[PHILOS-L] Call for Abstracts: Praxis and Crisis

[Massimiliano Muci - massimiliano.muci2@studio.unibo.it]

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PRAXIS & CRISIS

Call for Abstracts

The editorial collective of Problématique, York University’s Political Science graduate journal, is pleased to invite submissions for an upcoming issue on the theme of “Praxis and Crisis.”

The notions of praxis and crisis have evolved throughout social and political thought. The crisis of Athenian democracy shaped Aristotle’s theorizing of praxis as an activity that takes into account both the ends and the means of transformation, while the political crisis of modernity compelled Hegel to recast praxis in terms of historical development. Responding to the economic crisis of the modern state—civil society, Marx criticizes the economic abstractions of value from the perspective of praxis understood as sensuous human activity. Various strands of critical theory have drawn on the notions of crisis and praxis, rendering them theoretically open and contested while raising enduring questions about the nature of human agency, the structural conditions of socio-economic formations, and various modes of political transformation. The relationship between the social and political determination of crises and the concrete possibilities of praxis is therefore central to understanding the multiplicity of social relations that emerge from the contradiction between the state and civil society, as well as the international configurations of these contradictions.

The present conjuncture is widely described as one of intensified and intertwined crises. Mainstream accounts point to trade wars and the breakdown of economic globalization; the COVID-19 pandemic as a global health crisis; the security crisis in the wake of the ongoing armed conflicts; the unravelling of the rule-based international system; the rise of authoritarianism and the crisis of democracy; and the crisis of planetary ecology. Crises are frequently framed either as exceptional disruptions of an otherwise stable normativity or as discrete and self-contained phenomena. Such framing often serves to justify inegalitarian restructuring, the securitization of state forms, the foreclosure of democratic decision-making, and, ultimately, the continued reproduction and extension of dominant political-economic systems.

The ongoing crises demand not only significant attention but also critical interrogation and concrete transformation. Never experienced uniformly, crises are politically organized through exploitative, racialized, gendered, violent, and colonial relations that structure class formation, labour processes, social reproduction, mobility, and access to resources. This issue seeks contributions that examine crisis not as an anomaly, but as a totality of internally related phenomena, as a method, and as a terrain of struggle. We are particularly interested in historically grounded analyses of the relationship between material crises and crisis as critique: how breakdown generates political possibility, theoretical innovation, and new forms of praxis; and how crises both arise from and reconfigure historically specific social relations, state—society complexes, regimes of accumulation, forms of labour organization, and struggles over production and social reproduction.

We welcome submissions that engage, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• The articulation of financial, ecological, reproduction, and geopolitical crises;
• The transformation of state and legal forms, capacities, and strategies under conditions of crisis;
• The notion of “polycrisis,” including critical assessments of whether it refers to a descriptive category of crises, a juxtaposition of phenomena, or a theoretically grounded articulation of fundamentally linked contradictions;
• Theoretical clarifications of the concept of crisis as structural contradiction, conjunctural breakdown, ideological construction, or a form of political mediation;
• The ideological or hegemonic functions of the language of crisis;
• The question of political organization and emancipatory rupture vs. the contingency of reactionary politics;
• The racial and gendered segmentations of society and how they reconfigure political strategy and theory;
• Organizational forms, class alliances, and institutional conditions that shape emancipatory praxis;
• The methodological role of crises in Marxist critique, and the pertinent method for understanding crises;
• The structural, systemic, or cyclical crises of contemporary capitalism;
• The disambiguation and articulation of the concept of praxis.
  
  We welcome original research as well as book reviews. Submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars across disciplines are especially welcome. Please provide a brief description of your background, field of study, and institutional affiliation (if any). Selected submissions will be invited for full-paper submission and, if accepted after peer review, published in the academic journal Problématique — Journal of Political Studies/Revue d’études politiques, in association with the Political Science Department of York University (Canada). Please see our website for any additional information https://problematiquejournal.ca/.
  
  The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2026.

Submission Guidelines:

• Abstracts should not exceed 250 words.
• Final papers should not exceed 25 pages (c. 6000 words) in English or French. We also accept book reviews of no more than 4–5 pages (c. 1000 words) in length.
• Citations should adhere to the Chicago Style 17th edition.
• Email your abstract to problemati...@gmail.com. 

Important Dates:

• Abstracts are due by March 31, 2026.
• Decisions on abstracts will be made by April 15, 2026.
• Full submissions are due by June 15, 2026, and will be subject to peer review.

For further inquiries, contact the editorial collective at problemati...@gmail.com (cc: mu...@yorku.ca, emi...@yorku.ca, pab...@yorku.ca).

In solidarity,

The Editorial Collective

Problématique — Journal of Political Studies/Revue d’études politiques

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