Cultural Sociology
Cultural Sociology is an official journal of the British Sociological Association. It is a fully peer reviewed international journal that publishes original research and review articles concerning the sociological analysis of culture.
"With the launch of Cultural Sociology, the renewal of sociological interest in culture will finally find a central and global forum. I am convinced that Cultural Sociology will rapidly attract the best work within cultural sociology/sociology of culture, and establish itself quickly as the leading journal within the field" Prof. Rudi Laermans, Centre for Sociology of Culture, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Cultural Sociology is the first journal explicitly to be dedicated to the sociological comprehension of cultural matters. Now firmly established, it acts as a key meeting point for sociological analysts of culture coming from a wide range of theoretical and methodological positions, and from a great variety of national contexts. It is a locale where different analytical traditions in cultural sociology and the sociology of culture can engage with and learn from each other.
Topic coverage includes:
- Cultural sociology and sociology of culture
- Paradigms of sociological analysis of culture
- Relations between cultural sociology, cultural studies and other disciplines
- Methodologies of cultural analysis
- Sociology of cultural production, distribution and consumption
- Contemporary cultural forces and trends
- Cultural creativity and innovation
- Cultural reproduction
- Sociology of historical cultures
- Sociology of art and aesthetics
- Visual, oral and aural cultures
- Sociology of cultural forms and cultural media
- Sociology of performance
- 'Race', ethnicity and culture
- Class and culture
- Gendered cultures
- 'High cultures' and 'low cultures'
- Everyday cultures
- Culture, globalization and globality
- Local, regional, national, international and transnational cultures
- Culture and the life-course
- Tastes and lifestyles
- Cultural power and resistance
- Teaching cultural sociology
- Cultural sociology of 'nature' and the 'environment'
- Cultural sociology of sustainability
- Cultural sociology of health and medicine
Electronic Access:
All issues of Cultural Sociology are available to browse online
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Cultural Sociology publishes empirically oriented, theoretically sophisticated, methodologically rigorous papers, which explore from a broad set of sociological perspectives a diverse range of socio-cultural forces, phenomena, institutions and contexts.
The objective of Cultural Sociology is to publish original articles which advance the field of cultural sociology and the sociology of culture. The journal seeks to consolidate, develop and promote the arena of sociological understandings of culture, and is intended to be pivotal in defining both what this arena is like currently and what it could become in the future.
Cultural Sociology will publish innovative, sociologically-informed work concerned with cultural processes and artefacts, broadly defined. Papers dealing with empirically-existing cultural phenomena, analysed and researched in theoretically and methodologically sophisticated ways, are particularly encouraged. Papers that concentrate on more 'empirical', or more 'methodological', or more 'theoretical' issues in cultural sociology and the sociology of culture, are also welcomed.
The journal aims to facilitate fruitful dialogue and cooperation between scholars from different national contexts and between those working within different analytic and methodological paradigms. Although focussed on sociological contributions to cultural analysis, the journal will also encourage discussions between sociologists and others working in cognate fields such as cultural studies, gender studies, postcolonial studies, art history, history, literary and film studies, human geography and so on.
The journal is keen to encourage submissions from both established and emerging scholars. Book reviews will allow readers of the journal to keep abreast of important new contributions to the area.
| Nadya Jaworsky | Masaryk University, Czech Republic |
| Ming-Cheng Lo | University of California, Davis, USA |
| Marcus Morgan | University of Bristol, UK |
| Christopher Thorpe | University of Exeter, UK |
| Rin Ushiyama | Queen's University Belfast, UK |
| Lyn Spillman | University of Notre Dame, USA |
| Laura Harris | University of Southampton, UK |
| David Inglis | Helsinki University, Finland |
| Kimberly Allen | University of Leeds, UK |
| Vibha Arora | Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, India |
| Anson Au | The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong |
| Patricia A. Banks | Mount Holyoke College, USA |
| Shyon Baumann | University of Toronto, Canada |
| Elisabeth Becker Topkara | Heidelberg University, Germany |
| David Beer | University of York, UK |
| Andy Bennett | Griffith University, Australia |
| Emma Casey | University of York, UK |
| Isabelle Darmon | The University of Edinburgh, UK |
| Alessandro Gandini | University of Milan, Italy |
| Sadia Habib | University of Manchester, UK |
| Laurie Hanquinet | University of York, UK |
| Morteza Hashemi | University of Nottingham, UK |
| Mervyn Horgan | University of Guelph, Canada |
| John Ewing Hughson | University of Central Lancashire, UK |
| Paul K. Jones | The Australian National University, Australia |
| Emmaleena Käkelä | University of Strathclyde, UK |
| Kobe De Keere | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Kristina Kolbe | University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Agnes Ku | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong |
| Kelvin E. Y. Low | National University of Singapore, Singapore |
| Siobhan McAndrew | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Ali Meghji | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Kate Moles | Cardiff University, UK |
| Christian Morgner | University of Sheffield, UK |
| Kate Nash | Goldsmiths College, London, UK |
| Stephen Ostertag | Tulane University, USA |
| Matthias Revers | University of Leeds, UK |
| Agnes Rocamora | University of the Arts London, UK |
| Maria Rovisco | University of Leeds, UK |
| Nick Stevenson | University of Nottingham, UK |
| Rodanthi Tzanelli | University of Leeds, UK |
| Tomás Undurraga | Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile |
| Simone Varriale | University of Lincoln, UK |
| Dirk vom Lehn | King’s College London, UK |
| Galen Watts | University of Waterloo, Canada |
| Nancy Weiss Hanrahan | George Mason University, USA |
| Eric Woods | University of Plymouth, UK |
| Jeffrey C. Alexander | Yale University, USA |
| Ates Altinordu | Sabanci University, Turkey |
| Guy Bellavance | Université du Québec, Canada |
| Tony Bennett | Western Sydney University, Australia |
| Michael Billig | Loughborough University, UK |
| Bethany Bryson | James Madison University, USA |
| Karen Cerulo | Rutgers University |
| Daniel Dayan | Centre national de la recherche scientifique, France |
| Tia DeNora | Exeter University, UK |
| Ron Eyerman | University of Lund, Sweden |
| Gary Alan Fine | Northwestern University |
| Roger Friedland | University of California, USA |
| Josh Gamson | Unviersity of San Fransisco, USA |
| Wendy Griswold | Northwestern University, USA |
| Alois Hahn | University of Trier, Germany |
| Antoine Hennion | Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Paris, France |
| Michèle Lamont | Harvard University, USA |
| Jan Marontate | Simon Fraser University, Canada |
| Graziella Moraes Silva | Graduate Institute Geneva, Switzerland |
| Chandra Mukerji | University of California, San Diego, USA |
| Diane Reay | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Mimi Sheller | Drexel University, USA |
| Helen Thomas | University of the Arts, London, UK |
| Anna Lisa Tota | University of Rome III, Italy |
| Matthias Varul | Independent Scholar, UK |
| Alan Warde | Manchester University, UK |
| Helena Wulff | Stockholm University, Sweden |
| Shunya Yoshimi | University of Tokyo, Japan |
| Barbie Zelizer | University of Pennsylvania, USA |
| Viviana Zelizer | Princeton University, USA |
| Eviatar Zerubavel | Rutgers University, USA |
This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics
Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/culturalsociology to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned.
Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Cultural Sociology will be reviewed.
There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this Journal. Open Access options are available - see section 3.3 below.
As part of the submission process you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the Journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere. Please see our guidelines on prior publication and note that Cultural Sociology may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting (contact details are at the end of these guidelines) and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.
If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.
If you have any questions about publishing with Sage, please visit the Sage Journal Solutions Portal
- What do we publish?
1.1 Aims & Scope
1.2 Article types
1.3 Writing your paper
1.4 Book Reviews - Editorial policies
2.1 Peer review policy
2.2 Authorship
2.3 Acknowledgements
2.4 Funding
2.5 Research Data - Publishing policies
3.1 Publication ethics
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
3.3 Open access and author archiving - Preparing your manuscript
4.1 Formatting
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
4.3 Supplemental material
4.4 Reference style
4.5 English language editing services - Submitting your manuscript
5.1 ORCID
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
5.3 Permissions - On acceptance and publication
6.1 Sage Production
6.2 Online First publication
6.3 Access to your published article
6.4 Promoting your article - Further information
Before submitting your manuscript to Cultural Sociology, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.
Articles must be between 5,000 and 10,000 words in length, including footnotes, tables and references. Include a word count of the main article, (the count including all notes, tables and references), and put it in the same document as the abstract (see below). Articles of more than 10,000 words will not be accepted into the reviewing process, and will be returned to the author.
The Sage Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources. Sage Author Services also offers authors a variety of ways to improve and enhance their article including English language editing, plagiarism detection, and video abstract and infographic preparation.
1.3.1 Make your article discoverable
When writing up your paper, think about how you can make it discoverable. The title, keywords and abstract are key to ensuring readers find your article through search engines such as Google. For information and guidance on how best to title your article, write your abstract and select your keywords, have a look at this page on the Gateway: How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online
1.4 Book Reviews
Cultural Sociology publishes book reviews. Please see author guidelines here.
Cultural Sociology uses double-anonymize peer review, which requires that manuscripts be fully anonymised. If manuscripts contain any identifying information when they are submitted, they have to be corrected before they can be sent out for review.
All parties who have made a substantive contribution to the article should be listed as authors. Principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits should be based on the relative scientific or professional contributions of the individuals involved, regardless of their status. A student is usually listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that substantially derives from the student’s dissertation or thesis.
Please note that AI chatbots, for example ChatGPT, should not be listed as authors. For more information see the policy on Use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools.
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.
Please supply any personal acknowledgements separately to the main text to facilitate anonymous peer review.
2.4 Declaration of conflicting interests
Cultural Sociology encourages authors to include a declaration of any conflicting interests and recommends you review the good practice guidelines on the Sage Journal Author Gateway
The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the Sage Research Data policy pages.
Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:
- share your research data in a relevant public data repository
- include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
- cite this data in your research
Sage is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the Sage Author Gateway
3.1.1 Plagiarism
Cultural Sociology and Sage take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.
3.1.2 Prior publication
If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a Sage journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the Sage Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Editor at the address given below.
3.2 Contributor's publishing agreement
Before publication, Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the Sage Author Gateway
3.3 Open access and author archiving
Cultural Sociology offers optional open access publishing via the Sage Choice programme and Open Access agreements, where authors can publish open access either discounted or free of charge depending on the agreement with Sage. Find out if your institution is participating by visiting Open Access Agreements at Sage. For more information on Open Access publishing options at Sage please visit Sage Open Access. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit Sage’s Author Archiving and Re-Use Guidelines and Publishing Policies.
4. Preparing your manuscript for submission
The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. LaTeX files are also accepted. Word and (La)Tex templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.
As Cultural Sociology operates a double-anonymize peer review, please anonymise all manuscripts before submission. Guidelines on anonymisation can be found here.
Please submit an accompanying cover letter with your manuscript, outlining anything you wish to bring to the Editors’ attention, which is not seen by reviewers. If you are submitting a revised article after a round of reviews, please include a description of the amendments that you have made. This may be seen by the Editors and the reviewers.
4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit Sage’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines
Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online regardless of whether or not these illustrations are reproduced in colour in the printed version. For specifically requested colour reproduction in print, you will receive information regarding the costs from Sage after receipt of your accepted article.
This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files
Harris (2000) or (Harris, 2000)
Jones (1995, 1990)
Anderson (2001: 55-7)
(Smith, 1997, cited in Gibson, 2005: 41)
Use 'et al.' when citing in the text a work by more than two authors, e.g. Roberts et al. (1991).
Use the letters a, b, c and so on to distinguish citations of different works by the same author in the same year, e.g. Arluke (1991a, 1991b).
All references cited in the text are to be included in a reference list at the end of the paper, which should be situated after any endnotes. References are to be listed alphabetically. They should appear in this form:
Articles in journals:
Erlmann V (1996) The Aesthetics of the Global Imagination: Reflections On World Music In The 1990s. Public Culture 8(3): 55-75.
Please give page extents for journal articles.
Books:
Fowler B (1997) Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory. London: Sage.
Articles in books:
Maier JB (1984) Contribution to a Critique of Critical Theory. In: Marcus J and Tar Z (eds) Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, pp. 44-59.
For further information on Reference style, please consult the Sage Style Guide.
4.5 English language editing services
Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using Sage Language Services. Visit Sage Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.
Cultural Sociology is hosted on Sage Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/culturalsociology to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created. For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.
As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.
We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID IDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID ID then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.
If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.
5.2 Information required for completing your submission
You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. . The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).
Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the Sage Author Gateway
6. On acceptance and publication
Your Sage Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be sent by PDF to the corresponding author via our editing portal Sage Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate.
Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the Sage Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.
6.3 Access to your published article
Sage provides authors with online access to their final article.
Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The Sage Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.
Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Cultural Sociology editorial office.