Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian Studies
PUBL./CFP- Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research on South Caucasus
Posted by: Serguei Alex. Oushakine <oushakin@Princeton.EDU>
Call for Papers
Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research
Thematic issue: Rethinking the South Caucasus
Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research is a new international
peer-reviewed journal for the publication of, and debate on, empirical
social research. (See below for details on the journal and its
editorial board.) The pilot issue is scheduled to appear in late 2007.
In March 2008, Laboratorium will publish a thematic issue entitled
Rethinking the South Caucasus.
The South Caucasus is a region of exceptional interest to empirical
social scientists. In Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, the economic
and political change of the past two decades has resulted in social
transformations on a scale that makes the region stand out among
post-socialist states. Nation-state building, contested borders,
changing gender roles, a nascent civil society, poverty and
unemployment, labour migration, the predicament of refugees and
displaced persons, new historical narratives, ethnic conflicts and the
rise of nationalism all require thorough empirical study as a
precondition for in-depth analysis.
Yet serious scholarly studies are still scarce in the international
literature, especially if compared to the torrent of myths about this
region, many of which enjoy the active support of politicised scholars
from the Caucasus, Russia and elsewhere. Political punditry and
normative statements still prevail over detached scholarly analysis in
the study of this region. The moralizing slant of the debate is partly
due to the predominance of journalistic reports over sociological data.
The editors of Laboratorium wish to counter this trend and go beyond
the tradition of folklore-centred ethnography. We propose a new,
critical approach to social research in the South Caucasus. This issue
will feature original articles examining and analysing the social
changes that have taken place in the region over the past decades.
There is now a new generation of talented South Caucasian
sociologists, anthropologists and historians, most of whom are not,
however, well integrated in international scholarly communities.
Another important aim of this issue is therefore to overcome this lack
of communication between local researchers and their colleagues abroad
by publishing and discussing work both from within the region and by
outside scholars.
All scholars who have carried out original empirical research in the
South Caucasus are invited to submit articles to this issue. We will
only consider original, previously unpublished papers in either
Russian or English.
The issue will be edited by Viktor Voronkov, director of the Centre
for Independent Social Research in Saint Petersburg.
The deadline for submissions to this issue is 10 September 2007. All
papers will be subjected to double-blind peer review, and acceptance
of any paper may be conditional upon revising it in accordance with
suggestions by reviewers and/or the editorial board. Papers should be
submitted to Nadia Nartova, managing editor (nartova (at)
indepsocres.spb.ru). Enquiries concerning this thematic issue should
be directed to Viktor Voronkov (voronkov (at) socres.spb.ru), while
general questions on Laboratorium may be addressed either to Nadia
Nartova or to the editor-in-chief, Mischa Gabowitsch (gabowitsch (at)
gmail.com).
Formatting guidelines:
Papers are accepted in either Russian or English, in MS Word or RTF
format. They should not normally exceed 55,000 characters (ca. 8,000
words) excluding notes. You are free to write in either British or
American English, but please be consistent in your usage.
Please provide information about yourself (full first and last name,
institutional affiliation, departmental address, e-mail and telephone
number) on a separate page.
Please also include a detailed abstract (ca. 3,000 characters, or 400
words). Ideally, though by no means necessarily, this should be in
English if the article submitted is in Russian, and vice-versa.
Use a 12-point font and 1.5 spacing. Notes should be formatted as
endnotes rather than footnotes or alphabetical bibliographies.
LABORATORIUM. Russian Review of Social Research
LABORATORIUM is a new international forum for the publication and
discussion of empirical social research, with a focus on qualitative
methods. The journal wishes to foster interdisciplinary and
international debate on the findings of fieldwork-based research. In
particular, LABORATORIUM is committed to making findings and debates
from Russian-language social research available to an English-speaking
audience, and vice-versa. The journal aims to stimulate debate across
the language divide and to open up cross-national perspectives. The
editors firmly believe that in the social sciences, substantive issues
are more relevant than the author's nationality or geographic specialisation.
Dialogue and debate between authors from different methodological
backgrounds is particularly encouraged. As in a laboratory, we believe
that improved understanding in the social sciences is achieved through
trial and error as well as informed argument.
Approaches to be featured in the journal include, but are not limited
to, critical sociology, actor-network theory, ethnomethodology,
interactionism, the sociology of critique, feminist studies, the
sociology of everyday life, phenomenological sociology, and historical
sociology.
LABORATORIUM is also open to all neighbouring disciplines, including
cultural anthropology, social geography, cultural studies,
sociolinguistics and social history.
Articles may be submitted in either Russian or English, and every
article will be published with a detailed abstract in the other
language. LABORATORIUM only accepts original, previously unpublished
work, and will reject essays or theoretical texts not based on
empirical research. In addition to its regular bilingual issues,
LABORATORIUM will regularly publish special issues featuring Russian
translations of seminal articles originally published in other languages.
LABORATORIUM encourages critical responses to articles published in
the journal and to other important works, irrespectively of their
place and language of publication. Every issue will carry a large
selection of reviews covering the entire range of books and journals
in the social sciences, as well as flashbacks on influential or
overlooked Russian books (in English) or foreign works (in Russian).
Research articles should not normally exceed 5,500 words (40,000
characters) plus notes, review articles may be up to 3,500 words
(25,000 characters) long, and standard reviews should average 800
words (5,000 characters).
All articles are subjected to double-blind peer review, and authors
will usually be expected to revise the submitted version of their
article to incorporate suggestions by anonymous reviewers and the
editorial board.
LABORATORIUM. Russian Review of Social Research. Editorial Board
Alexander Bikbov (Russian State University of the Humanities, Moscow)
Elena Bogdanova (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Olga Brednikova (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Sofia Chuikina (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Marc Elie (Franco-Russian Centre for the Humanities and Social
Sciences, Moscow)
Mischa Gabowitsch (Princeton University, editor-in-chief)
Katerina Gerasimova (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Konstantin Ivanov (Leo Tolstoy State Pedagogical University, Tula)
Oksana Karpenko (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Olessia Kirtchik (Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris)
Nadya Nartova (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint
Petersburg, managing editor)
Oleg Pachenkov (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Mihail Rozhansky (Center for Independent Social Research and
Education, Irkutsk)
Irina Tartakovskaya (Institute for Social and Gender Policy, Moscow)
Anna Temkina (European University at Saint Petersburg)
Sergei Oushakine (Princeton University)
Ilya Utekhin (European University at Saint Petersburg)
Viktor Voronkov (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
Oxana Zaporozhets (Samara State University)
Elena Zdravomyslova (Center for Independent Social Research, Saint Petersburg)
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