Criteria for Consideration

Like the series title indicates, this series seeks monographs that bring together the three elements of social ethics, ethnography, and theologies.

With regard to social ethics, we seek projects that address contemporary problems related to the social order. Topics can include, but are not limited to, issues such as immigration, armed conflict, public health, racism, sexuality/gender, and disability.

With regard to ethnography we accept projects drawing upon one of two basic kinds of social scientific inquiry, or a blend of the two. The first involves substantial participant observation over an extended period of time – preferably at least a year – where the researcher is embedded within the communities being researched. The author offers a specific context-rich study of a particular person/people/community, shows deep knowledge of the local culture(s), languages, religion(s), and the socio-economic, political, racial, and gender contexts. This category constitutes what is usually meant by the term “ethnography.” The expectation here is that while the overall aim of the text is theological, it also meets the standards of rigor set by the disciplines of cultural anthropology and field-based qualitative sociology for ethnography and engages the literature in these disciplines. The researcher may engage in field interviews, archival research, and other methods as well as participant observation. The second kind of inquiry sought for this series is what is generally called qualitative research. While not drawing upon extensive participant observation, this approach can include individual interviews, focus group interviews, and other related methods. While participant observation primarily emphasizes depth of inquiry and engagement with the research subjects, qualitative research, while seeking some of that depth, emphasizes the breadth of the sample size. While there is no fixed number of interviews that is considered adequate for a monograph-length study (much depends on the population studied and the nature of the claims made by the researcher), we strongly recommend a benchmark of at least thirty hour to hour-and-a-half semi-structured individual interviews. Group focus studies may supplement the individual interviews.

With regard to theologies, we distinguish this series from writing that comes under the rubric of “the study of religion.” While we seek to meet social scientific standards of rigor, this is not simply a social scientific series. Congregational studies, the sociology of religion, and the anthropology of Christianity, for instance, are all respected sub-disciplines (and projects may draw from them), but they do not as a matter of course have a theological orientation. Projects can, but do not need to arise out of specifically religious settings such as mosques, churches, or synagogues to include theological analysis. Projects anchored in such settings can include, but must extend beyond, questions of ecclesiology. Alternative settings for theological analysis might include, for instance, such spaces as a health clinic, a refugee camp, an addictions treatment center, or a school for persons with intellectual disabilities. 

If you are in the process of developing or finishing a project that fits with the above criteria and would like the series to consider your manuscript, please send a letter of inquiry to one of the four series editors, whose contact information is listed on the Contact page of this website.  

If there is sufficient fit between your project and the series, we will invite you to submit a formal proposal.  The form for the proposal is available through the Bloomsbury/T&T Clark web page under "Academic Proposal Form" at https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/academic/for-authors/submit-a-book-proposal/

Once you submit a formal proposal, two of the series editors will read it in detail and recommend whether to undertake a full review.  If we recommend a full review, then we will ask for a minimum of two chapters -- an introductory chapter and a chapter demonstrating the ethnographic fieldwork.  There will be two reviewers, one from among the series editors and one external reviewer, perhaps from the Board of Advisors.

If the reviewers recommend publication, then the series editors forward that recommendation to the general Bloomsbury/T&T Clark Editorial Board.

We aim to have the full process take no more than six months.