CFP: Topoi. Special Issue on: Social Ontology, Culture and Institutions

Topoi. An International Review of Philosophy

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Special Issue on: Social Ontology, Culture and Institutions

Guest Editors: Filip Buekens (Leuven, Tilburg) and Alessandro Salice (Copenhagen).

Invited Contributors: Andreas De Block, Grant Ramsay, Hans Bernhard Schmid, Kim Sterelny

Deadline for submissions: May 1st, 2014

RATIONALE

Over the last two decades, social facts have been investigated by a rapidly growing community of scholars who have contributed to the field from different disciplinary approaches. Concepts like collectives, cultures and institutions have been analyzed with conceptual tools from the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, social philosophy and from formal disciplines like game theory.

It is now generally agreed that social facts – and in particular institutional facts – exist due to the collective acceptance of a social group. Since collective acceptance may be – and usually is – culturally based, it can be argued that, e.g., such-and-such objects are money according to a given culture, but not to others. This insight not only highlights that cultural transmission and cultural evolution are crucial for any attempt at describing social reality. It also suggests that the ontological approach may shed light on the dynamics underlying the non-genetic forms of inheritance.

In particular, it remains unclear what the ontological structure of culture is and how it is connected with that of sociality. On the one hand, it seems that, in a sense, all social facts are cultural, since their existence allegedly depends on groups’ beliefs – which are or may be anchored in a culture. But what does it mean for a group belief to be culturally determined? And, more generally, what does it mean for a social group to embody a culture? Indeed, it is questionable whether all groups are eo ipso cultural, and one can even point at phenomena which apparently are social, but not cultural (e.g., sincerity). So, on the other hand, this leads to the contrasting idea that not all social facts are cultural
and thus to a partial autonomy of the cultural vis à vis the social. Accordingly, questions arise regarding the ontological profile of cultural facts, the way cultural evolution and transmission mechanisms contribute to the construction of social realities and how these phenomena have to be properly related to collective acceptance.

Few efforts have been made thus far to bring together social ontology and empirically informed theories of culture (as developed, e.g., within the philosophy of biology, theories of “animal culture,” or the cognitive sciences). This special issue seeks contributions that connect conceptual accounts with more naturalist approaches and, more specifically, with evolutionary thinking about culture and evolution. Are crucial explanatory components missing in philosophical accounts of institutions? Can conceptual accounts of social facts inform current practice in empirical theories of culture?

SUBMISSION DETAILS

All papers should be prepared for double-blind peer review following international standard
practices. Submissions for this issue should be made through Topoi Editorial Manager (http://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/default.asp), selecting ‘S.I.: Social ontology, culture and institutions (Buekens/Salice)” as the article type.

Please save your manuscript in one of the formats supported by the system (Word, WordPerfect, RTF, TXT, LaTeX2E, TeX, Postscript, etc.), which does not include PDF. Formatting instructions for submissions can be found at: http://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/11245 (click ‘Information for Guest Editors and Authors’ on the right).

Papers must be in English and should not exceed 8,000 words, though there is no minimum length. Each submission should also include a title page containing contact details, a brief abstract and list of keywords for indexing purposes.

For any further questions regarding the special issue please contact Filip Buekens
(Filip.Buekens[at]hiw.kuleuven.be) or Alessandro Salice (wzv817[at]hum.ku.dk).