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GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS
Submit all general submission manuscripts and pedagogy manuscripts at:
For all general inquiries contact our Editors at [email protected]
For Pedagogy specific questions, contact Editor Dr. Myron Strong at [email protected]
For Book and Media Reviews inquiries and submissions, contact Editors Dr. Shaonta’ Allen at [email protected]
Please be aware of our non-anonymous peer review process.
Humanity and Society is committed to an open, peer review process that encourages dialogue. To that end, all authors and reviewers are non-anonymous to one another. In our view, non-anonymous reviewing does not diminish the rigor, integrity, and validity of the peer-review process. Rather, we believe it creates a more open and honest dialogue between authors and reviewers. We find this helps to generate the kind of constructive criticism that is most conducive to improving the article, as opposed to the “destructive criticism” that too easily occurs in more traditional double-blind peer-review processes. In this light, the editorial staff is fully committed to mentoring new scholars to facilitate their professional development.
Manuscript Guidelines: All papers should be double spaced with word count noted, use ASA citations and references, and include key words. All papers also must include a personal reflexive statement.
Manuscript Organization
(1) Title page
(2) Abstract
(3) Personal Reflexive Statement(s)
(4) Text
(5) Notes, if applicable
(6) References
(7) Tables, if applicable
(8) Figures, if applicable
(9) Appendices, if applicable.
1. Title page. Please include the following: (1) Full article title, (2) Acknowledgments and credits, (3) Each author’s complete name and institutional affiliation(s), (4) Grant numbers and/or funding information, and (5) Corresponding author (name, address, phone/fax, e-mail).
2. Abstract. Print the abstract (150 to 200 words) on a separate page headed by the full article title.
3. Personal Reflexive Statement: 150-200 words. For more information, see the explanation on Personal Reflexive Statement below.
For all general inquiries contact our Editors at [email protected]
For Pedagogy specific questions, contact Editor Dr. Myron Strong at [email protected]
For Book and Media Reviews inquiries and submissions, contact Editors Dr. Shaonta’ Allen at [email protected]
Please be aware of our non-anonymous peer review process.
Humanity and Society is committed to an open, peer review process that encourages dialogue. To that end, all authors and reviewers are non-anonymous to one another. In our view, non-anonymous reviewing does not diminish the rigor, integrity, and validity of the peer-review process. Rather, we believe it creates a more open and honest dialogue between authors and reviewers. We find this helps to generate the kind of constructive criticism that is most conducive to improving the article, as opposed to the “destructive criticism” that too easily occurs in more traditional double-blind peer-review processes. In this light, the editorial staff is fully committed to mentoring new scholars to facilitate their professional development.
Manuscript Guidelines: All papers should be double spaced with word count noted, use ASA citations and references, and include key words. All papers also must include a personal reflexive statement.
Manuscript Organization
(1) Title page
(2) Abstract
(3) Personal Reflexive Statement(s)
(4) Text
(5) Notes, if applicable
(6) References
(7) Tables, if applicable
(8) Figures, if applicable
(9) Appendices, if applicable.
1. Title page. Please include the following: (1) Full article title, (2) Acknowledgments and credits, (3) Each author’s complete name and institutional affiliation(s), (4) Grant numbers and/or funding information, and (5) Corresponding author (name, address, phone/fax, e-mail).
2. Abstract. Print the abstract (150 to 200 words) on a separate page headed by the full article title.
3. Personal Reflexive Statement: 150-200 words. For more information, see the explanation on Personal Reflexive Statement below.
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Please be aware of our citation policy
Humanity and Society, as a sociological journal attending to the humanist tradition, centering people, agency, and struggles towards social justice, will no longer contribute to epistemic apartheid in knowledge construction and dissemination by publishing work that portends to speak for rather than in solidarity with knowledge producers inside and outside of academic institutions. By encouraging authors to engage deeply with historically marginalized and exploited communities, we seek to center work and voices that are often ignored, undervalued, and exploited within the academy. Please read the full policy here. |
Personal Reflexive Statements
The Personal Reflexive Statement is a statement by the author(s)’ that explains their background, individual connection to, and/or personal commitment to the subject matter of the article. It is appropriate to include the author’s experiences as a social activist.
A Personal Reflexive Statement should be provided for each author, unless a single statement is appropriate. The Personal Reflexive Statement(s) should be approximately 150-200 words and provided below the Abstract.
For more information and examples of a Personal Reflexive Statement, please see below:
A sample by Dr. walda katz-fishman and Dr. Anthony Jackson, and Jerome Scott
A description on the importance of the reflexive statement and example by Dr. Corey Dolgon (from SSSP Presidential address)
You can also read the reflexive statements of each of our editorial board members
A Personal Reflexive Statement should be provided for each author, unless a single statement is appropriate. The Personal Reflexive Statement(s) should be approximately 150-200 words and provided below the Abstract.
For more information and examples of a Personal Reflexive Statement, please see below:
A sample by Dr. walda katz-fishman and Dr. Anthony Jackson, and Jerome Scott
A description on the importance of the reflexive statement and example by Dr. Corey Dolgon (from SSSP Presidential address)
You can also read the reflexive statements of each of our editorial board members
Excerpt from Dr. Corey Dolgon's SSSP Presidential Address
Reflexive Statement: I want to start this presentation with some of what I’ve learned from being a humanist sociologist, nurtured by my almost 30-year membership in the Association for Humanist Sociology [AHS]. The importance of this reflection is twofold: on the one hand it is to share with the audience the lived experiences and historical conditions that shape my perspective and give insight into the political and social world that shaped my ideas. On the other hand, the history of AHS itself is inextricably wound up with that of The Society for the Study of Social Problems [SSSP]. AHS began in the mid-1970s as some of the founders of SSSP grew weary of that organization’s rising bureaucratization and professionalization. Established in the 1950s, SSSP was to be an alternative to the arrogant corporate professionalism and “fat cat” sociology that had characterized the American Sociological Association [ASA] from Robert Park’s racial and patriarchal elitism through Talcott Parson’s consensus-driven, cold war imperialism. (Ross 2010; Nicolaus 1991; Briant and Lee 1976) By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, critics claimed SSSP had “lost its critical ardor” and become a mainstream professional association, “specializing in the study of social problems,” not in the application and activism needed to change their root causes. (Reese 2001; Pfohl 1990; Skura 1976) At the founding AHS meeting in 1976, Albert McClung Lee (1977) panned existing professional societies for being “enmeshed deeply in the bureaucratic, technocratic, plutocratic, and imperialistic structures” of contemporary society. These “ruling cliques are dedicated consciously or unconsciously to the enforcement of our decadent [self-destructive] social structure,” and are now “parts of the problems sociologists should be probing” in their efforts to improve human society.
As a young scholar activist, I found this perspective about professional organizations and even the formation of “professionalism” itself refreshing. But the most striking and liberating aspect of AHS to me has always been its requirement to present reflexive statements at the beginning of conference presentations and published articles in the AHS journal, Humanity and Society. The journal explains that the “Personal Reflexive Statement provides an account of the author’s perspectives about and personal commitment to the subject matter…. It is appropriate to include the author’s experiences as a social activist.” The reflexive statement allows AHS to proclaim its transparency—the humanist sociologist declares their subjective commitment, thus forsaking the debilitating myth of being “value-free.” In many ways I would suggest this straightforwardness forms an initial step towards conceiving a revolutionary sociology as we make our positionality and our goals front and center, deeply infused in the content and style of activist scholarship. For it’s the claim of objectivity and neutrality that obscures the foundations and persistent frameworks of corporate, patriarchal and racialized power—or what AHS Past-President, Johnny Williams, (2022) called sociology’s “orientation towards the imperialist status quo.” (Meghji 2021; Go 2020; Bonilla-Silva 2019) As former AHS President, David Embrick (2019) explained, the reflexive statement “is not an organizational gimmick.... It is done with the recognition that our research design and practice are not done in a vacuum. It is done to acknowledge that our values and perspectives are tied in important ways to what we study, how we study, and why we study.”
Humanist sociology is committed to making the world a better place and the reflexive statement helps us openly consider how, what Patricia Hill Collins (2003) called our “perspectivity,” influences our work and shapes our vision of a new world. In declaring the role of Feminism for radical, humanist sociology, Mary Erdmans (2003) suggests that the reflexive statement should not be simply “additive but transformative.” She continues, “Reflexivity should be integrated into our research practices from the emergence of the research question (in collaboration with the researched), to the interpretation of the findings (both inside and outside of the academy), to the praxis-based implementation of the findings in policy proposals.” In other words, the kind of sociology we do should be deeply infused with—not purposefully aloof from—our values and commitments. We are anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-white supremacist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and against any system or ideology that oppresses people by its very nature and definition, motivation or institutionalization. By being self-reflective, radical sociologists recognize that we carry with us the history of these systemic oppressions and, therefore, we make mistakes, stumble, fall and often fail in our efforts to fully dismantle the negative impact of structural and cultural formations in society, and in ourselves. Our reflexivity allows us to be introspective, and our mutual commitment to these goals means our comrades will be loving and unyielding in nurturing our personal and collective process of becoming and being revolutionary. This is a process that begins with our personal and collective histories of struggle against these forces and conditions of oppression.
My own proper reflexive statement begins as a classic red diaper baby, the product of Jewish Communists from Brooklyn, New York. My grandparents, David and Ruth Dolgon, were members of the International Workers Order [IWO] and spent summer vacations in the “Left Catskills” summer camps. (Brown 1998; Mishler 1989). They attended IWO meetings and, as my grandmother wrote to her son, Herman (my uncle, who was stationed at the Santa Ana Air Base in California), that gatherings were “joyous affairs.” In 1954, Ruth received the Emma Lazarus Award for community service from the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order of the IWO. Soon afterward, however, the organization would be disbanded by New York government officials who claimed that, because it was led by Communists, the IWO “constitut[ed] a political hazard" to its members and the public. (Saban 1999; Keeran 1995)
I know about Ruth’s letter to Herman because my father obtained his brother’s FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act. Agents followed my uncle and reported on him to J. Edgar Hoover throughout the 1940s until Herman died in 1949. While he worked for the U.S. Census Bureau in D.C., agents interviewed his landlords, supervisors and colleagues, concluding he was an “agitator type” and union member who “exhibited great interest in employees’ social and economic welfare.” To illustrate this feeling, Herman always, “ate in the segregated Negro dining room” at the Bureau. After joining the Army, Military Intelligence spoke to superior officers and bunk mates alike, finding that Herman was likeable and talkative, and worked hard and read a lot. But he also, “talked about the inequality of the social order and said that it was very unfair to the worker. He also said that no one should inherit a good job but should have to work for it.” Agents concluded Herman was “Communistically inclined.”
My Uncle Herman was a Communist and Community organizer in the 1940s and like many leftists at the time, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight against fascism. After the war, he returned to Brooklyn and became an indefatigable advocate for integrated, low-income veterans’ housing. He fell victim to an intestinal disease contracted during the War and died just before the City’s Housing Authority completed 18 apartment buildings in Brooklyn—low-income and integrated public housing—for veterans. The new Nostrand and Sheepshead Bay Houses have a shared playground that was named Herman Dolgon Park, following the Jewish War Veterans campaign to memorialize his efforts.
Herman was my dad’s hero and he, too, became a Communist devoted to the anti-capitalist cause. But Fred Dolgon was also hungry for a laugh and an embrace from the most alienated of the working class. My dad had little but disdain for fat cats or fat heads, and though he belonged to classical music clubs and devoured prose and poetry, he preferred playing at hootenannies, performing comedy sketches at Cooper Union (instead of going to class), and writing witty, sardonic verses and plays about hobos. He was an “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” kind of guy, less a Karl Marxist and more a Groucho Marxist who hesitated belonging to any club that would have him as a member. And I have probably approached my relationship to sociology as a discipline, and professional sociological organizations in general, with much the same attitude.
Reflexive Statement: I want to start this presentation with some of what I’ve learned from being a humanist sociologist, nurtured by my almost 30-year membership in the Association for Humanist Sociology [AHS]. The importance of this reflection is twofold: on the one hand it is to share with the audience the lived experiences and historical conditions that shape my perspective and give insight into the political and social world that shaped my ideas. On the other hand, the history of AHS itself is inextricably wound up with that of The Society for the Study of Social Problems [SSSP]. AHS began in the mid-1970s as some of the founders of SSSP grew weary of that organization’s rising bureaucratization and professionalization. Established in the 1950s, SSSP was to be an alternative to the arrogant corporate professionalism and “fat cat” sociology that had characterized the American Sociological Association [ASA] from Robert Park’s racial and patriarchal elitism through Talcott Parson’s consensus-driven, cold war imperialism. (Ross 2010; Nicolaus 1991; Briant and Lee 1976) By the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, critics claimed SSSP had “lost its critical ardor” and become a mainstream professional association, “specializing in the study of social problems,” not in the application and activism needed to change their root causes. (Reese 2001; Pfohl 1990; Skura 1976) At the founding AHS meeting in 1976, Albert McClung Lee (1977) panned existing professional societies for being “enmeshed deeply in the bureaucratic, technocratic, plutocratic, and imperialistic structures” of contemporary society. These “ruling cliques are dedicated consciously or unconsciously to the enforcement of our decadent [self-destructive] social structure,” and are now “parts of the problems sociologists should be probing” in their efforts to improve human society.
As a young scholar activist, I found this perspective about professional organizations and even the formation of “professionalism” itself refreshing. But the most striking and liberating aspect of AHS to me has always been its requirement to present reflexive statements at the beginning of conference presentations and published articles in the AHS journal, Humanity and Society. The journal explains that the “Personal Reflexive Statement provides an account of the author’s perspectives about and personal commitment to the subject matter…. It is appropriate to include the author’s experiences as a social activist.” The reflexive statement allows AHS to proclaim its transparency—the humanist sociologist declares their subjective commitment, thus forsaking the debilitating myth of being “value-free.” In many ways I would suggest this straightforwardness forms an initial step towards conceiving a revolutionary sociology as we make our positionality and our goals front and center, deeply infused in the content and style of activist scholarship. For it’s the claim of objectivity and neutrality that obscures the foundations and persistent frameworks of corporate, patriarchal and racialized power—or what AHS Past-President, Johnny Williams, (2022) called sociology’s “orientation towards the imperialist status quo.” (Meghji 2021; Go 2020; Bonilla-Silva 2019) As former AHS President, David Embrick (2019) explained, the reflexive statement “is not an organizational gimmick.... It is done with the recognition that our research design and practice are not done in a vacuum. It is done to acknowledge that our values and perspectives are tied in important ways to what we study, how we study, and why we study.”
Humanist sociology is committed to making the world a better place and the reflexive statement helps us openly consider how, what Patricia Hill Collins (2003) called our “perspectivity,” influences our work and shapes our vision of a new world. In declaring the role of Feminism for radical, humanist sociology, Mary Erdmans (2003) suggests that the reflexive statement should not be simply “additive but transformative.” She continues, “Reflexivity should be integrated into our research practices from the emergence of the research question (in collaboration with the researched), to the interpretation of the findings (both inside and outside of the academy), to the praxis-based implementation of the findings in policy proposals.” In other words, the kind of sociology we do should be deeply infused with—not purposefully aloof from—our values and commitments. We are anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anti-white supremacist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and against any system or ideology that oppresses people by its very nature and definition, motivation or institutionalization. By being self-reflective, radical sociologists recognize that we carry with us the history of these systemic oppressions and, therefore, we make mistakes, stumble, fall and often fail in our efforts to fully dismantle the negative impact of structural and cultural formations in society, and in ourselves. Our reflexivity allows us to be introspective, and our mutual commitment to these goals means our comrades will be loving and unyielding in nurturing our personal and collective process of becoming and being revolutionary. This is a process that begins with our personal and collective histories of struggle against these forces and conditions of oppression.
My own proper reflexive statement begins as a classic red diaper baby, the product of Jewish Communists from Brooklyn, New York. My grandparents, David and Ruth Dolgon, were members of the International Workers Order [IWO] and spent summer vacations in the “Left Catskills” summer camps. (Brown 1998; Mishler 1989). They attended IWO meetings and, as my grandmother wrote to her son, Herman (my uncle, who was stationed at the Santa Ana Air Base in California), that gatherings were “joyous affairs.” In 1954, Ruth received the Emma Lazarus Award for community service from the Jewish People’s Fraternal Order of the IWO. Soon afterward, however, the organization would be disbanded by New York government officials who claimed that, because it was led by Communists, the IWO “constitut[ed] a political hazard" to its members and the public. (Saban 1999; Keeran 1995)
I know about Ruth’s letter to Herman because my father obtained his brother’s FBI files through the Freedom of Information Act. Agents followed my uncle and reported on him to J. Edgar Hoover throughout the 1940s until Herman died in 1949. While he worked for the U.S. Census Bureau in D.C., agents interviewed his landlords, supervisors and colleagues, concluding he was an “agitator type” and union member who “exhibited great interest in employees’ social and economic welfare.” To illustrate this feeling, Herman always, “ate in the segregated Negro dining room” at the Bureau. After joining the Army, Military Intelligence spoke to superior officers and bunk mates alike, finding that Herman was likeable and talkative, and worked hard and read a lot. But he also, “talked about the inequality of the social order and said that it was very unfair to the worker. He also said that no one should inherit a good job but should have to work for it.” Agents concluded Herman was “Communistically inclined.”
My Uncle Herman was a Communist and Community organizer in the 1940s and like many leftists at the time, he enlisted in the U.S. Army to fight against fascism. After the war, he returned to Brooklyn and became an indefatigable advocate for integrated, low-income veterans’ housing. He fell victim to an intestinal disease contracted during the War and died just before the City’s Housing Authority completed 18 apartment buildings in Brooklyn—low-income and integrated public housing—for veterans. The new Nostrand and Sheepshead Bay Houses have a shared playground that was named Herman Dolgon Park, following the Jewish War Veterans campaign to memorialize his efforts.
Herman was my dad’s hero and he, too, became a Communist devoted to the anti-capitalist cause. But Fred Dolgon was also hungry for a laugh and an embrace from the most alienated of the working class. My dad had little but disdain for fat cats or fat heads, and though he belonged to classical music clubs and devoured prose and poetry, he preferred playing at hootenannies, performing comedy sketches at Cooper Union (instead of going to class), and writing witty, sardonic verses and plays about hobos. He was an “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” kind of guy, less a Karl Marxist and more a Groucho Marxist who hesitated belonging to any club that would have him as a member. And I have probably approached my relationship to sociology as a discipline, and professional sociological organizations in general, with much the same attitude.
Excerpt from a book chapter by Dr. walda katz-fishman, Dr. Anthony Jackson, and Jerome Scott
We begin this section with reflective statements to tell our readers our stories of who we are and how we have come to be, “Woke”: Revolutionary Intellectuals in Theory & Practice. Humanity exists across a spectrum of identities that shape our lived experiences in this world across time and place. We all are born inherently invaluable simply because we exist, and our perspectives, the lenses by which we view the world, and the consciousness we share as humans must come to a point of convergence that recognizes the necessity to support, protect, and if and when necessary, fight for life, not simply to survive but to live and thrive. It is our hope that through telling our individual stories we are able show our readers how our lives are all connected to one another, to a collective reality where we have come to know and confront the forces that threaten life itself. We illuminate the unity of scholar activists, proletarian intellectuals, movement organizers, and emphasize the significance of theory and practice. We see the radiance of revolutionary education as the light of life, it opens our eyes to the death and destruction that the system of capitalism engenders. Revolutionary education must be seen as life giving and it must be passed down from generation to generation to save us all.
We begin this section with reflective statements to tell our readers our stories of who we are and how we have come to be, “Woke”: Revolutionary Intellectuals in Theory & Practice. Humanity exists across a spectrum of identities that shape our lived experiences in this world across time and place. We all are born inherently invaluable simply because we exist, and our perspectives, the lenses by which we view the world, and the consciousness we share as humans must come to a point of convergence that recognizes the necessity to support, protect, and if and when necessary, fight for life, not simply to survive but to live and thrive. It is our hope that through telling our individual stories we are able show our readers how our lives are all connected to one another, to a collective reality where we have come to know and confront the forces that threaten life itself. We illuminate the unity of scholar activists, proletarian intellectuals, movement organizers, and emphasize the significance of theory and practice. We see the radiance of revolutionary education as the light of life, it opens our eyes to the death and destruction that the system of capitalism engenders. Revolutionary education must be seen as life giving and it must be passed down from generation to generation to save us all.