CALL FOR CHAPTERS : Inequality of Opportunities

CALL FOR CHAPTERS

Inequality of Opportunities

Editors-in-Chief:

Rajendra Baikady PhD, Department of Social Work, School of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

Email: rajendra.baikady@mail.huji.ac.il

Jaroslaw Przeperski PhD, Director, Centre for Family Research, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland

Email: jprzeperski@umk.pl

Claudia Reyes-Quilodran PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Social Work, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Email: claudiar@uc.cl

Dear colleagues, we invite you to take part in the largest editorial project on Inequality - Mapping Global Inequality - Major Reference Work Book Series being published by Springer Nature, United States.

The Series encompasses 30+ volumes, but we will publish individual call for contributions to each volume separately. In this call for contribution, we are particularly seeking authors for the volume on: Inequality of Opportunities

This volume in the Mapping Global Inequalities series aims to explore how inequality in opportunities affects different sections of population in different societies across various regions and regimes. Our aim here is to explore how the state and society can guarantee equal access to basic resources to its members regardless of their circumstances and disadvantages. How and to what extent a civil society, State and third sector can collaborate in co-creating a just society where opportunities and resources are equally distributed. Inequality can persist in many dimensions and impact different population groups differently. Most affected in society would be the disadvantaged and the marginalized, those who are denied of their basic rights and opportunities in relation to other section of society. Research studies focusing on inequality in the recent past tend to argue that focus on reducing inequality of opportunity is the crucial missing link in the contemporary development agenda. Despite the introduction and implementation of the global development goals in 2015, our commitment to achieving equality and ensuring equal opportunity for all sections of society tends to be less successful.

Inequality of opportunities is largely dependent on the choices people can make. The choices that people make depends on the ability and economic stability of the individual. People living in countries where individual decisions are determined by limited nationally available resources have fewer alternatives to choose from than people living in wealthier and developed countries. Hence, inequality in opportunities is more of a policy and programe issue than an individual's ability and capability to create his or her own destiny. The economic, developmental, and industrial policies of a nation can create a number of opportunities and economic gains to its citizens. Furthermore, a growing number of literatures shows that inequality in opportunity is more common in societies where there exist practices of unequal access to education, segregation of labor markets into insiders and outsiders, and where financial markets favor the better-off. National policies that support and create unequal access to opportunities for work, education, happiness, health, longer life expectancy, assets acquisition, and social mobility result in a world with injustice and inequality. Thus, reducing inequality and creating a just and equal world is not only an individual's responsibility, but rather a collaboration between the state, state machineries and citizens.

We aim to address the following questions in this volume on Inequality of Opportunities:

1. How is inequality of opportunities defined in different countries and societies?   
2. How do we know there exist gross inequality in terms of opportunities and what are the evidence?  
3. What does available data/ evidence say about inequality in opportunity in different countries?
4. How are different societies across the globe tackling inequality in terms of opportunities and creating a just and equitable society?

We invite contributions that addresses: (1) contemporary theories of inequality in opportunities; (2) how inequality in opportunities effect growth and societies' attainment of sustainable development goals; (3) causes and consequences of inequalities in opportunities; (4) why we should talk about inequality in opportunities in times of globalization and neoliberalism; (5) why decent work and employment opportunities are crucial in creating an equal and just society; (6) impact of inequality in opportunities on different sections of society i.e., youth, women, children, disabled, elderly, and other marginalized sections; (7) inequality in opportunities in different national and regional contexts; (8) comparative perspectives on inequality in opportunities; (9) how the quality of education opens employment opportunities and reduces inequalities.

Our aim is to gather the best possible contributions in the respective area’s and make this reference work truly global in nature. There will be a minimum of 40 chapters in this volume and each chapter will discuss different aspects of inequality in different socio-political and economic contexts. The editorial team aims to cover at least 30 different countries in each of these volumes so that this series will be a valuable source for researchers, academics and policy makers at both local and global levels. To further this aim, each issue will be saturated with the whole problem of inequality from 2 perspectives: countries and topics. This will give us a sense of fulfilling the description of the indicated problem of inequality. Each volume will also include chapters on cross country comparison to provide an understanding of similarities and differences in many aspects of inequality across different regimes and regions. In addition to this, each volume will have an exclusive and extensive introductory chapter that provides an overview of the volume, its scope and a comparative understanding of all the contributions covered in the volume(s).

Structure of the Volume:

Level of Your Contribution: Our aim is to provide an accessible and exciting handbook for specialists, academics, advanced students, and readers who are familiar with the field as well as those from other related disciplines.

We expect each chapter to contain approximately 8000-10,000 words (including the reference list). We are inviting chapters, that are critical summaries/synopses (Tertiary literature) rather than original research reports.

Contributions are being accepted on a rolling basis and writing and reviewing is scheduled to take place until approximately July 2023 and final proofing between then and the end of the year. The sooner you submit your chapter the sooner it will be published online and citable. Contributions to all the volumes in this series are peer-reviewed. 

Online-First Publication of Chapters: Once the production and proofing loop is completed, the chapter will be published online-first on Springer Nature's online publication webpage SpringerLink http://link.springer.com. At that stage the article becomes DOI citable. You will be able to access it via your chapter page on METEOR. As a contributing author to this project, you can also access via METEOR all other online published Springer Nature References.

Please keep in mind: the faster you send in your manuscript, the sooner it will be published and become citable.

Print Publication: The print publication of the volume you contribute to will be finalized once the last chapter of the volume has been reviewed and gone through the production workflow.

Online Update of Chapters: One copy of the published version of your chapter is re-ingested to METEOR for further updates. The chapter opens up for updates again in METEOR and the status of your chapter changes to ‘Open for Submission’. At this time, you can up-load fresh or updated files, if you wish. The updated and approved chapter will be published as a new version in the living reference version of this project.  Editors and authors can submit updates to articles at the pace of science advancement.   On behalf of the publishers Palgrave/Springer Nature, we thank you for your contributions. Please don't hesitate to contact us with any queries you might have.

Interested authors should send a 250-word abstract and author bio by 25^th March, 2022 to Dr. Rajendra Baikady rajendra.baikady@mail.huji.ac.il. Please give the subject header as - Inequality of Opportunities: Chapter proposal. The editorial team members will evaluate the submitted abstract on a rolling basis and notify the authors along with full chapter submission guidelines.

Qualifications: We recommend that academic authors have, be supervised by, or in pursuit of their PhD, whereas non-academic professionals should have at least 3 years of experience in the field.

Full chapter submission Schedule: