Andrew Jameson
Consultant on Russian Language and Culture
Translator, Russian & German to English
Listowner, russian-teaching list
6 Gilbert Road
Malvern WR14 3RQ UK
01684 572466
-----Original Message-----
From: ESRCs East West Programme [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Serguei A. Oushakine
Sent: Saturday, September 14, 2013 4:05 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Ab Imperio invites submissions: the 2014 annual theme is Assemblage
Points of the Imperial Situation: Places and Spaces of Diversity.
Ab Imperio invites submissions to its 2014 volume
The editors are pleased to announce the Ab Imperio 2014 annual theme
Assemblage Points of the Imperial Situation: Places and Spaces of Diversity.
The program of the volume is available in .pdf format.
http://net.abimperio.net/node/2948
In 2014, Ab Imperio invites its contributors and readers to examine the
central category of new imperial history: the imperial situation. The
coexisting and partially overlapping nomenclatures of social statuses and
hierarchies of authority produce an irregular map of human diversity and
hegemony, which can be discovered in virtually any epoch and society,
"imperial" or "nation-state." In this imperial situation, location can be
exchanged for a different social status (say, a petty clerk from the capital
becomes an important figure once he arrives in the borderlands or a colony);
ethnicity and class generate different social capital in different
situations or locations; and time is conditional and reversible (one can
bomb people "into the stone age," or propel them from primitive or feudal
society all the way into socialism).
Numerous questions arise as soon as one projects this model onto specific
case-study material: What is the relationship between the imperial situation
and historical actors? Can we speak of a coherent imperial subject produced
by the imperial situation? How exactly is the imperial situation "made?"
In order to avoid embedded explanatory strategies built into grand
structuralist generalizations, we suggest operating with an open-ended
middle-range theory category such as an "assemblage point." Although it
comes from the nonacademic sphere (namely, the visionary works of Carlos
Castaneda), an "assemblage point" seems to be a quite neutral and
"technical" way to capture the very moment of forming an imperial situation
- at a certain moment, under certain circumstances, from certain "building
blocks." It is possible that this notion can be productively used with the
new analytical and rational connotations of new imperial history. More
conventional (but not much more analytically clear) categories such as
"bricolage" or "hybridity" can be revisited and overhauled in the pursuit of
developing a language to describe the process of producing the imperial
situation - between structurally more stable "spaces" and "places."
Four thematic issues in this annual volume of Ab Imperio approach this task
from different angles.
1/2014 Zeit und Raum: Adjacent Spaces, Overlapping Epochs?
Recipe number one: bring different worlds together, "mix, but do not stir."
Neighboring communities or regions get incorporated into a common social
and political sphere, on different legal, economic, and political terms;
Multiple temporalities espoused by different social strata and cultural
groups coexist, resulting in the incongruences of calendars, work rhythms,
and perceptions of the past and future;
Perceived or self-nominated "civilizations," "worlds," "socioeconomic
formations," and "cultures" become integrated into an all-embracing
worldview, through an assortment of adapting institutional and discursive
mechanisms;
Individual trajectories across various social loci and temporalities
"stitch them up" together;
Historical turning points, junctures, and decisive events as formative
experiences.
2/2014 Crossroads and Multiple Temporalities: Contact Zones and Middle
Grounds
Recipe number two: strangers meeting in the "middle ground" in search of
identity and common sense.
The city as a site of diversity, actualized and visualized: everyone is
local, everyone is a newcomer;
What mechanisms produce inequality in the inter-"minorities"
relationships?
How stable are the "conversion rates" between ethnicity and social
status, wealth and territorial localization, education and state service?
The nonessentialist understanding of collectivities as products of
"magnetic fields" set by external factors and internal decisions;
Thinking power without a clear subject in heterogeneous space: who rules
the empire?
3/2014 Ghettos and Time Gaps (bezvremenie): Negativity as "the Moment of
Truth"
The Test Case: Difference Being Produced Despite Isolation and Arrested
Dynamics
Seemingly homogeneous societies and groups still generate situationally
and contextually revealing differences: in a Jewish Ghetto, within a peasant
community, or in a "stagnating" and stable "Developed Socialism" society;
"The narcissism of small differences" as a historical mechanism of
social demarcation at work in routine situations and egalitarian settings;
How historical ruptures and "time capsules" make symbolic boundaries
look bigger than life;
The art of inventing differences: states, social groups, and the
management of populations and statuses;
Unintended consequences: projects of uniformity and the proliferation of
differences.
4/2014 Spontaneous Bricolage, Masters of Assemblage, and Their Contested
Blueprints
Assemblage Points Deconstructed: Who, When, and Why Attempted to Rationalize
and Rearrange Diversity?
Social engineering as a conscious practice;
How spontaneous are "hybridity," "bricolage," and premodern practices of
composite identities?
Seeing not like a nation-state: the history of certain schemes to
sustain human diversity;
Post-"isms" in their historical contexts: deconstructing deconstruction
and social critique;
The future of diversity.
Permanent Sections: Theory and Methodology History Archive Sociology,
Anthropology & Political Science ABC: Empire & Nationalism Studies
Newest Mythologies Historiography and Book Reviews.
Submission guidelines are available at the journal's website at
http://abimperio.net/cgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=portal/contributor&idlang=1.
|
