The Grand Challenges Blog
The Grand Challenges Blog
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The Grand Challenges Blog

Special Issue – Utopia

17.04.2024

Author

Call for contributions for our Special Issue on Utopias:

In his ingenious book ‘The Ministry for the Future’, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson popularized the genre ‘climate fiction’ and visualized both the horrors of a world under accelerated climate change but also the creative human potential to deal with it. At universities, ideas of imaginaries and desirable futures gain traction as students protest on the streets and scholars attempt to reimagine academia in the face of urgent global challenges (e.g., see the recent post by Palazzo & Gallea at the Grand Challenges Blog or the article in which Gümüsay & Reinecke call for value-led and future-oriented social science theories). In this context, the infamous ‘performativity of ideas’ helps to recognize that, what we picture in our minds, can indeed become real.

But what do you think? What is your desirable future and how can it be enacted?

With this Special Issue on ‘Utopias’ we seek to provide a forum for ideas that can grow into more desirable futures. Below, you can find a non-exhaustive list of topics that you may want to explore (500-1000 words). You can of course propose your own topic.

Deadline to submit an abstract (150 words): we accept submissions on a running basis in 2024

How to submit: Please follow our submission guidelines that are available here

 

Categories Example questions/topics
Technology: quo vadis?
  • Low-tech solutions in a degrowth scenario
  • Carbon-capture and storage (CCS): an effective solution or excuse for business-as-usual?
  • Hydrogen: Hype or real alternative?
  • Nuclear fusion: source of electricity in the future?
  • Artificial intelligence: positive and negative ecological impact potentials
The future of climate cooperation
  • Good COP? Bad COP? A response to Gomez-Echeverri and Müller on reforming the U.N. climate conferences (COPs)
  • Keep it in the ground: an outlook on post-fossil energy scenarios
  • Enacting the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty
  • Debt-for-climate swaps
Political organization and ‘living well within limits’
  • Ecological and democratic planning
  • Desirable futures in food systems (e.g., agro-ecology, permaculture)
  • More radical than radical? A perspective on anarchist social organization
  • Comparative political economy: Measuring well-being in socialist and capitalist economies
Growth, post-growth, degrowth
  • Reimagining economic life in a post-or degrowth society
  • Work / care work
  • Financial regulation
  • ‘Biospherical’ currencies and money creation
  • Geopolitics
  • Theoretical and practical barriers to a degrowth world economy.
Science and academia
  • Curriculum change at business schools: imagining higher education beyond business-as-usual
  • What makes ‘good science’ in the Anthropocene?
  • Enlightenment or ‘Enlivenment’? Philosophical perspectives in the 21st century
  • Getting rid of human chauvinism: Between the metaphysics of alterity and relationality



By: Philipp Censkowsky, Arianna Pisciella & Robin Schimmelpfennig (The Editorial Team)

Authors

Philipp Censkowsky, Robin Schimmelpfennig, Lilly Felber, Laurence Jeangros

References →

Cornelissen, J. P., & Werner, M. 2025. What Are Mechanisms? Ways of Conceptualizing and Studying Causal Mechanisms. Organizational Research Methods, forthcoming.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. 2016. Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6): 1880–1895.

Hanisch, M. 2024. Prescriptive Theorizing in Management Research: A New Impetus for Addressing Grand Challenges. Journal of Management Studies, 61(4): 1692–1716.

Horner, S., Cornelissen, J. P., & Zundel, M. 2024. Panacea or Dangerous Practice: A Counterpoint to Hanisch’s Argument for Prescriptive Theorizing. Journal of Management Studies, 61(4): 1717–1730.

Krautzberger, M., & Tuckermann, H. 2024. Navigating Both/And and Either/Or Approaches in Response to Paradoxical Demands: A meta-both/and approach. Organization Theory, 5(4).

Longino, H. E. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press.

Muller, J. 2018. The Tyranny of Metrics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Oreskes, N. 2019. Why Trust Science? The University Center for Human Values series. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rolin, K. 2017. Can Social Diversity Be Best Incorporated into Science by Adopting the Social Value Management Ideal? In K. C. Elliott & D. Steel (Eds.), Current Controversies in Values and Science: 113–129. Routledge.

Simon, H. A. 1964. On the Concept of Organizational Goal. Administrative Science Quarterly, 9(1): 1–22.

Swedberg, R. 2018. How to Use Max Weber’s Ideal Type in Sociological Analysis. Journal of Classical Sociology, 18(3): 181–196.

Weber, M. 1922. Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften. In M. Weber (Ed.), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre: 451–502. Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck Verlag.

The Grand Challenges Blog

Special Issue – Utopia

17.04.2024

Author

Call for contributions for our Special Issue on Utopias:

In his ingenious book ‘The Ministry for the Future’, novelist Kim Stanley Robinson popularized the genre ‘climate fiction’ and visualized both the horrors of a world under accelerated climate change but also the creative human potential to deal with it. At universities, ideas of imaginaries and desirable futures gain traction as students protest on the streets and scholars attempt to reimagine academia in the face of urgent global challenges (e.g., see the recent post by Palazzo & Gallea at the Grand Challenges Blog or the article in which Gümüsay & Reinecke call for value-led and future-oriented social science theories). In this context, the infamous ‘performativity of ideas’ helps to recognize that, what we picture in our minds, can indeed become real.

But what do you think? What is your desirable future and how can it be enacted?

With this Special Issue on ‘Utopias’ we seek to provide a forum for ideas that can grow into more desirable futures. Below, you can find a non-exhaustive list of topics that you may want to explore (500-1000 words). You can of course propose your own topic.

Deadline to submit an abstract (150 words): we accept submissions on a running basis in 2024

How to submit: Please follow our submission guidelines that are available here

 

Categories Example questions/topics
Technology: quo vadis?
  • Low-tech solutions in a degrowth scenario
  • Carbon-capture and storage (CCS): an effective solution or excuse for business-as-usual?
  • Hydrogen: Hype or real alternative?
  • Nuclear fusion: source of electricity in the future?
  • Artificial intelligence: positive and negative ecological impact potentials
The future of climate cooperation
  • Good COP? Bad COP? A response to Gomez-Echeverri and Müller on reforming the U.N. climate conferences (COPs)
  • Keep it in the ground: an outlook on post-fossil energy scenarios
  • Enacting the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty
  • Debt-for-climate swaps
Political organization and ‘living well within limits’
  • Ecological and democratic planning
  • Desirable futures in food systems (e.g., agro-ecology, permaculture)
  • More radical than radical? A perspective on anarchist social organization
  • Comparative political economy: Measuring well-being in socialist and capitalist economies
Growth, post-growth, degrowth
  • Reimagining economic life in a post-or degrowth society
  • Work / care work
  • Financial regulation
  • ‘Biospherical’ currencies and money creation
  • Geopolitics
  • Theoretical and practical barriers to a degrowth world economy.
Science and academia
  • Curriculum change at business schools: imagining higher education beyond business-as-usual
  • What makes ‘good science’ in the Anthropocene?
  • Enlightenment or ‘Enlivenment’? Philosophical perspectives in the 21st century
  • Getting rid of human chauvinism: Between the metaphysics of alterity and relationality



By: Philipp Censkowsky, Arianna Pisciella & Robin Schimmelpfennig (The Editorial Team)

Authors

Philipp Censkowsky, Robin Schimmelpfennig, Lilly Felber, Laurence Jeangros

References →

Cornelissen, J. P., & Werner, M. 2025. What Are Mechanisms? Ways of Conceptualizing and Studying Causal Mechanisms. Organizational Research Methods, forthcoming.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. 2016. Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6): 1880–1895.

Hanisch, M. 2024. Prescriptive Theorizing in Management Research: A New Impetus for Addressing Grand Challenges. Journal of Management Studies, 61(4): 1692–1716.

Horner, S., Cornelissen, J. P., & Zundel, M. 2024. Panacea or Dangerous Practice: A Counterpoint to Hanisch’s Argument for Prescriptive Theorizing. Journal of Management Studies, 61(4): 1717–1730.

Krautzberger, M., & Tuckermann, H. 2024. Navigating Both/And and Either/Or Approaches in Response to Paradoxical Demands: A meta-both/and approach. Organization Theory, 5(4).

Longino, H. E. 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton University Press.

Muller, J. 2018. The Tyranny of Metrics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Oreskes, N. 2019. Why Trust Science? The University Center for Human Values series. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rolin, K. 2017. Can Social Diversity Be Best Incorporated into Science by Adopting the Social Value Management Ideal? In K. C. Elliott & D. Steel (Eds.), Current Controversies in Values and Science: 113–129. Routledge.

Simon, H. A. 1964. On the Concept of Organizational Goal. Administrative Science Quarterly, 9(1): 1–22.

Swedberg, R. 2018. How to Use Max Weber’s Ideal Type in Sociological Analysis. Journal of Classical Sociology, 18(3): 181–196.

Weber, M. 1922. Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften. In M. Weber (Ed.), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre: 451–502. Tübingen, DE: Mohr Siebeck Verlag.