CFP: Borders: Merging, Emerging, Emergent

The Russian Sociological Review (http://sociologica.hse.ru/en), an international peer-reviewed academic journal published by the National Research University — Higher School of Economics (http://www.hse.ru/), invites contributions from philosophy, social sciences and cognate fields for the special issue entitled Borders: Merging, Emerging, Emergent. In this issue, we would like to discuss various meanings of the concept “border” and to go beyond a narrow understanding of borders as a political or geographical phenomenon. Therefore, we aim to provide a forum for those who study borders on different levels and in its variety.

The concept itself seems to draw attention in many disciplines. As spatial phenomena, borders are always drawn in spaces, while social scientists, philosophers and other academics often have different meanings of space. Recent reconsiderations of space in terms of networks, flows and events, bring even more complexity to the concept. There is a permanent demand for both theoretical and empirical studies of borders on various levels. We expect contributions that will look at the relevant phenomena from contemporary or historical perspectives, study narratives about borders, reconstructions of the empirical configurations of borders and other objects (such as bodies),
exploring how borders emerge and reshape existing spaces, etc. Overall, the issue will contribute to the emerging interdisciplinary field of border studies and encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue.

In particular, we invite papers which address the following aspects:
• historical and modern understanding and contestation of borders;
• borders and bodies;
• borders and political events;
• narratives and changing orders;
• shifting borders and foundations of social order;
• situated actions and emerging borders;
• and other relevant aspects which may be of interest to border studies.

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.

Preliminary dates:
September 10, 2014: The title and abstract of contribution
September 17, 2014: Notification of acceptance
October 17, 2014: The first draft
November 1, 2014: Results of editorial peer-review and feedback
November 15, 2014: The final draft
End of 2014: 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 ([email protected]) and Nail Farkhatdinov ([email protected]).

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).