community Organizing. Each issue will have a section animated by the following theme questions. Non-theme papers are also welcomed and will be considered for inclusion in each issue:
Issue No. 1: Reimagining the Scholarship and Practice of Community Organizing
How can the scholarship and practice of community organizing be reimagined?
A. What community organizing practices can and should endure? What have been the impacts of these practices and in what ways can they be sustained in the future?
B. What needs to be disrupted? Why?
C. How can the academic study and teaching of organizing contribute more effectively to the practice of organizing?
Issue 1 Development
Resubmission of abstracts for Issue 1 due, September 21, 2023
Notification of invitation to submit for Issue 1, October 5, 2023
Completed Manuscripts for Issue 1 due, January 15, 2024
Notification of Acceptance for Issue 1 following peer review process, April 8, 2024
Final Manuscripts due May 31, 2024
Publication of Issue 1, June 2024
Issue No. 2: Community Organizing and Democratic Visions
In what ways does the field of community organizing elevate a democratic vision of humanity?
A. Is community organizing connecting effectively with other forms of political and civic engagement including social movements, labor organizing and unions, and electoral politics?
B. How does organizing defend and promote democracy?
C. In what ways does organizing challenge the growing concentration of wealth and power and the rise of antidemocratic, authoritarian movements?
Issue 2 Development
Resubmission of abstracts for Issue 2 due, September 21, 2023
Notification of invitation to submit for Issue 2, October 5, 2023
Completed Manuscripts for Issue 2 due, January 15, 2024
Notification of Acceptance for Issue 2 following peer review process, May 8, 2024
Final Manuscripts due July 1, 2024
Publication of Issue 2, December 2024
Issue No. 3: Innovations in Community Organizing
What significant trends are occurring around the globe that speaks to change and innovation in organizing?
A. How are local communities organizing and building power for change? In what ways do these practices embody established organizing traditions and new approaches?
B. How are established organizing groups and networks responding creatively and effectively to new challenges and opportunities? To what extent and how are newer organizing initiatives doing so?
C. What organizing practices are best poised to meet the social, economic and political challenges of the moment? Why?
Issue 3 Development
Resubmission of abstracts for Issue 3 due, AUG 2024
Notification of invitation to submit for Issue 3, SEP 2024
Completed Manuscripts for Issue 3 due, OCT 2024
Notification of Acceptance for Issue 3 following peer review process, OCT 2024
Development and revisions for Issue 2, DEC 2024
Publication of Issue 3, MAY 2025
Questions?
info@organizingjournal.net