Theme: Doing and Undoing “Family” in Uncertain Times 

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NEOS welcomes submissions for the Fall 2022 issue: Doing and Undoing “Family” in Uncertain Times. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, refugee displacement, border detention, the effects of climate change, U.S. attacks against transgender youth, and the confirmation of unmarked child graves at former Indian Residential Schools, family continues to be a site of uncertainty, struggle, and hope for children and youth. This upcoming issue will reposition classical anthropological questions focused on the formation of family and cultivation of kinship by applying contemporary, critical, and interdisciplinary lenses toward how family is done and undone in highly uncertain and unequal times. We seek pieces that explore the constructions, practices, beliefs, and values that lead to and maintain family formations and configurations and how these may be influenced by historical, cultural, political, and economic structures. We invite pieces on the following themes within family and kinship studies, and we encourage submissions that focus on the perspectives of children, youth, and those who closely engage with them: 

1. Reproductive Inequalities, Justice, and Care

• • Reproductive issues in the work of forming families, specifically considering reproductive workers such as midwives and doulas
  • Reproductive justice and injustice according to racialized, gendered, classed, age-based, or ability-based disparities
  • The distribution of care work within and between households, including the ways the family members may differently enact care and protection

2. Mobility, Movement, and Configurations

• • • Childhood mobility and child circulation in and between households in local or transnational contexts including fosterage and adoption
    • The formation of families through non-heteronormative and non-biocentric means including “fictive” kinship, queer kinship, non-plenary parentage, and informal fosterage
    • Siblinghood and gender

3. Violence and Persistence

• • • • Intergenerational trauma that situates contemporary familial life in historical contexts of injustice or inequity
      • Forms of and responses to family separation resulting from interaction with state systems such as immigration and child welfare services
      • Family reunification following separation

We invite short-form original research articles (1,200 words max, excluding references) that address the issue’s theme. NEOS also welcomes short pieces (1,200 words max, excluding references) on scholarship and applied research that uplifts racial, economic, and social justice and the dismantling of systemic oppression, for a dedicated standing column on anti-racism and equity in child and youth studies. 

NEOS is an open-access publication of the Anthropology of Children and Youth Interest Group (ACYIG) of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). We publish research on childhood and youth from scholars working across the four fields of anthropology, as well from those interdisciplinary fields in conversation with anthropological theories and methods. Articles published in NEOS undergo a double-blind peer-review process.  

The deadline for submissions is August 16, 2022 (end of the day). Rolling submissions prior to August 16 are also welcome.  While not required, authors are encouraged to submit a brief message about their intent to submit to the Co-Editors by August 2, 2022. The NEOS Editorial Team may be reached at acyig.editor@gmail.com Visit our website for further information on NEOS, as well as submission guidelines and instructions. You may access the submission portal for the Fall 2022 Issue here.