CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
A Special Issue of The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI)
THE GLOBAL DRUMBEAT: PERMEATIONS OF HIP HOP ACROSS DIVERSE INFORMATION WORLDS
The work of library and information science (LIS) professionals can be likened to the work of DJs in Hip Hop culture. For example, both DJs and LIS workers curate content as an act of service that adds meaning and context to peoples' lives.
When Hip Hop artist D-Nice began DJ'ing virtual sets on Instagram Live at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was not only providing joy in midst of a widespread sense of isolation, grief and loss, but through his #clubquarantine we witnessed the unique power of Hip Hop to permeate and permute across diverse information worlds in an amoeba-like fashion. In the scientific sense, amoebas do not form into a single taxonomic group; instead, they are found in every major lineage of eukaryotes. Like an amoeba, Hip Hop has a unique ability to extend, retract, and most notably to reshape, the normative behaviors that occur in diverse information worlds.
The concept of an 'information world' is closely linked to Alfreda Chapman's theory of normative behavior (Burnett, Besant, and Chatman, 2001), which examines information behavior in the context of definable social groupings of people, or "small worlds." Hip Hop essentially started as a small world developed by Black and Latino youth during the early-1970s on the East Coast of the United States that included arts, media, cultural movement and community. Fifty years later, Hip Hop has expanded and evolved in ways that give it a global border-crossing impact that is unparalleled among other subcultures that similarly started with youth, such as Punk or Manga.
The crossover appeal of Hip Hop has permeated everything from mainstream television advertisements like The Kroger Company's playing of Flo Rida's song "Low" to tell customers how to get the lowest prices on fresh products, to politicians like President Barack Obama gesturing to brush his shoulders off to give a nod to an urban colloquialism popularized by rapper Jay-Z. The vestiges of Hip Hop can be found in every major modern culture well beyond Urban Black America, from Asia to Europe, South America, and every corner of the earth.
In service to and honor of Hip Hop, this special issue invites submissions that hold space for the contributions, controversies and other insights that this cultural movement has on the way LIS professionals understand and study diverse information worlds. We welcome a broad spectrum of submissions that touch on the following themes:
- Intellectual debates about Hip Hop that intersect with hallmark themes and theoretical constructs in LIS
- New models that use Hip Hop to examine hallmark themes and theoretical constructs in LIS (see e.g., Kumasi, 2018)
- Case studies of culturally relevant Hip Hop arts-based programming in libraries
- Exemplars of partnerships between LIS organizations ana diversity of youth focused community organizations
- Examinations of Hip Hop expressions of literacy in the literate lives of people across diverse demographic categories
- Explorations of the how the shifts on today's new media ecology (the internet, digital media production tools portable media and social gaming environments) have been shaped by Hip Hop culture
- Explorations of Hip hop literacies and their intersections with African oral traditions and modern poetry spoken word traditions
- Historical, ethical, political developments and debates around sampling, intellectual property and breaking norms about traditional notions of copyright
- Hip Hop Based education curricula, information literacy and library instructional strategies and resources
References
Burnett, G., Besant, M., & Chatman, E. A. (2001). Small worlds: Normative behavior in virtual communities and feminist bookselling. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 52(7), 536.
Kumasi, K. D. (2018). InFLOmation: A model for exploring information behavior through Hip Hop. The Journal of Research on Libraries and Young Adults, 9(1). http://www.yalsa.ala.org/
We invite proposals for the Articles section, as well as shorter submissions for the Special sections: the latter may include opinion/viewpoint pieces, interviews, work in progress reports from the field, doctoral projects, and theory-to-practice essays. We are also interested in creative non-fiction, photographic essays, and poetry.
This issue will be guest edited by:
Kafi Kumasi, Associate Professor, Wayne State University, USA (ak4901@wayne.edu)
And co-edited by:
Kendra Moyer, MA, MLIS Candidate Wayne State University, USA (cs8840@wayne.edu)
Submission Process – Important Dates
This special issue of IJIDI is scheduled for publication in January 2022. The following submission timeline applies:
31 March 2021: Abstracts and Expressions of interest (name, role and affiliation: extended abstracts of up to 1,000 words for full research papers/articles, and 250-500 words for contributions to the special section). Please email your submissions to: ak4901@wayne.edu.
01 May 2021: Notification of acceptances
31 July 2021: Full papers due (peer reviewing August – December)
January 2022: Special issue published
Author Guidelines and Peer Review Process
Please consult IJIDI Author Guidelines and IJIDI Peer Review Process at: https://jps.library.utoronto.
Any questions related to this issue should be addressed to: ak4901@wayne.edu.
