Special Issue on Global Health in Studies in Comparative International Development

Special Issue on Global Health in Studies in Comparative International Development: While the coronavirus has focused public attention on the problems of global health as never before, the study of global health has frequently taken place on the margins of the disciplines of sociology and political science. Yet, disciplinary social sciences bring theoretical lenses, methodological concerns, and references to literature that often make these contributions quite distinct from traditional public health approaches. What do disciplinary social sciences have to contribute to the study of politics, power, and inequality in global health? How does the inclusion of voices and findings from the Global South unsettle foundational theory that social science disciplines in the Global North take for granted? What can the disciplines gain by moving comparative study of health problems, particularly those in the Global South, from the periphery to the fore? This special issue on global health seeks to critically challenge the absence of race and racism in mainstream international relations theory (Dionne and Turkmen 2020) and the “epistemic parochialism” of major social science disciplines (Farber and Harris 2022) by highlighting important new work in the emergent sociologies and political sciences of global health (Noy 2019; Harris and White 2019; McInnes, Lee, and Youde 2019). Submissions to the special issue need not focus on COVID-19 and may consider the politics, power relations, and inequality of other important (or neglected) public health issues, including but not limited to global health governance, intellectual property issues, comparative healthcare access and/or health disparities, non-communicable disease, and misinformation and the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Interesting paper topics might examine, for example, international organizations through race and/or gender lenses; could demonstrate how the domain of global health offers new ways for thinking about foundational concepts like the developmental state; might explore how new technologies, institutions, and actors are shifting power equilibria in global health; could critically explore the role of powerful actors, such as pharmaceutical companies and private foundations, that have frequently been ignored by social scientists studying global health politics; or could provide evidence that challenges our understanding of major theories from policy diffusion to the fundamental cause theory. The review process will prioritize (1) submissions that have wide-ranging impact on and/or force rethinking of major theories the disciplines take for granted; (2) submissions with novel findings and/or methodological approaches that are ideally comparative in focus; (3) submissions from researchers in the Global South; and (4) submissions which draw on cases that have not historically received a great deal of attention in the sociology and political science canons. Submissions from outside sociology and political science are welcome, including from researchers who have interdisciplinary training and/or work in interdisciplinary spaces, but should clearly articulate how they speak to the above themes. Word count for all submissions should not exceed 10,000 words including notes, references, tables and figures. The abstract is not included in the word count. Longer submissions will not be considered. Authors may include further material in an online appendix.