World Society Foundation (WSF) is inviting research paper proposals from researchers and scholars to undertake a study of the global economic crisis. The crisis started off with failure of financial institutions in the United States, but soon the impact was seen all over the world with major economies dropping in recession that had not happened before since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Consequently, changes have occurred not only at the country-level but also in the international political environment where “several semiperipheral countries are profiting from their considerable foreign currency reserves to gain more political weight in international financial institutions, peripheral countries are experiencing sharp rises in poverty and accumulating new foreign debt.” It is believed that such a situation can carry a greater risk where prices of essential commodities such as oil and food can increase again since semiperipheral countries have shown signs of fast recovery from the recession while “peripheral countries are likely to suffer substantially longer from the crisis fallout than the rest of the world.” Even the accepted theories of free market have received a jolt and many policymakers around the world have found themselves in “an ideological vacuum.” In this context, it is important to understand, analyze and interpret the crisis to generate policy responses. WSF has requested this call for research paper proposals “to investigate into the social construction of crisis interpretations and/or the effects of the current crisis on perceptions of global social relations (economic globalization, North-South relations, multilateralism, etc). Issues that may be addressed include:
- Crisis representations and interpretations in the mass media (qualitative and quantitative content analysis) or the general population (quantitative surveys);
- Crisis framing by social movement organizations, business actors, or international organizations (content analysis, participant observation, etc);
- Impacts on political mobilization and transnational organizing among civil society organizations (protest event analysis, participant observation, interviews, etc);
- Impacts on national and international regulating agencies and mechanisms;
- Effects of the crisis, and policy responses to the crisis, on trust in (international) political institutions;
- Effects of the crisis, and policy responses to the crisis, on perceptions of global and regional governance institutions;”
The proposals submitted will be reviewed by the Foundation’s Board of Members and successful ones will be requested to submit full papers of not more than 8000 words. Papers which meet quality standards will be honoured with $1000 and will be published in a forthcoming volume (2010-2011) of World Society Studies. Besides, candidates whose papers are outstanding will receive the Award of Excellence in World Society Research (2010), which carries cash prizes woth $10,000 and $5000. The prize winners will also be invited at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, on September 10-11, 2010 to receive the award. The last date to submit the research proposals is 15 December 2009. For more information, visit this link.
