Dan Hirschman || Late last month, the senior editors of the journal Theory & Society announced their collective resignation. Springer, which owns the journal, had decided to replace the existing editor-in-chief and take the journal in a new direction without consulting the existing editorial team. These resignations were soon followed (on January 4th) by the resignations of the rest of the editorial board (the corresponding editors). The full text of both resignation letters is below.
The new editors-in-chief were then announced and recently posted a statement of goals which might be politely described as “controversial” and, at a minimum, very counter to the prior focus of the journal.
Today, the new editorial board was listed on the journal’s website. The timing suggests that this editorial board had already been recruited before the prior editorial team had resigned en masse. This timeline also raises the question of how much the incoming editorial board members knew and when. I would like to invite any of the incoming editorial board to speak to the process by which this transition (takeover?) occurred. Specifically, I would like to invite them to answer the following questions:
1. When were you asked to serve on the new editorial board? What was the pitch you were given when you were asked?
2. Did you the know the previous editorial board was not consulted about the change in editors?
3. Do you stand behind the statement of goals released by the new editors?
4. Given the way the transition happened, do you intend to stay on the board?
Resignation letters:
Announcement regarding Theory and Society
We wish to notify section members that as of January 1, 2024, Theory and Society is under new editorial management.
Up to now, the journal has been structured as a team of senior editors working in accord with the collaborative model and intellectual vision of Alvin Gouldner when he founded the journal in 1974. In mid-December 2023, the current team ofsenior editors (the undersigned) was told by the journal’s present owners, the Springer Publishing Company, that they had opted for a “completely different view” of the journal going forward.
We also wish to let section members know that we ourselves have resigned from the journal. We will no longer be involved at any stage of the editorial process. Henceforth, all editorial decisions will be made by the new editors. We have no idea who the new editors will be.
In ending our affiliation with the journal, we wish to acknowledge and express thanks on behalf ofthe social-scientific community to the journal’s Executive Editor Janet Gouldner and Managing Editor Karen Lucas for their many years ofdedication to Theory and Society.
Charles Camic (Northwestern)
Nitsan Chorev (Brown)
Gil Eyal (Columbia)
Neil Gross (Colby)
Greta Krippner (Michigan)
Mara Loveman (Berkeley)
Chandra Mukerji (UCSD)
Monica Prasad (Johns Hopkins)
David Swartz (Boston University)
Ivan Szelenyi (NYU)
CORRESPONDING EDITORS OF THEORY AND SOCIETY RESIGNATION
January 4, 2024
Dear Kevin McCaffree, Jonathan Turner, and Esther Otten:
We write as Corresponding Editors of Theory &Society to collectively tender our resignations.
We did not reach this decision lightly. We take this step because of Springer Nature’s decision to choose a new Executive Editor(s) to replace Janet Gouldner without consulting the journal’s community of Senior and Corresponding Editors. Springer Nature’s unyielding position on this was a clear violation of our profession’s academic norms and standards and was fundamentally at odds with the spirit of the journal. Given our long service and dedication to the journal, we were extremely disappointed that at no point in the publisher’s effort to install a new Executive Editor was a single one of the Senior Editors (nor, to our knowledge, any of the Corresponding Editors) consulted regarding their vision for the future of the journal. Additionally, their attempts to have input into the process of selecting new leadership for the journal were repeatedly rebuffed. We are unaware of any other publisher handling its relationship with an editorial board insuch a dismissive fashion.
For us, this is not only about Theory and Society, but more broadly, the precedent of for-profit owners of academic journals unilaterally installing their selected editors. At stake here is how much control we academics are willing to give to for-profit publishers who have so much influence over our professional trajectories on the one hand and rely on our uncompensated labor on the other.
We emphasize that we are not criticizing the choice of Professors McCaffree and Turner as Editors-in-Chief. Our objections are to the process of selecting new leadership, not the leaders chosen.
Given these recent developments, we have lost confidence that Theory and Society will continue to advance the intellectual project founded by Alvin Gouldner five decades ago, a continuing project that has engaged and excited us over the years. We see no alternative but to resign from our role with the journal.
Sincerely (in alphabetical order),
Javier Auyero (University of Texas Austin)
Tim Bartley (Georgetown University)
Jean Beaman (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Karida Brown (Emory University)
Miguel A Centeno (Princeton)
Katie E. Corcoran (West Virginia University)
Claire Decoteau (University of Illinois at Chicago)
Paul DiMaggio (NYU)
Eva Fodor (Central European University)
Harriet Friedmann (University of Toronto)
Marion Fourcade (UC Berkeley)
Roger Friedland (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Marco Garrido (University of Chicago)
Alya Guseva (Boston University)
Jack A. Goldstone (George Mason University)
Josée Johnston (University of Toronto)
Christian Joppke (University of Bern)
Jaeeun Kim (University of Michigan)
Krishnan Kumar (University of Virginia)
Magali Sarfatti Larson (Temple University)
Omar Lizardo (UCLA)
Tey Meadow (Columbia University)
Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra (UC San Diego)
John N Robinson III (Princeton U)
Chris Tilly (UCLA)
Tianna S. Paschel (UC Berkeley)
Michael Schudson (Columbia University)
Bruce Western (Columbia University)
Marina Zaloznaya (University of Iowa)
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