Call for papers / Special issue ‘The Politics of Visibility in Public Space’ / Space and Culture (Sage Publications) / Deadline:September 16, 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS – Deadline September 16, 2018

THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY IN PUBLIC SPACE

Special issue for Space and Culture (Sage Publications Inc.)

Guest editors:

Ceren Sezer / Delft University of Technology, Urbanism, the Netherlands

Freek Janssens / University of Leeds, School of Geography, United Kingdom

Theme:

The visibility of individuals or groups in public space is a conceptual tool useful to assess the ‘public’ character of space, allowing to examine the local socio-spatial conditions for recognition, civic participation, safety and surveillance. Visibility is understood as the condition of seeing and being seen of individuals or groups, who are identifiable as diverse through their cultural, sexual, and/or other type of manifestation.

In this special issue, we investigate the politics of visibility in public space in terms of the relations between various socio-spatial practices that construct, claim, improve, suppress, or control visibility. The main questions that we ask are:

  1.  What conceptual frameworks are useful to examine the relationship between visibility and public space?
  2.  What are the ethical, methodological and other challenges of studying visibility as an explanatory framework of urban inquiry?

We aim to bring together an interdisciplinary collection of high-quality papers based on original empirical research on this topic. Interested contributors are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.<mailto:This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>. The abstract should include:

  *   Title and keywords;
  *   Author(s)’ name, current affiliation and e-mail address;
  *   Research questions, methodology, findings of the research;
  *   Maximum five key references;
  *   Short bio and a list of recent publications by the author(s); and
  *   If applicable, two related images at a good resolution (min. 200dpi).

The deadline for abstract submission is September 16, 2018. After preliminary review by the guest editors, the selected authors will be invited to submit a full paper by September 30, 2018. The deadline for submitting full papers is February 3, 2019. The selected papers will proceed for blind review process with Space and Culture (Sage Publications Inc.).