Call for papers

Economic inequality: crises, conflicts and threats for peace

Over the past decades, and especially immediately after the fall of communism, the issue of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth has been almost ignored by economists and by social scientists in general, although inequalities have been increasing both in developing and in developed countries. Even the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals ignored this issue, which is addressed instead in the current Sustainable Development Goals.

This attitude resulted from the idea that a larger economic equality would reduce the incentives for people to produce the right effort to improve their condition and, as a result, would impair economic efficiency. Over the last few years, however, many scholars, including Atkinson, Bourguignon, Deaton, Krugman, Milanovic, Piketty, Stiglitz and Wade among many others, and international institutions, like the OECD and the IMF, together with some NGOs like OXFAM, have been devoting their specific attention to economic inequality (although, to be fair, it needs to be acknowledged that some of those authors and institutions had been dealing with this issue for a long time already).

The reasons for this renewed attention have to be found in the negative effects of the increased economic inequality and in the consequences that this trend may produce even more dramatically in the future, in terms of open conflicts, threats to peace and crises of different nature (social, financial, economic, and including the migratory one).

As a matter of fact, besides ethical reasons for reducing gaps in income and wealth, economic inequality, both among and within countries, reduces social capital, weakens the citizens’ attitude towards social participation and inclusion, risks to increase poverty and in the end reduces the economic development potential of the countries that would be mostly in need of it. Moreover, a higher economic inequality induces the accumulation of private debt that may produce quite negative effects, as the recent global financial crisis has clearly shown.

The increase in economic inequality has many different causes. Yet, most of them seem to be related to the effects on less skilled workers and on the low-income segments of the population: the process of real and financial globalization (that moves manual labor from one side to the other of the world, and increases the weight of rents), technological progress (that increases the role of machines and capital with respect to labor in the production process), but also the reduction, if not the abandonment, of redistributive income policies and of the protection of workers.

Several solutions have been proposed so far to reduce income inequality, including a global tax on capital movements or a (low) global tax on wealth, combined with a return to the progressivity of income taxation; a tax on the use of machines (and robots) replacing human work; an increase of women’s participation in the labor market (at the condition of not being discriminated with respect to male workers); a reduction of precarious labor and an increase in the investment in human capital and in the qualification of workers.

Against this background, Scienza e Pace/Science and Peace has decided to devote a thematic section of its next issue to economic inequality and to its economic and not economic effects on peace, conflicts, and social relations in general. Just to provide a few examples, inequality might affect economic growth, social mobility, internal and global migrations, social services, corruption, the respect of the environment, the functioning of democracy and determine financial and economic crises. Needless to say, this will encourage both the raising of protests at different levels and the formation of social movements proposing changes in the economic model.

The journal invites economists, jurists, political and social scientists to submit research papers devoted to the analysis of the causes and consequences of economic inequality, and proposals to address and reduce this problem, from all possible points of view, but especially focusing on all possible implications for peace, conflicts and crises of different nature.

Instruction for the authors

In order to participate to the call for papers, please send by e-mail to the Editorial Committee (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) a (max) 300 words long abstract and (possibly) a list of key references before October 15, 2017.

Scienza e Pace/Science and Peace organizes a one-day conference that will take place on December 1, 2017 with the authors who will have submitted the abstracts found suitable by the editorial committee and who are expected to have at least a first draft of the paper ready by then. See here for the Conference programme.

Notice to the authors will be given by November 1, 2017.

A special issue of Scienza e Pace/Science and Peace will be devoted to the theme of the conference/roundtable and will include the papers presented at the conference and those that will be submitted in their final form by January 6, 2018.

Il 15 maggio è una ricorrenza di particolare importanza per i palestinesi. È il giorno in cui celebrano la Nakba, ovvero la 'catastrofe': tramite questa giornata viene mantenuto vivo il ricordo della cacciata dalle proprie abitazioni di centinaia di migliaia di persone e la mancata fondazione di un proprio Stato autonomo. La data scelta per questa ricorrenza ha un elevato significato simbolico: il 15 maggio 1948 segna, infatti, l'inizio della prima guerra arabo-israeliana, che si concluderà all'inizio del 1949 con la vittoria del neocostituito Stato d'Israele. È anche l'inizio delle lunghe traversie del popolo palestinese che, in circa 70 anni, hanno portato alla drammatica situazione attuale caratterizzata da violazioni sistematiche dei diritti umani e delle risoluzioni delle Nazioni Unite, da un regime di occupazione militare particolarmente opprimente, da continui espropri e dalla colonizzazione abusiva delle terre, da espulsioni individuali e di massa che, nel corso dei decenni, hanno prodotto una quantità tale di profughi che, ad oggi, metà del popolo palestinese vive al di fuori dei cosiddetti "Territori occupati", acquisendo il poco invidiabile status di "popolo della diaspora".

After considering plurilingualism's current social, cultural and political significance, in the European and national contexts, and the need to guarantee the right to plurilingualism in multi-ethnic classes, also in the light of the recent migratory flow, the article presents the results of an ongoing didactic experimentation based on plurilingual teaching and dialogical techniques and aimed at enriching students’ linguistic repertoire, making more effective the assessment of their linguistic and communicative competence, through plurilingual tests, and giving visibility to all the languages present in the class, thereby facilitating intercultural communication. The full text of this paper is available in Italian.

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Editor

Pompeo Della Posta

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Journal Secretary

Federico Oliveri

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Scientific Committee

Leonardo Becchetti (Università di Roma "Tor Vergata"), Donatella della Porta (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), Francisco Jiménez Bautista (Universidad de Granada), Maria Rosaria Marella (Università degli Studi di Perugia), Domenico Mario Nuti (Università di Roma "La Sapienza), Massimo Panebianco (Università degli Studi di Salerno), Eduardo A. Sandoval Forero (Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México), Alexis Tsoukias (Université Paris-Dauphine), Stefano Zamagni (Università di Bologna)

Editorial Committee

Carlo Belli, Roberto Belloni, Roberto Burlando, Paolo Busoni, Davide Caramella, María Lucía Carrillo Expósito, Thomas Casadei, Gianlugi Cecchini, Stefan Collignon, Daria Coppola, Simone D'Alessandro, Fabio Dei, Matteo Del Chicca, Pompeo Della Posta, Emidio Diodato, Giorgio Gallo, Federica Guazzini, Marcelo Labanca Correa de Araujo, Federico Oliveri, Sonia Paone, Leonardo Pasquali, Alessandro Polsi, Maurizio Pugno, Davide Ruggieri, Francesco Sarracino, Mauro Stampacchia, Fabio Tarini, Tiziano Telleschi

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Scienza e Pace – Science and Peace (SP) is the online and open access half-yearly journal of the “Sciences for Peace” Interdisciplinary Centre (CISP) established at the University of Pisa. New issues come out each year before the end of July and December respectively. Refounded in 2010, the journal seeks to provide an international, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, academic forum for all those who research, teach and work in the area of Peace Studies, adopting a multiplicity of methodological approaches.

Scienza e Pace – Science and Peace focuses in particular on: theoretical and empirical analyses of present-day and historical conflicts, taking into account their different (social, economic, political, juridical, cultural, religious, etc.) roots and their (structural, systemic, interpersonal, etc.) nature, within their specific contexts and at their multiple levels; theoretical and empirical analyses of new and traditional strategies for managing, transforming and solving conflicts, with the aim of constructing peace-based social and international relations. The journal encourages the submission of cutting edge, critical-oriented and interdisciplinary research papers.

Scienza e Pace – Science and Peace publishes original articles in Italian, in English and exceptionally in Spanish, when this choice is justified by the cultural specificity of the paper and its author. All research papers in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and anonymized refereeing by two anonymous referees, not belonging to the editorial committee nor to the scientific committee.

A section of the journal will periodically focus on specific issues, that either the editorial or the scientific committee will address through open calls for papers. However, it will possible at any time to submit articles on topics not covered by calls for papers.

The journal also welcomes reviews of books within the area of Peace Studies. Publishers and authors are invited to send their publications in electronic or paper format to the editorial committee, which will make any possible effort to have them reviewed.

Ideas and statements expressed by the authors contributing to Scienza e Pace – Science and Peace do not necessarily reflect those of the director, the editorial or the scientific committee, nor of the “Sciences for Peace” Interdisciplinary Centre.

Referees are selected by the Editorial Committee among international specialists of the topics addressed by the paper, or among international experts of the disciplines prevailing in the paper. They support the Editorial Committee in guaranteeing to authors and readers a rigorous and impartial peer review process, aimed to uphold the quality of single papers and of the journal as a whole.

Referees do not know the identity of the authors whose papers they are evaluating, and vice-versa. In order to preserve the anonymity of the referees, their names will not be published.
 
Referees are asked to follow the evaluation criteria for research papers adopted by the journal. These criteria should analytically assess the pertinence, the originality, the scientific quality and the editorial quality of each paper submitted to Scienza e Pace - Science and Peace. Referees are asked to provide a general assessment of the manuscript according to each of these criteria, and to support the author with comments and suggestions on how to improve the paper. In conclusion, they provide a synthetic statement on the opportunity to publish the paper with or without major changes. They also assess the coherence between their comments and suggestions of improvement and the new version resubmitted by the author.

A more detailed overview of the editorial policy followed by Scienza e Pace - Science and Peace may be found in the Code of conduct of the journal.

Authors submitting their original research papers or book reviews for publication on Scienza e Pace - Science and Peace are invited to send them by This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. at any time their original manuscripts, in .doc or .odt format, to the Editorial Committee. They may also participate to the periodical calls for papers opened by the journal. Manuscripts are accepted in Italian, in English and only exceptionally in Spanish. They should be prepared and submitted according to the Editorial Guidelines of the journal.

Manuscripts must be original, should not be simultaneously under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere, and should be in line with the aims and scope of the journal. Authors are advised that, after an initial editor screening, research papers are referred anonymously to at least two specialist readers (double-blind peer review) and that some revision may subsequently be required before the manuscript is accepted for publication. However, the Committee invites the authors to propose possible external reviewers, at least three in number.

To facilitate anonymous refereeing, authors should ensure that neither their name nor address appears anywhere within the paper. 

A more detailed overview of the editorial policy followed by Scienza e Pace - Science and Peace may be found in the Code of conduct of the journal.

Rubriche

Focus

Criteri editoriali e regole per i collaboratori (in costruzione)