Presentation of the journal
Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods is a peer-reviewed, bilingual, interdisciplinary, and international journal. Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods focuses on three areas of research: the arts, culture, and ideas. Contributions are not limited to the most recognized artistic and cultural forms; they also examine symbolic goods in the broader sense, including political ideas, amateur practices, working-class cultural output, digital productions, media discourse, and lifestyle markers (clothing, housing, food, etc.). The journal addresses cultural activity as a collective production involving multiple interests. This means refraining from limiting analysis to the traditional figures of the 'artist,' 'author,' or 'scholar,' and expanding our scope to include all persons and institutions that contribute in some form to the production, (unequal) diffusion, (re)definitions, and appropriation of symbolic goods.
Biens Symboliques / Symbolic Goods welcomes input from a variety of disciplines in human and social science. Emphasis is placed on consistency of approaches and points of view on the arts, literature, cultural practices, and ideas, rather than on disciplinary affiliations per se. Though theoretical thinking is welcome, the journal seeks primarily to give exposure to empirical research, regardless of the methods of investigation used (archival research, ethnography, statistics, discourse analysis, image analysis, etc.).
Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods is a digital-only half-yearly journal, offering readers open access to all papers. This choice supports the free circulation of research that is for the most part publicly funded. Our blog, published on the Hypotheses platform alongside the journal, will be used to enhance this circulation, by offering pre-publications and complementary material to the papers published in our issues, and to put our editorial and scientific boards, authors, and our readers in touch with each other. Our target audience is not only made up of academics: we also want the journal to be relevant to professionals in the cultural sector, teachers, artists, and any other interested persons.
French-language social science research on symbolic goods also tends to suffer from a lack of international exposure. That is why we have decided to publish articles in French and in their English translations (or the other way around), which is also a way to emphasize the process of conceptual transfer from one language to another. The goal is to make the journal a genuine crossroads for international exchange.
Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods adheres to the principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing supported by international scholarly organizations like the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Therefore, the papers submitted for the thematic dossiers and varia are subjected to two double-blind peer reviews, according to evaluation criteria that are visible online on our peer-review form. The names of the members of the journal’s editorial board and scientific committee are available online.
For a longer and more argued presentation of the journal, see the editorial of the first issue.
To submit an article, see our permanent call for papers and notes for authors and translators.
In addition to these dossiers built around a single theme, the journal also features five original sections: ‘Library’, ‘Research on Translation’, ‘In the Classroom and Beyond’, ‘On the Job’ and ‘Perspectives’, which are described here. Contributions to these sections are very welcome, procedures and contact for submissions can be found here.
Biens symboliques / Symbolic Goods encourages the deposit of articles, in their final version, on open repository HalSHS: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/.