Cultural Dynamics
Cultural Dynamics seeks to publish research - and occasionally other materials such as interviews, documents and literary creations - focused on the structured inequalities of the contemporary world, and the myriad ways people negotiate these conditions. Our approach is adamantly plural, following the basic "intersectional" insight pioneered by third world feminists, whereby multiple axes of inequalities are irreducible to one another and mutually constitutive. Our interest in how people live, work and struggle is broad and inclusive: from the individual to the collective, from the militant and overtly political, to the poetic and quixotic. Cultural dynamics is the epitomizing phrase for this scholarship because it keeps the multiple cultural meanings of these processes - both the creation of inequalities and on-the-ground politics of struggle - front and center. The journal is thoroughly interdisciplinary, encompassing anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, and any other areas that can shed light on culture, power, and politics.
The Editors call for insurgent scholarship because we believe intellectual work is more ethically honest and analytically compelling when it is politically positioned, explicitly and reflexively, from the outset. Our focus is the global south, understood as a structural-racial location, which includes not only majority populations of the south, but also, people of color in places like New Orleans and Paris. This invitation to south-south dialogue highlights our own political affinities and affirms that those who suffer marginalization in the current global social order have the greatest potential to envision and enact transformative social change. We encourage appraisals of activist, collaborative, or engaged research methods--both achievements and contradictions. We seek politically engaged theoretical reflection and scholarly rigor as a means to enliven academic discourse, and because the peoples we work with and write about generally refuse to settle for anything less.
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Cultural Dynamics is a peer reviewed journal that seeks to publish research - and occasionally other materials such as interviews, documents and literary creations - focused on the structured inequalities of the contemporary world, and the myriad ways people negotiate these conditions. Our approach is adamantly plural, following the basic "intersectional" insight pioneered by third world feminists, whereby multiple axes of inequalities are irreducible to one another and mutually constitutive. Our interest in how people live, work and struggle is broad and inclusive: from the individual to the collective, from the militant and overtly political, to the poetic and quixotic. Cultural dynamics is the epitomizing phrase for this scholarship because it keeps the multiple cultural meanings of these processes - both the creation of inequalities and on-the-ground politics of struggle - front and center. The journal is thoroughly interdisciplinary, encompassing anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, and any other areas that can shed light on culture, power, and politics.
The Editors call for insurgent scholarship because we believe intellectual work is more ethically honest and analytically compelling when it is politically positioned, explicitly and reflexively, from the outset. Our focus is the global south, understood as a structural-racial location, which includes not only majority populations of the south, but also, people of color in places like New Orleans and Paris. This invitation to south-south dialogue highlights our own political affinities and affirms that those who suffer marginalization in the current global social order have the greatest potential to envision and enact transformative social change. We encourage appraisals of activist, collaborative, or engaged research methods--both achievements and contradictions. We seek politically engaged theoretical reflection and scholarly rigor as a means to enliven academic discourse, and because the peoples we work with and write about generally refuse to settle for anything less.
| Michaeline Crichlow | Duke University, USA |
| Francisco J. Hernandez Adrian | Durham University, UK |
| Sean Metzger | University of California Los Angeles, USA |
| Claudia Milian | Duke University, USA |
| Patricia Northover | Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, Jamaica |
| Tanya Shields | University of North Carolina, USA |
| Marc Augé | Ecole des Hautes Etudes Sciences Sociales, Paris, France |
| S N Balagangadhara | University of Ghent, Belgium |
| A J Bishop | Monash University, Clayton, Australia |
| Dipesh Chakraborty | Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, USA |
| Christopher Cozier | Trinidad |
| Rene Devisch | Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium |
| Vivek Dhareshwar | Centre for Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore, India |
| Arie de Ruijter | Ceres, Utrecht, Netherlands |
| Aant Elzinga | University of Gothenburg, Sweden |
| Johannes Fabian | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Barbara Frankel | Lehigh University, Bethlehem, USA |
| G Hamilton | University of Washington, USA |
| Dell H Hymes | University of Virginia, USA |
| D Kondo | University of Southern California, USA |
| David Loy | Bunkyo University, Japan |
| Malcolm McLeod | University of Glasgow, UK |
| D Mungazi | Northern Arizona University, USA |
| Rik Pinxten | University of Ghent, Belgium |
| Laura Sanchez | Bowling Green State University, USA |
| S Slyomovics | MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA |
| Marilyn Strathern | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Charles Taylor | McGill University, Canada |
| P van der Veer | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Frank van Dun | University of Maastricht, Netherlands |
| Kamala Visweswaran | University of Texas, USA |
| R P Werbner | University of Manchester, UK |
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cdy to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Cultural Dynamics will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
2.6 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Cultural Dynamics, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
The journal is thoroughly interdisciplinary, encompassing anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, and any other areas that can shed light on culture, power, and politics. Cultural Dynamics accepts research articles and occasionally other materials such as interviews, documents, literary creations. The suggested word count for an article is about 9,000 words. Each manuscript should also contain an abstract of about 100 words and about five keywords.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online.
Cultural Dynamics operates a strictly anonymous peer review process in which the reviewer’s name is withheld from the author and the author’s name from the reviewer. The reviewer may at their own discretion opt to reveal their name to the author in their review but our standard policy practice is for both identities to remain concealed. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two referees. All manuscripts are reviewed as rapidly as possible, and an editorial decision is generally reached within 4-6 weeks of submission.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.3.1 Third party submissions
Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:
• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.
Where appropriate, Sage reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.
Cultural Dynamics requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the Sage Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
Cultural Dynamics encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway.
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway.
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Cultural Dynamics and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway.
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Cultural Dynamics offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines.
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
Cultural Dynamics does not currently accept supplemental files.
Cultural Dynamics adheres to the Sage Harvard reference style. View the Sage Harvard guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.
If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the Sage Harvard EndNote output file
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Cultural Dynamics is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cdy to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
The collection of ORCID iDs from corresponding authors is now part of the submission process of this journal. If you already have an ORCID iD you will be asked to associate that to your submission during the online submission process. We also strongly encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID ID to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. Your ORCID iD will become part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway.
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Cultural Dynamics editorial office as follows: