__________________________________________________
Call for Publications Theme: State of War Subtitle: Human Condition and Social Orders Publication: Russian Sociological Review Date: Special Issue (December 2015) Deadline: 20.4.2015 __________________________________________________ The Russian Sociological Review (sociologica.hse.ru/en), an international peer-reviewed academic jour- nal published by the National Research University — Higher School of Economics (www.hse.ru), invites contributions from philosophy, social sciences and cognate fields for the special issue entitled State of War: Human Condition and Social Orders. From the beginning, sociology has tried to explain the emergence of social order, and to describe the conditions of solidarity. It has often been criticized for neglecting social conflicts, revolutions, and war- fare. However, some sociologists have always been concerned with conflicts and revolutions. Warfare, indeed, has been a rare focus of sociological inquiry. It has only been during recent decades that sociolo gists have tentatively approached the topic, while the sociology of warfare is still a minor discipline for others. This may explain why social scholars still do not pay attention to the fact that the opposition of war and peace can be questioned. In sociology, social order before modernity is mainly understood as being imposed upon society by the police state which fulfills its legitimate monopoly on violence through specific institutions. Despite globalization, it is often assumed that the self-organization of so- ciety takes place within the secure borders of national states. We have to abandon this assumption since there are many instances of hybrid situations in the contemporary world. Examples of various undeclared wars, terror, the strengthening of secret intelligence services, overthrows of governments (coups d’etat), and revolutions challenge the traditional oppositions of the external and internal, or war and peace. Warfare and social order have always been in an ambiguous relationship to each other. Any warfare causes disorganization and disorder, but it also causes reorganization and the beginning of a new or- der. Warfare is directly related to the redistribution of resources, border shifts, and the hybridization of social forms. War metaphors permeate into civil narratives. The chance of being killed may be higher in a peaceful city than at the front line. Wars can begin without a formal declaration. Peace is often made beyond legal systems, so there is always a possibility to breach peace without the fear of being accused of violations of agreements, or of being unreasonable. Warfare transgresses the border between the real and virtual worlds, since we live in the age of information-, financial-, hybrid-wars. There seems to be a new global situation which is reminiscent of the era of civil and religious wars, rather than the social order that has been a part of the foundational experience and the intellectual model for sociology at its birth. As a disturbing observation, it is also a challenge for the social sciences, which should not advo- cate for peaceful processes but should objectively analyze the current situation and the perspectives of social transformations. With this special issue, we would like to go beyond conventional “sociologies of war”, which recently became a popular field of studies. We aim to radically reconsider the theoretical problem of the con- stitutive nature of warfare in terms of the (im)possibility of social order, i.e., when war is understood as ultimo ratio but also as conditio humana. In the forthcoming special issue of the Russian Sociological Review, we invite scholars from a variety of disciplines to discuss the following issues: - The relationship between the notions of “war” and “social order” - The sociological significance of the notions of “hybrid wars”, “stasis”, “guerrilla”, etc. - The impact of the new forms of warfare on the traditional challenges of sociological disciplines (culture, economic life, education, etc.) - Warfare from the standpoint of sociology and political philosophy, in particular, the relevance of the philosophy of the Modern Era in understanding contemporary situations - The sociological significance of the ethical problems of warfare, that is, the notion of neutrality, justice, humanness, or moral obligations In order to enrich cross-disciplinary communication we encourage scholars from different disciplines (sociology, anthropology, urban studies, human geography, political science, philosophy, intellectual history etc.) to take part in the issue. Schedule April 20, 2015: 500 words abstracts deadline May 1, 2015: Invitation to submit full papers September 1, 2015: 6000 words full papers deadline October 1, 2015: Notification of acceptance October 20, 2015: Revised papers deadline December, 2015: Publication Please note that the contributions to the special issue will be primarily reviewed by the members of the editorial board and therefore we expect that the process will not take considerably more time than advertised. Contributions should be sent via e-mail to the editor-in-chief Professor Alexander Filippov (filippovaf@ gmail.com) and Nail Farkhatdinov (farkhatdi...@gmail.com). Papers should be no more than 12,000 words and written in English. See website of the Review for the detailed guidelines for authors (sociologica.hse.ru/en/authors). For details please see: https://www.hse.ru/data/2015/03/16/1093013404/RSR%20Call%20for%20Papers%202015.pdf __________________________________________________ InterPhil List Administration: http://interphil.polylog.org Intercultural Philosophy Calendar: http://cal.polylog.org __________________________________________________
