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Call for papers

BETWEEN DISCOURSE AND EXPERIENCE: QUEER PEOPLE IN POLAND AND BEYOND

Dear Colleagues,

We invite submissions of scholarly articles for Issue 1.2026 of Władza Sądzenia (Power of Judgment).

The thematic issue, “Between Discourse and Experience: Queer People in Poland and Beyond”, is guest-edited by Aleksandra Sobańska and Krystyna Dzwonkowska-Godula.

This issue is devoted to the analysis of contemporary, dynamically evolving and expanding ways of constructing, experiencing, and problematizing queerness in the Polish social context and beyond. The scope of reflection and debate is broad—from tensions between discourses, both dominant and those produced within queer communities, to the everyday experiences of LGBTQ+ people operating within specific power structures, axionormative systems, and institutional frameworks.

The aim of the issue is to create a space for reflection on queer communities in Poland and beyond as dynamic, internally differentiated, and historically changing fields of identities, practices, and social relations. We are interested both in biographical narratives and individual experiences, as well as in structural conditions—political, legal, institutional, and cultural—that shape life chances, agency, visibility, and resistance.

The issue seeks not only to diagnose the current situation of queer people in Poland and beyond but also to critically analyze the languages of description and the knowledge produced around queerness, with particular attention to their political consequences, mechanisms of exclusion, and emancipatory potential.

We encourage you to share your reflections, research findings, and scholarly work that may contribute to a deeper understanding of queerness in Polish contexts and beyond.

Proposed thematic areas include, but are not limited to:
• Public discourses on LGBTQ+ people and their role in shaping social attitudes and public policies.
• Discourses produced within queer communities and their significance for constructing individual and collective identities, community-building, practices of resistance, and social mobilization.
• Queer communities past and present: processes of identity formation and differentiation, the development of activism and self-organization, and the evolution of languages of description and self-description.
• LGBTQ+ people in relation to political and institutional opportunity structures—public policies, legislation, legal frameworks, and their consequences for everyday life and family spheres.
• Experiences of non-binary, intersex, aromantic, asexual, polyamorous people, and others represented by the less visible letters of the LGBTQ+ acronym.
• Intersectional analyses of LGBTQ+ lives, addressing diversity of experience as well as issues of inequality and social exclusion, including those related to age, ethnicity, religion, social class, and disability.
• Controversies surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and visibility, including the discourses and actions of opposing groups.
• Diversity of attitudes, experiences, and interests within queer communities—including internal tensions, conflicts, and negotiations.

Please submit your articles, between 40,000 and 60,000 characters, formatted according to the editorial guidelines available at Information for Authors. All submissions will be evaluated by reviewers with the appropriate expertise to ensure a high level of scholarly contribution.

Important Dates:

We invite submissions of papers for issue 2 (31) 2026 of “Władza Sądzenia”.

The thematic issue “Communication Practices and the Ordering of Uncertainty”, is guest-edited by Anna Radiukiewicz, Jerzy Stachowiak and Adam Konopka (Section for Research on Social Communication, Polish Sociological Association).

Contemporary social life unfolds within an atmosphere of uncertainty in which practices of social communication play a central role. Although the research on disinformation and the crisis of expert knowledge is well developed, we still lack approaches that treat anxiety, uncertainty, and contestation not as subjective reactions to deficits of knowledge or rationality, but as resources and frames for communicative practices — practices that stabilise existing orders of meaning as well as those that challenge or transform them. We want this thematic issue to become a space for in-depth reflection on the relationship between practices of social communication and the dynamics of an atmosphere of uncertainty.

We invite articles that examine uncertainty related to controversies that unfold as: (a) epistemic conflicts — disputes over knowledge where actors draw boundaries between what counts as rational or irrational, true or false, and where they negotiate the limits of legitimate scepticism toward expert and media knowledge; (b) identity conflicts — struggles over what appears acceptable or unacceptable, legitimate or illegitimate, including practices that defend autonomy and sustain symbolic authority in defining, undermining and redefining community; (c) political conflicts — disputes over what counts as civic or anti-civic, politically legitimate or unacceptable, including practices of collective mobilisation that take both “progressive” and “conservative” forms; (d) spatial conflicts — struggles over physical spaces, from sites of historical memory to contemporary arenas of social, international or ethnic contestation.

We particularly welcome contributions that:
● examine how actors articulate scepticism and criticism toward expert knowledge, state institutions, symbolic elites, and dominant narratives, and how these practices gain legitimacy as rational dissent, defense of autonomy, care for freedom or alternative definitions of social reality;
● study relationships between social communication and practices of shaping, stabilising or unsettling meaning-making, including styles of argumentation, strategies of (de)legitimation and the aesthetics of communication as symbolic resources for ordering uncertainty;
● analyse communicative alterations of contemporary capitalism, work culture and dynamics of the digital economy;
● show how interpretive and classificatory practices organise conflicts and collective mobilisation, providing foundations for the actions of social movements, protest repertoires, and other forms of both “progressive” and “backlash” civic engagement;
● locate such communicative practices in diverse arenas of public contestation, including debates over memory, identity, security, migration, technology, capitalism and the environment, as well as in struggles over public space and institutional crises;
● redefine relations among citizens, the state, experts, media, AI and other actors of social communication by demonstrating how uncertainty reshapes responsibilities, authority, and capacities for action.

Please submit your articles of around 40000 characters to wladzasadzenia@gmail.com or via the OJS platform: https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/ws/about/submissions
Editorial guidelines: https://wladzasadzenia.pl/informacje-dla-autorek-i-autorow
Submission deadline: August 31st 2026.
Planned publication: December 2026

Kind regards,
Editors of "The Power of Judgement"

CfP not related to thematic issues

We invite you to submit articles dealing with issues of power, politics, and institutional and non-institutional forms of constructing and conserving social order. We welcome both articles representing the sociology of politics or psychology of politics and other fields, offering theoretical and/or empirical studies commenting on transforming political reality. We also welcome reviews of books on power and instruments of authority. All information for the Authors may be found under the bookmark Information for the Authors. We also invite shorter materials, such as comments and photos, commenting directly or metaphorically on social and power relations in contemporary society.

Contact:

"Power of Judgment" Editorial Board
Department of Sociology of Politics and Morality
Institute of Sociology University of Lodz
ul. Rewolucji 1905 r. 41/43
90-214 Lodz, Poland
e-mail: wladzasadzenia@gmail.com
tel.: +48 42 635 55 33