Call for papers “Societies in Crisis: Inequalities, Disruptions, and Collective Responses”

In recent years, Colombia, like other countries in Latin America and around the world, has experienced crises of different kinds that have profoundly transformed everyday life. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequalities in access to healthcare, employment, education, income, and care. The social uprising of 2021 expressed the discontent of broad segments of the population and brought to light accumulated tensions surrounding inequality, exclusion, opportunities for young people, violence, and the relationship between citizens and institutions. More recently, seismic events have once again brought to the forefront the vulnerability of territories, unequal housing and infrastructure conditions, and the differing capacities of households and communities to respond to an emergency.

Although these are very different events, they all raise a common issue: crises do not affect everyone in the same way. The same event may represent a temporary disruption for some groups while fundamentally transforming the living conditions of others. Economic resources, gender, age, ethnic and racial background, territory, labor market position, housing conditions, family and community networks, and access to state protection all influence both exposure to a crisis and the capacity to cope with and recover from it.

Crises, therefore, do not merely generate losses or emergency situations. They also function as a kind of magnifying lens for societies, making inequalities, conflicts, and vulnerabilities visible that may otherwise be less apparent during periods of relative stability. At the same time, they can deepen existing inequalities, produce new disruptions, and reshape the relationships among the state, the market, households, and communities.

However, societies do not remain passive in the face of crises. Different social groups develop equally diverse responses. While states implement emergency policies and markets adapt to conditions of uncertainty, households reorganize their resources and labor, and communities build networks of solidarity, care, and mutual support. In other cases, crises trigger protests, social mobilizations, resistance, migration, new forms of territorial organization, or demands for institutional transformation. These responses are not neutral either: they depend on the resources available, power relations, previous experiences, and the organizational capacities of each group.

Rather than understanding crises exclusively as extraordinary events, this call for papers proposes approaching them as privileged moments for examining the social and economic structures that organize our societies. It invites us to ask who is most exposed, who bears the greatest costs, who provides care, who has the capacity to protect themselves and recover, what role institutions play, and what collective responses emerge when everyday life is disrupted.

The journal Sociedad y Economía invites the national and international academic community to submit articles for Issue 61, “Societies in Crisis: Inequalities, Disruptions, and Collective Responses,” with the aim of analyzing, from economic, sociological, and interdisciplinary perspectives, the relationship between crises and inequality, as well as the various social, economic, political, and community responses that emerge in situations of disruption.

Contributions addressing a broad range of topics will be welcomed, including:

• Crises and inequalities: analyses of how economic, social, political, health, and environmental crises reveal, produce, or deepen inequalities related to class, gender, race and ethnicity, generation, and territory.
• Crises, work, and living conditions: transformations in employment, income, informality, care work, housing conditions, and access to essential goods and services.
• Territories, vulnerabilities, and disruptions: the differentiated effects of disasters, conflicts, violence, and other critical situations on territories, communities, and social groups, as well as on social relations and everyday life.
• The state, institutions, and responses to crises: the capacities and limitations of public institutions, social protection systems, and policies implemented to address emergency situations, as well as their unequal effects.
• Collective action, community organization, and reconstruction: responses developed by households, communities, and social movements in the face of crises, including networks of solidarity and care, protest and social mobilization, survival strategies, and processes of recovery and reconstruction.

We invite scholars to submit original research papers, theoretical essays, or policy analyses addressing the aforementioned topics. Submissions should be between 6,000 and 8,000 words, including references and appendices. Please submit your manuscript in Word format through the OJS system: https://sociedadyeconomia.univalle.edu.co/

Author guidelines are attached.

Book reviews are also welcome, preferably on the proposed topic. Additionally, the journal features a section titled "Other Topics," which accepts articles on various themes throughout the year. Articles may be written in Spanish or English.

Important Dates:

• Submission deadline: January 31, 2027.
• Notification of acceptance: April, 2027.

For any inquiries and user registration in the OJS, please contact the editorial team at revistasye@correounivalle.edu.co. We look forward to receiving your contributions.