Call for papers

Semiotics and Fieldwork: On critical enthographies

Special issue of Punctum. International Journal of Semiotics

Guest Editors: Eleftheria Deltsou (Univ. of Thessaly) and Fotini Tsibiridou (Univ. of Macedonia)

The cross-fertilization between anthropology and semiotics, stretching back to Levi-Strauss’s structural anthropology, has repeatedly reinvigorated both disciplines, all the while encouraging rapprochments and interdisciplinarity across a wide range of disciplinary fields. Ethnography, on the other hand, the once distinctive methodology of anthropological research, was a less common point of convergence between anthropology and semiotics, even though it has long been a favorite fieldwork tool of qualitative soci0-cultural research. Geertz’s ‘interpretative anthropology’, whereby a semiotic conception of culture as ‘webs of significance’ is coupled with the prioritization of the thick description of the pragmatics of social life, social semiotics’ emphasis on social action, context and use, as well as critical ethnography’s sensitivity to issues of agency, power and reflexivity, lay down the broad outlines of this special issue’s problematics.

More specifically, this special issue of Punctum aims to foreground the fertile interplay of semiotics and ethnography in the critical analysis and interpretation of context-bound social action and symbolic interaction, particularly as it concerns the immersive engagement with sites and microcosms non-discernible by other means of research, that enriches our non- reductive understandings of the contemporary. Welcoming both ethnographically based semiotic research and semiotically informed ethnographies, as well as relevant theoretical elaborations, we encourage the authors’ focus on the lived experience of meaning, the processes of contestation/negotiation/construction of meaning, hybridity and performativity, agency and reflexivity, grounded theory production.

Prospective authors should submit an abstract of approximately 300 words by mail to Eleftheria Deltsou (eldelt@uth.gr) and Fotini Tsibiridou (ft@uom.gr) including affiliation and contact information. Αcceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication, given that all research articles will be put through the journal’s peer review process.

New extended deadline for abstracts: June 30, 2016
Notification of acceptance of the abstract: July 15, 2016
Deadline for submission of full papers: September 30, 2016
Final revised papers due: December 15, 2016
Publication: Volume 2, Number 2 (December 2016)

The official website of the conference is available here.