What do we care about? A Cross-Cultural Textbook for Undergraduate Students of Philosophical Ethics

deadline for submissions: 
February 2, 2021
full name / name of organization: 
Björn Freter
contact email: 

Call for Papers

for

What do we care about?

A Cross-Cultural Textbook for       

Undergraduate Students of Philosophical Ethics

 

Second Call for Papers

Special Call for Sections

Representing Philosophical Ethics from

Asia, South America, and Australia as well as from underrepresented groups from North America and Europe

 

Edited by

Dr. Björn Freter, Knoxville, USA

Dr. Elvis Imafidon, Ekpoma, Nigeria

Prof. Gunter Bombaerts, Eindhoven, Netherlands

Prof. Benda Hofmeyr, Pretoria, South Africa

Prof. Marie Eboh, Port Harcourt, Nigeria

 

Published with

OpenBook Publishers

 

 

Preliminary Remark

The editorial board has already begun the work on this project and received a variety of contributions. Those contributions addressed philosophical approaches from Africa, the global West and Asian. This is why we are particularly interested in contributions on the non-represented locations, like Australia, South American and Asia (so far only India is represented). We are also highly interested in representing philosophies from underrepresented groups with the global West (Europe, North America, Australia). Please let us know if you would like to contribute to regions already represented, we will then check if we can incorporate your ideas!

 

About the Book

Texts in ethics designed primarily for students should have four main focal points: exposing students to normative moral theories, the history of ethics and ethicists, the nature and major contents of applied ethics, and exposing students to the analysis of moral terms and questions of moral validation in meta-ethics. However, what is currently available in this regard are texts that provide a one-sided and narrow narrative of these focal points: the Western narrative. As it is becoming more obvious in academic philosophy such hegemony of knowledge in any area of philosophy is not only a fraud and disservice to humanity – deliberately or non-deliberately – but also results in the poverty of knowledge. This book is a bold attempt to remedy this and provide a comprehensive and broad perspective of ethics to undergraduate students. The book will indeed provide information on the four focal points mentioned above, but it will also

incorporate in a non-eurocentric, non-biased way of presenting traditions from Asia, Africa, North-America, South-America, Australia and Europe.

And it will

have a recurring section at the end of every chapter that will attempt to embed the respective ethical traditions into lived experience by asking (as reflected in the title): »What, exponent of tradition X, do you care about? What is an ethical issue dear to you? And what do you do to address it? What do you do to promote that which you care about?«

An extensive general introduction and specific short introductions to each section will be provided by the editors explaining the approach of the book in detail. The introduction will also address why a project like this is necessary and address the inglorious history of philosophy as a means of oppression.

 

About the Pedagogical Direction

We want to ensure that all forms of superiorism (like sexism, white supremacy, eurocentrism) will be strictly avoided. The book shall illuminate differences and at the same time explicitly stress that material differences are normatively irrelevant: a mere difference between two things does not imply that one of these two things is better or worse than the other. The book will further refrain from the use of frivolous (but very common) eurocentric approaches which, for instance, claim the birth of philosophy itself happened in ancient Greece and only there.

The editors want to ensure that both the contributors and in the references for further reading include philosophers from underrepresented groups (we will adhere to the suggestions of the Diversity Reading List, see: https://diversityreadinglist.org/teach/). The text will be optimized for instruction by including bolding of key terms, chapter summaries, suggested further readings, and discussion questions.

 

About the Style of the Contributions

The chapters shall be written in an accessible, jargon-free style with chapters lengths of about 3000 to 5000 words. The editors will ensure that the book will be written in an inclusive manner, for instance we wish to utilize gender-neutral language, usage of cultural references with appropriate explanations (and avoid to take western culture as leading culture), avoid stereotyping (for instance in explanatory example situations multiple perspectives will be incorporated), etc.

 

About the Publisher

Open Book Publishers is an independent, non-profit and scholar-led Press for the free dissemination of high-quality research. With over 2 million readers the world over Open Book Publishers is the main Open Access book publisher in the United Kingdom and one of the leading Open Access Presses internationally. For more details, please see: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/6/1.

 

About the submission, peer-reviewing and publishing process

Topics

We invite all scholars and researchers regardless of their academic background to provide us with their ideas. However, we are especially interested in contributions by underrepresented groups (see: https://diversityreadinglist.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DRL_Poster_ad.pdf) and on underrepresented themes and topics (for details see: https://www.apaonline.org/members/group.aspx?id=110430).

 

 

As stated in our outline above, we want to ensure to describe at least two ethical approaches from Asia, Africa, North-America, South-America, Australia and Europe. We are open to all ideas presenting the ethics of a certain place! You submit a detailed analysis of for instance the ethics of the Kyoto School or a more general approach on Japanese Ethics, or you may submit a discussion of the ethical foundations of the Yoruba people or an account of African Ethics in general (or, of course, discuss, if these generalizations are possible at all). Please keep in mind that this project aims at an undergraduate readership.

 

Submission

In case you wish to submit a proposal, please

  • send an email to both editors

Björn Freter: freterb@freenet.de or bfreterb@googlemail.com

Elvis Imafidon: elvismafi@yahoo.com

  • include your contact details in the email
  • a separate anonymous attachment (doc, docx, pdf or similar) with your proposal

 

Please make sure that your proposal takes the pedagogical outline described above (including the question »What do you care about?«) into account. Your proposal should be about one or two pages in length (excluding references, in case you wish to add those).

 

Ιf the proposed chapter is based on material published before and under copyright a permission from the original publisher will be required.

 

The deadline for submissions of proposals is the 15.2.2021.

 

Review

We will inform you as soon as possible about the acceptance/rejection of your submissions. At the latest we will get back to you two to three weeks after the deadline.

 

Once your proposal has been accepted for consideration, we ask you to write and submit the full manuscript.

 

Preparation of the Manuscript and Publication.

We would ask our contributors to submit their final manuscript within twelve months.

 

Once received, the editors and OpenBooks Publishers will be in charge of peer-review. They will send the final manuscript to two peer- reviewers for their comments and will ask referees to submit their report within three months wherever possible. On the basis of the referees’ reports the publisher and the editors will decide whether to approve the manuscript for publication. As a condition of acceptance, we’ll ask authors to consider referees’ recommendations, if any, to improve the manuscript. Depending on how substantial these revisions are, we may ask referees to read the final manuscript for any additional comments or questions they may have. A further condition of acceptance is that the manuscript has been proofread and styled according to our Style guide & manuscript presentation, and that if necessary, the manuscript has been copy-edited to ensure a high level of English.

The Style Guide for the manuscripts can be found here: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/section/86/1.