We’re calling for contributions for our next edition on what the Covid-19 pandemic means for the future of our societies and politics. Get in touch to contribute to the debate on health, sustainability, dignity and an alternative green vision for the future.
The health crisis and its repercussions continue to strike painfully around the world. Millions have been infected and hundreds of thousands have lost their lives. In many cases, governments have struggled, and international cooperation has been found wanting. The economic fallout will be deep and long-lasting and the impacts of the crisis have not been distributed equally. Exposure to health risks and social consequences have been determined by factors of inequality such as class, race, gender and geography. From a European perspective, the weaknesses of the EU institutional order as it exists have once again been revealed. Overcoming strained divisions between and within EU countries, as well as determining Europe’s place in a changing world, are major questions for the future.
The pandemic has highlighted many injustices within our societies, from domestic violence to underfunded public services, and accelerated disruptive trends such as digitalisation and the gig economy. Its root causes bear out many long-standing critiques of our current way of life and organising society, from the impact of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss on global health to the lack of resilience of our political and economic systems.
At the same time, the pandemic could represent a turning point. For months, the normal functioning of the economy has been put on hold to prioritise life. People have changed their behaviour radically in solidarity with others and states have responded on a previously unthinkable scale. Amid the crisis, signs of hope are visible, from mutual aid networks stepping in to fill the gaps of weakened welfare systems to repurposed urban spaces and cleaner air. The challenge for Greens and progressives is to make sure that our societies emerge from Covid-19 resilient, fairer, and more sustainable.
What the world will look like after Covid-19 is still to be determined. The struggle between those forces who want a quick return to business as usual, those who will exploit the crisis for exclusionary ends, and those who defend a social and ecological alternative will be critical.
This is why we are calling for contributions on the ideas, movements and people pushing for a post-pandemic world based on living together in dignity, safety and sustainability. How can green thinking inform broader social and ecological understandings of health? How has the Covid-19 crisis shifted the political terrain? What narratives about a post-pandemic world are open for green politics? These are the kind of questions the next edition of the Green European Journal will explore.
Approach
What would you like to write about? Here are some ideas:
- Social and ecological understandings of health: public health and health systems, wellbeing, prevention, care, communities
- Inequalities magnified by the pandemic: race, gender, disability, class
- Green movements and parties: Green parties in power, responses from green and climate movements, narratives and vision
- Link between health and the environment: biodiversity loss and zoonotic diseases, climate crisis, air pollution, housing and urban space
- Demography: intergenerational solidarity, ageing societies and the urban-rural divide
- Work and Covid-19: essential workers, precariousness and unemployment, migrant labour, new ways of working
- Governance and risk: biosecurity, hygiene and securitisation
- The economic response: state support and intervention, debt and monetary policy, sectoral impacts
- Relations to nature: societal responses to lockdown, the politics of biodiversity
- Solidarity: new forms of support, rights, mutual aid, welfare states and the social contract
- Democracy and autocracy: authoritarian responses and emergencies, the changing public sphere
- Global politics: global health and the WHO, globalisation and international tensions
- The European Union: recovery funds and solidarity between members, relocalisation and industrial policy, power in times of crisis
- Pandemics in history: social, economic and cultural consequences
- Scientific knowledge and political decision-making: expertise, the precautionary principle and epidemiology
We welcome contributions from everyone. Contributions from women, gender non-binary people, people of colour, and from the south and east of Europe, as well as from outside the European Union, are especially encouraged.
Editorial requirements
We do not just want theoretical or academic articles for the next edition of the Green European Journal. We’re looking for lively texts and interviews that will stimulate debate and imagination, and we are also open to formats such as photo essays and comics. All contributions that take a novel approach to understand the current health crisis and shape the post-pandemic world are welcome.
Pitches should be sent to jamie.kendrick@gef.eu and annabelle.dawson@gef.eu
Send us a summary of your proposed contribution and introduce yourself before submitting a draft.
We accept submissions in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish. You can write in another language but please send us a pitch in one of the above languages first. Before contacting us, check our editorial guidelines carefully. Submissions may be published in print or online.
The deadline for pitches and ideas was August 24th 2020.