The Oxford Political Review is now welcoming submissions for Issue 20 of its print edition.
Please note:
In a break from previous editions, for Issue 20 we invite both pieces centred on the Issue’s designated theme, ‘Scarcity’, and pieces submitted to a non-themed (Open) call. We are also pleased to announce the introduction of a new ‘Economy’ section, to which authors may submit original commentary on economic theory and philosophy, political economy, and developments in markets and economic governance.
The deadline for submissions is Thursday 1st October at 23:59 BST. Submissions should be emailed to submissions@oxfordpoliticalreview.com along with a one- to two-sentence bio of the author.
Scarcity:
‘You can see the future first in San Francisco’, professes Leopold Aschenbrenner in the introduction to his influential essay, ‘Situational Awareness’. Aschenbrenner has in mind that city’s supposed enlightenment regarding the power of artificial intelligence (AI); but perhaps his claim is true in other respects. San Francisco is famed for its pockets of deprivation amid staggering wealth, for its acute housing shortages, and for its residents’ sense that their attention and time can never stretch far enough.
If Aschenbrenner is right about AI’s disruptive capacity, all countries are due to wrestle with problems of resource allocation as profound as those which followed past economic upheavals — consider, for instance, Silvia Federici’s account of European enclosure, and Friedrich Engels’s of urban deprivation during the Industrial Revolution. But even if predictions are overblown, it will surely remain true that – as authors from Hume to Marx to Lasswell have described – the management of scarcity is a fundamental problem of politics.
But what precisely is scarce is not always obvious: today we hear of scarcity not only of resources, but of ideas, trust, solidarity and strong leadership. How, then, to judge which kinds of scarcity are most pressing, and to whose benefit? Hannah Arendt and Aimé Césaire argue that past attempts to overcome constraints through imperial expansion produced devastating consequences for all parties involved. Such histories raise a broader question: can scarcity ever be humanely overcome, or must politics learn to live within its limits?
Articles which creatively interpret the theme of ‘Scarcity’ are encouraged. Some suggestions include:
- Resource conflicts and the geopolitics of energy, food, water, and critical minerals
- The merits of (de-)growth economics
- Technological change and automation
- Imperialism and migration as responses to and causes of constraint
- The politics of loneliness and ‘the attention economy’
Submission guidelines:
Submissions should generally take one of the following formats:
- Short op-ed style articles of around 800 words
- Long-form articles of no more than 2,000 words
- Book reviews and review essays of no more than 1,500 words
- Interviews of no more than 2,000 words
For more information on our submission guidelines, please follow this link. Pieces that do not adhere to our style guide will be rejected.
Typically, we receive more submissions than we can accept. If we think your submission merits publication but are unable to accept it for the print issue, we may release it separately online.
Please direct all queries to submissions@oxfordpoliticalreview.com.