特邀主编杨国斌教授按：

月初去普林斯顿拜访社会学家谢宇教授，偶遇来自纽约大学的晓刚教授，相谈甚欢。谈到转型时代中做中国研究面临种种困难，研究者的处境十分尴尬，唏嘘不已。谢教授主编Chinese Journal of Sociology, 邀我客串编一期研究互联网和数字社会的专辑。我们决定以“面向希望的数字中国社会学”为题，向广大学人征稿。困难时期，更要看到希望。恰巧明年的ASA社会学年会也呼唤希望，主题是“交织的团结：建设希望、公正、快乐的社群”（“Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy”）。看到希望不是简单的乐观，不是没有批判精神的逢迎，而是从认识论角度重新思考理论、方法及学术，给正统的理性认识论，添一把火，注入一点情感，让我们的研究增添些共情，从而超越无望的怀疑和批判。请诸位不吝赐稿，共同探讨如何书写“面向希望的数字中国研究”。

Call for Papers:Toward a Hopeful Sociology of Digital China

Academic discourse on China is full of gloom and doom. In the name of critical analysis, much research output is engaged in the work of doubt, exposure, and denunciation. While critique has a long and august intellectual genealogy, scholars have recently pointed to its affinity to the state epistemology of suspicion in the Cold War, when the state apparatus engineered a mindset of suspecting everyone around as enemies, leading to a culture of suspicion (Castiglia, 2017). Wary of the persistence of orientalist thinking in China studies, postcolonial scholars have called for the re-orienting of "all the fields" (Vukovich, 2017), an intellectual trend that is also building momentum in general sociology and the social sciences more broadly (Go, 2016; Seth, 2021).

An academic discourse of suspicion and negation may be blind to human agency and empathy. At its extreme, it may breed fatalism and political apathy, and may feed into the contemporary media environment that is already awash with negation, hostility, and hate. Seeing the agency and diverse experiences of ordinary people is an act of recognition and care; it is to see hope. More than ever before, the contemporary historical conjuncture calls for a sociology of care and hope (Collins, 2000; Felski, 2015; Hodgson et al., 2017).

In this spirit, Chinese Journal of Sociology calls for submissions to our special issue “Toward a Hopeful Sociology of Digital China”. We invite theoretical and empirical studies on all aspects of ordinary people's digital practices and experiences, including (but not limited to):

Papers may employ quantitative, qualitative, historical, or mixed methods. Studies using the latest data are encouraged. We also welcome submissions that consider comparative studies between China and other countries.

【Guest Editor】

Guobin Yang，Grace Lee Boggs Professor of Communication and Sociology，University of Pennsylvania, USA

【Key Dates】

Full paper deadline: 2024.5.31

Full paper decision: 2024.8.31

Final camera-ready: 2024.12.31

Publication (estimated): 2025.4

Please submit a full manuscript to the CJS submission portal (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cjsocio) and choose “Special Issue” as the submission type. Check the “Instructions to Authors” (https://journals.sagepub.com/author-instructions/CHS) for more details about the paper format and submission process.

Selected studies will be published as a special issue, “Toward a Hopeful Sociology of Digital China” in Chinese Journal of Sociology in the spring of 2025.

We would greatly appreciate you spreading this call as widely as possible and considering contributing. If you have any questions, please get in touch with CJS@oa.shu.edu.cn.

For more information, please visit https://journals.sagepub.com/home/chs.