Call for Submissions on Crisis/Disaster

20 July 2010
Call for Submissions on Crisis/Disaster
Public Knowledge invites contributions for Volume 2, Issue 2, on the topic of Crisis/Disaster.

Theorist Ulrich Beck (1986) argues that the modern world is inherently risky: that is, merely by existing, industrial society affects the environment, health, and safety of individuals. Recent history supports this premise with a number of disasters that range from primarily natural to human-made. As we write this call for contributions, the U.S. Gulf Coast is seeing tar balls, oil-soaked wetlands, and other damaging effects from the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This disaster comes on the heels of others, including the global economic crisis, ongoing terrorist threats, and devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.

Communities across the world are understandably shaken by the magnitude of these crises. Our goal with this issue is to explore how individuals, communities, and organizations approach and respond to crisis or disaster.

We welcome contributions from graduate scholars or practitioners in any discipline. Some questions that may be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:
• How do we define and theorize crisis and disaster? How do such definitions and theories affect how we respond to crises/disasters?

• Do dividing lines exist between human-made and “natural” disasters? Does a human element exist in all “natural” disasters? Conversely, does a “natural” element exist in all manmade disasters (such as the financial crisis)?

• What are the roles of social capital in crisis/disaster? What tensions are found between responsiveness and equity in reaction to a crisis/disaster?

• What are the roles of knowledge in crisis/disaster? How can academics contribute to knowledge management before or after a crisis/disaster? How do we respond to tensions between local knowledge and institutional (academic, governmental) knowledge?

• What are the roles of communication before, during, and after crisis/disaster?

• What is the balance of responsibility among local, state, and federal government, nonprofits, private industry, and citizens? How much protection do we as citizens expect – and how do we invest in that protection?

• How do individuals, communities, organizations, etc. respond to crisis/disaster, and what motivates these responses? What attributes allow for greater resilience after tragedy? How does disaster/crisis affect vulnerable populations, such as children?

• What are different forms of coping from the stress induced by a crisis, and what are the most effective ways in learning how to mentally recover from such an event?

Submitting Your Work:
We accept scholarly articles for peer review, as well as book reviews, reflections, interviews, response essays, and other selected non-peer-reviewed work.

E-mail all text submissions as Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) or Rich Text Format (.rtf) attachments to submissions@pkjournal.org. We also encourage multimedia texts, including podcasts, video compositions, and other creative works.

Please email inquiries@pkjournal.org with questions about individual submissions.

The deadline for scholarly articles and book reviews is September 8, 2010. Non-peer reviewed and multimedia work will be accepted throughout the issue’s lifespan.


About Public Knowledge Journal

Public Knowledge is a multidisciplinary, graduate student-run electronic journal hosted by the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech (ISSN 1948-3511). The journal incorporates a variety of communication technologies to sustain a conversation about the topics
and questions raised in each issue. The journal welcomes contributions of articles for peer review, as well as book reviews, essays, interviews and other works using a variety of media.

For more information about publishing in Public Knowledge and to upload your submissions, please visit our website at www.pkjournal.org and follow through to the Submissions site.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions you might have. We can be reached at editor@pkjournal.org

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