CfP Fashion and (In)Justice

2026-03-12

The Editorial Board of Kultura i Społeczeństwo invites submissions for a thematic issue devoted to the relationships between fashion and (in)justice. Fashion, understood as a socially structured system of practices, meanings, and relations within which dress becomes a vehicle of identity, power, and difference, today constitutes one of the key arenas in which the tensions of contemporary social orders are revealed. Positioned at the intersection of aesthetics and economics, creativity and exploitation, and global aspirations and local consequences, fashion is simultaneously entangled in processes that produce inequalities, hierarchies, and forms of symbolic exclusion. As an object of sociological and anthropological analysis, fashion cannot be reduced merely to the sphere of consumption or the clothing industry. Rather, it functions as a lens through which one can examine mechanisms of power, social classification, bodily control, and the production of material goods and cultural norms. It is precisely this multidimensional character of fashion that makes it an important and compelling subject for the social sciences.

The planned issue invites reflection on justice in the context of fashion, understood broadly as a social, cultural, and philosophical category encompassing both a distributive dimension (the allocation of goods, resources, and burdens) and a symbolic dimension (the right to representation, recognition, and presence in cultural space). We are interested in fashion as a space in which conflicting values and interests are negotiated: between labour and capital, consumption and care, and aesthetics and the costs borne in global production chains by both people and ecosystems. At the same time, the issue is open to analyses of alternative practices, social movements, and forms of resistance that seek to transform dominant models of clothing production and consumption.

We welcome submissions grounded in the perspectives of the social sciences and humanities, particularly sociology, social and cultural anthropology, social thought, and cultural studies, in line with the profile of Kultura i Społeczeństwo. We encourage contributions addressing, among others, the following topics:

Social inequalities, power relations, and working conditions in global clothing production chains — including women’s labor, workers’ rights, and the dignity of work.
Fashion as a field of class conflict, the unequal distribution of goods, and the responsibilities of transnational corporations.
Environmental justice — the ecological costs of textile production, greenwashing, and critiques of the “sustainable fashion” discourse.
Cultural, symbolic, and bodily justice — cultural appropriation, postcolonial perspectives on fashion, aesthetic norms and exclusion, and the (non)representation of gender, class, race, and disability in fashion.
Adaptive and inclusive fashion as an expression of justice for people with disabilities; clothing as an element of identity, consumer experiences, industry barriers (accessibility of physical stores and fitting rooms, lack of standard sizes), and 3D printing in the design of garments and garment components.
Fashion as a tool for the control and/or emancipation of the body.
Social movements and alternative practices — Fashion Revolution, slow fashion, circular fashion, local production, practices of resistance, and education for fashion justice.
Local and post-socialist perspectives — (in)justice and fashion in post-socialist countries, archives of textile industry memory, sewing practices, DIY, and community-based production as forms of resistance.
Theoretical and methodological approaches — justice in fashion from the perspectives of social philosophy, critical fashion studies, and qualitative, ethnographic, and visual research.

We welcome submissions in both Polish and English. Guidelines for preparing manuscripts for publication in Kultura i Społeczeństwo can be found at: https://czasopisma.isppan.waw.pl/kis/about/submissions

The guest editors of the issue are Dr. Kalina Kukiełko (kalina.kukielko@usz.edu.pl),
Dr. Aleksander Cywiński (aleksander.cywinski@usz.edu.pl), Prof. Ellen McKinney
(ecmckinney@ua.edu) and Dr. Tomasz Kasprzak (tomasz.kasprzak@us.edu.pl).

The issue is scheduled for publication in June 2027. Submissions will be accepted until the end of August 2026 and should be made exclusively through the journal’s website: https://czasopisma.isppan.waw.pl/kis