All that is Solid … is a radical blog that seeks to promote a future beyond capital's social universe. "All that is solid melts into air" (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 'The Communist Manifesto', 1848).

Ana C. Dinerstein (University of Bath), Gregory Schwartz (University of Bath) and Graham Taylor (University of the West of England)

Brief: As the Editors of the 2014 Annual Special Issue of Sociology (http://soc.sagepub.com), a journal of the British Sociological Association (http://www.britsoc.co.uk), would like to invite you to submit a paper, and extended book review essay, or a theoretical intervention that does one of two broadly defined things:

· Explore how sociology can contribute to a better understanding of (the lived experience of) the global economic crisis; and/or

· Reflect on how social processes and movements confronting the crisis can inspire a new sociological imagination.

Our aim is to bring together contributions that:

· Bridge disciplines

· Unsettle conventions

· Cosmopolitanise epistemologies

· Renew sociology

We welcome contributions on relevant topics in any field of social science engaging with sociological research, from early career and established academics, and from those outside academia.

Rationale: The Editorial Board of Sociology considered a high number of proposals in response to the tender for the Special Issue of the journal in 2014. Our proposal, titled ‘Sociology and the Global Economic Crisis’ was selected as the successful submission. The Special Issue will address the urgent need to deconstruct and interrogate the formulation and reality of the global economic crisis. Additionally, it will systematically and critically investigate the specifically social processes underpinning its development and intensification.

Our aim in this proposal has been to tackle the challenge confronting the social sciences by the current economic crisis, in that there has largely been a failure to translate a quotidian reality of crisis into adequate forms of knowledge. While there has been discussion of ‘the crisis’, or ‘austerity’, of growing poverty, precarity, unemployment, and proletarianisation, there have been severe limitations in the disciplines of social science to engage with their object of knowledge in a way that seriously rethinks the epistemological and methodological assumptions of such knowledge. In short, the emergence of the current crisis has tended to highlight serious limits to the sociological imagination. Rethinking the ‘crisis’ could facilitate the renewal of sociology as an intellectual force in the public sphere, and imbue sociology with a critical or radical force that has been missing in recent decades.

With the explicit aims of the special issue to bridge disciplines, unsettle conventions and cosmopolitanise epistemologies, we see the contribution of critical Marxist theorists as paramount. Why? Above all, by asking authors to reflect on how social relations of production are confronted and rethought by various (new) movements and (new) forms of politics, and how modes of protest are not only confronting the political-cultural and class changes, but how social mobilisation itself nurtures epistemological innovation.

Queries: The full paper should be submitted by the 31 August 2013. The articles will be peer reviewed following the journal’s usual procedures. The special issue is to be published in October 2014. To discuss initial ideas, seek editorial advice, or discuss a specific paper, please contact the Special Issue Editors by email on sociology.specialissue.2014@gmail.com