CFP: Subsistence Marketplaces Journal

Call For Papers: Special Issue of Subsistence Marketplaces

Subsistence Marketplaces is an interdisciplinary, inter-sector, international journal focused on research, education, and practice that takes a bottom-up approach to studying the broad range of low-income consumers, entrepreneurs, communities and marketplaces around the world. The journal publishes both refereed and invited papers. The first issue of Subsistence Marketplaces (ISSN - 2765-8058), a journal affiliated with the entity and stream of work of the same name (www.subsistencemarketplaces.org), was published in 2025.

Special Issue - Non-Empirical Papers On Subsistence Marketplaces

We invite non-empirical papers on any topic within subsistence marketplaces for consideration for publication in the journal, Subsistence Marketplaces. These papers will be in a special section or special issue of the journal to be published in 2026.

Editors

Andrés Barrios, Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Colombia

Ronika Chakrabarti, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

Samanthika Gallage, Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, UK

Deadline: December 31, 2025

Description

Quarter of the way into the 21st century, the need for impactful research, education, and practice for resource-poor individuals, households, and communities around the world cannot be overstated. This special issue is intended to provide a forum for broad thinking and specific directions for research, education and practice, relating topics in the arena of subsistence marketplaces. As such, conceptual richness as well as detailed implications for research, education, and commercial, social, and governmental practice are central. Also welcomed are systematic literature reviews, summaries, curations, relevant contexts and logics. Papers need to cover what has come before not only in the immediate literature, but more broadly construed. Exhaustive reviews are not a requirement unless authors craft a paper with this specific purpose. Sample topics are below purely for illustrative purposes.

• Subsistence consumers

• Subsistence entrepreneurs/consumer-merchants

• Subsistence entrepreneurship

• Value chains

• Marketplace literacy

• Micro-level elements of subsistence marketplaces

• Thinking/cognition

• Affect/emotion/feeling

• Behaving/coping

• Relating

• Sustaining

• Meso-level theories that emerged from / or can be applied to subsistence marketplaces

• Domains of subsistence such as:

• Health

• Livelihoods

• Education

• Housing

• Agriculture

• Environmental sustainability

• Social sustainability

• Sustainable development

• Ecosystems

• Product development

• Innovation

• Business Models

• Social enterprise models

• Public policy

Three important elements of the paper are noteworthy:

1. Review of relevant literature

2. Conceptual lense(s), frameworks

3. Specific implications for research, education, and practice.

Objectives of Subsistence Marketplaces, an interdisciplinary, inter-sector journal.

1. To provide a forum for research, education, and practice at the intersection of a wide-range of low-income contexts and marketplaces.

2. To highlight work on subsistence marketplaces that is grounded at the micro-level or reflects ground reality and takes a bottom-up orientation.

3. To provide an ecosystem through the entire research and intervention value cycle from formulation to completion and translation to practice.

We emphasize an approach that begins from a bottom-up perspective of the micro-level of marketplaces, consumers and entrepreneurs, rather than the meso or macro levels . Thus, the journal welcomes a broad range of work at different units of analysis from individual to community to organization and society. Unique though will be an emphasis on grounding in the circumstances at different units of analysis. Thus, work may focus on any level of aggregation as long as it draws from grounded reality. In other words, perspectives that remain at a high altitude do not fit the journal whereas those that have connection to reality at the ground level conceptually and/or empirically fit well. We invite authors to write to the editor if there is any doubt as to fit as our goal is to be broad without diluting the unique focus.

Also unique will be an emphasis on practice with feedback on proposed studies/interventions, and a focus on translating findings to practice with specificity (e.g., such as through proposing and/or piloting specific initiatives for practice), rather than through implications that remain at a broad or generic level. Thus, implications of the work for practice will be emphasized heavily. The supporting web portal will provide a bridge between research, education and practice.

Viswanathan, Madhubalan, and Jose Rosa, (2007), “Product and Market Development

for Subsistence Marketplaces: Consumption and Entrepreneurship Beyond Literacy

and Resource Barriers,” in Product and Market Development for Subsistence Marketplaces:

Consumption and Entrepreneurship Beyond Literacy and Resource Barriers, Editors, Jose

Rosa and Madhu Viswanathan, Advances in International Management Series,

Joseph Cheng and Michael Hitt, Series Editors, 1-17, Elsevier.