Leaving Pleasantville: Transforming beyond Self in Everyday Life

Call for Papers for JBR Special Issue
Extended Deadline: 15 November 2014

The Journal of Business Research invites authors to submit manuscripts for a Special Issue on “Leaving Pleasantville: Transforming beyond Self in Everyday Life.” The manuscript submission deadline is 30 September 2014. The co-editors of the special issue seek manuscripts that address transformations of all forms and processes of transformation in the lives of individuals.

Scope of the Issue. The plan for the JBR special issue is to describe and explain micro and macro transformations of self beyond everyday life involving the dynamics of new thinking, buying, experiencing-doing, traveling, rebelling, witnessing, and socializing. What follows are some suggestive examples. A movie, Pleasantville, provides an emotional foundation for the special issue. A trailer for the movie is available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAiyrees0uM.

Another example can be found in Hyeonyoung Choi, Eunju Ko, and Carol M. Megehee (2014), “Fashion’s Role in Visualizing Physical and Psychological Transformations in Movies,” Journal of Business Research, 67 (1), 2911-2918. (Ask Carol for a reprint, cmegehee@coastal.edu).

Grant McCracken writes on Transformations: Identity Construction in Contemporary Culture (2008). In 1928 Margaret Mead describes Coming of Age in Samoa—for many years the most widely read book in anthropology. In 2008 Tom Boellstorff describes Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. In 1989 Russell Belk, Melanie Wallendorf, and John Sherry explain “The Sacred and the Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy on the Odyssey,” Journal of Consumer Research—“Two processes at work in contemporary society are the secularization of religion and the sacralization of the secular. Consumer behavior shapes and reflects these [transformative] processes. For many, consumption has become a vehicle for experiencing the sacred. [The] article explores the ritual substratum of consumption and describes properties and manifestations of the sacred inherent in consumer behavior.”

The JBR special issue seeks theory and field research studies relating to multiple dimensions of personal transformations: individual and group; revocable versus irrevocable; public versus private; macro versus micro; conscious versus unconscious; automatic versus volitional; approved versus disapproved of by society, groups, and friends; viewed from a bystander perspective versus personal stance; and with positive versus negative outcomes.

The co-editors and special issue blind reviewers are solely responsible for accept/reject decisions for submitted manuscripts. The three co-editors are Carol M. Megehee, Coastal Carolina University (c_megehee@yahoo.com), Eunju Ko, Yonsei University (ejko@yonsei.ac.kr), and Russell Belk, York University (rbelk@schulich.yorku.ca).

Manuscript Requirements:

• Create manuscripts using Microsoft WORD and submit in an e-mail attachment to all three editors on or before September 30, 2014
• Include all authors and their full addresses on the cover page; include a separate abstract page; please double space everything on the cover, abstract, text, and reference pages and use 12-point type only.
• Article length should be limited to 30 text double-spaced pages, not counting the cover page, abstract, tables, figures, and reference pages
• A brief autobiographical note should be supplied, including full name, affiliation, e-mail address, and full international contact details for all authors
• Six keywords on the abstract page should be provided which encapsulate the principal topics of the paper
• Submissions must be in American-English–please have a native or near-native American-English speaker review document before submission
• Send one WORD file attachment of the complete manuscript (send one additional file of figures, if used, in POWERPOINT).

Copyright. Articles submitted to the journal should be original contributions and should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright and will indemnify the publisher against any breach of such warranty.

[The moderator messed up the deadline for this announcement last week. My apologies – ch]

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