Founding Workshop

October 22–24, 2026 | Duke University | Hybrid Format

About the Journal

Care in Common is a new open-access, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of care in its social, cultural, and ecological dimensions. It is the journal of the international Revaluing Care in the Global Economy network, based at Duke University, which brings together scholars, practitioners, activists, and artists across six continents around a shared conviction: that care work remains structurally undervalued across the world, and that understanding why — and imagining otherwise — requires forms of inquiry that cross methodological, geographic, generational, and institutional lines. The journal proceeds from the premise that social, cultural, and ecological care are not separate domains but deeply entangled and takes that imbrication as an analytical and political commitment. Care in Common is fully open access, with no subscription fees, paywalls, or article-processing charges. It publishes two issues per year, each comprising three sections: refereed scholarly articles, writing from practitioners and activists, and creative work.

First Issue: Care Against Violence: Gender Violence, Reproductive Justice, and Social Reproduction

The issues of feminicidio and gender violence more broadly have formed a centerpiece of Latin American feminist activism since the first Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe in 1981 in Bogotá, galvanizing movements from Mexico to Argentina.  In 2015, the femicide of Chiara Páez brought thousands into the streets of Buenos Aires, launching what became known as the Ni Una Menos movement, which grew  across Argentina and across the region. Braiding together the issues of gender violence, reproductive justice, and social reproduction, widespread strikes and protests drew attention not only to violence but also to the conditions under which life is sustained: labor, debt, abortion, territory, migration, kinship, and the daily work of keeping people alive.

In the intervening decade, rights have been won and rolled back throughout the region — building and dismantling care infrastructures, granting and rescinding reproductive rights, and criminalizing feminicidio de jure but more often not de facto. Movements have shifted scale, fractured, and in some cases been absorbed by the institutions they set out to pressure. This issue asks not only what these movements achieved in their moment of visibility, but what they are constructing now — under backlash, under austerity, under ecological devastation, under the slow erosion of what was gained.

Feminist, transfeminist, Indigenous, and grassroots movements across the region have long understood that violence — against women, against feminized bodies, against racialized communities, against land and territory — is inseparable from the organization of reproductive life. The struggle for abortion access and reproductive justice is not separate from the struggle against femicide, environmental destruction, criminalization, or the defense of care infrastructures. They are different fronts of the same fight over who controls the conditions under which life is sustained.

This issue exploreshow Latin American feminist movements have transformed the language of care by refusing to separate bodily autonomy from social reproduction, ecological survival, and cultural memory. Accompaniment networks, community kitchens, territorial defense, mutual aid, migrant solidarities, anti-femicide assemblies, and abortion support networks are forms of political invention. They show that care is a terrain of struggle over bodies, territories, labor, memory, and the future.

The issue also asks what this history makes visible beyond Latin America. In the United States and Europe, debates on reproductive justice, gender violence, migration, and care are still too often divided into separate institutional languages: law, health, family policy, environmental crisis, cultural rights, labor.Latin American feminist movements offer another grammar. They show how social, ecological, and cultural care are bound together, and how violence operates precisely by breaking those relations apart.

We are interested in work that holds together what is too often separated: the analysis of violence and the analysis of care; the critique of institutions and the study of what movements build outside them; the regional specificity of Latin American feminist organizing and its resonances elsewhere. We especially welcome contributions that do not treat Latin America as a field of examples, but as a site of conceptual and political elaboration from which broader debates on care, reproductive justice, backlash, and social reproduction can be rethought.

Contributions might address:

• trajectories of anti-femicide mobilizations over the past decade, including fractures, reversals, and processes of institutionalization
• abortion struggles and the uneven geographies of what was won and what was lost
• care and survival practices under extraction, environmental violence, displacement, and militarization
• social reproduction organized through informal labor, mutual aid, accompaniment networks, and non-domestic kinship
• the relation between feminist movements, legal reform, penal power, and criminalization
• Indigenous, Afro-descendant, migrant, and transfeminist practices of ecological, social, and cultural care
• historical continuities and discontinuities between earlier feminist struggles and the present moment of backlash

The Founding Workshop

The first issue of Care in Common will be assembled through a founding workshop at Duke University, October 22–24, 2026, in hybrid format. Six papers will be selected for presentation and sustained collective discussion across two and a half days, with the aim of strengthening contributions before publication. Papers presented at the workshop will constitute the refereed articles section of Issue 1. Please do not submit a proposal if you do not plan to publish in this issue. Authors will retain the rights to publish their works elsewhere, but we anticipate sending all research papers out for peer review for Care in Common.

Formats and Submission Guidelines

I. Refereed Articles (Workshop and Submission)

We welcome original scholarly research, theoretical contributions, comparative studies, and methodological interventions across disciplines. Articles typically run between 8,000 and 10,000 words, including notes and references. All refereed articles are subject to double-blind peer review. Submissions are welcome in English, Spanish, or Portuguese; the journal will provide AI-assisted translation in collaboration with authors. Six papers will be selected for the founding w by orkshop, with participation open to all; additional submissions will be considered for publication in the issue. Please submit an abstract of 300–400 words and a short bio of 100 words.

II. Care in Practice

A dedicated space for those whose primary engagement with care is practical and political: care workers and their organizations, community organizers, policy advocates, educators, disability activists, and others working at the frontlines of care. Scholarly conventions not required; we seek clarity of purpose, authenticity of experience, and a genuine contribution to collective understanding. Essays, accounts of campaigns or struggles, organizational histories, collective statements, or interviews, typically between 1,500 and 3,000 words. Collaborative submissions particularly welcome.

III. Creative Materials

Poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, visual art, photography, graphic work, and experimental forms engaging care — and, in this issue, the experience of living under conditions of violence and building otherwise. We seek work of genuine artistic merit and welcome both established and emerging voices. No strict length limits for written submissions. Visual work as high-resolution files; no reproduction fees.

Abstracts (refereed articles): August 1, 2026

Full papers (after the workshop): December 1, 2026

Care in Practice and Creative submissions: December 1, 2026

Workshop: October 22–24, 2026 | Duke University | Hybrid

All submissions must be original work not previously published and not under simultaneous consideration elsewhere.

Submissions and inquiries: revaluingcarelab@duke.edu

A journal of the Revaluing Care in the Global Economy network

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