FW: Call for papers: Ab Imperio 2008 annual program

Fri Oct 5 12:53:00 UTC 2007

Dear colleagues,

Please, find below Ab Imperio annual program for 2008. The program, as well
as tables of contents and abstracts, is also accessible through the
journal$B!G(Bs website at http://abimperio.net

Sergey Glebov

Ab Imperio

P.O. Box 157, Kazan, 420015, Russia
fax: 1-866-445-9438 $B!&(B e-mail: office at abimperio.net
<http://www.abimperio.net/> www.abimperio.net

International Quarterly
on the Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet
Space

CALL FOR PAPERS

2008

annual theme:

Gardening Empire

As a result of Ab Imperio$B!G(Bs focus on languages of self-description in the
imperial space (2005-2006) and on knowledge and its gray zones in empire
(2007), the journal explored discourses and practices of rationalizing and
modernizing the diverse imperial space. To build on this trend - as well as
expand it to new areas of research and reflection - we invite our authors
and readers to explore the history of empire through the concept of the
$B!H(Bgardening state$B!I(B inspired by Zygmunt Bauman$B!G(Bs sociology. Following the
established tradition, we would like to explore practices of the
rationalization of imperial space through a meta-concept - in this case a
meta-concept in continental sociology reflecting grand historical processes
of modernity - which is brought to bear on diverse imperial experiences and
encounters. It becomes immediately obvious that in the case of empire the
concept of the gardening state loses its single-vectored character and its
homogenizing and totalizing potential, because in the imperial states the
right to $B!H(Bgarden$B!I(B is contested by multiple - social, political, ethnic,
confessional - actors.

This right to garden is entangled with one of the key questions in the study
of empire: the problem of uniqueness and exceptionalism of historical
experiences, both in the eye of the scholarly beholder and as contained in
the languages of self-description of historical actors. Each and every
empire - from classic antiquity to modern day composite polities - rests on
a notion of a unique and exceptional historical path. This exceptionalism is
dialectically translated into imperial universalism, which lifts imperial
loyalties and identifications above local, regional, national, confessional,
or social loyalties. The dialectic transformation of imperial exceptionalism
also reveals itself in hierarchies of shared and divided sovereignties,
exclusions, and gray zones unregulated by the ever increasing pace of
rationalization of modern polities. As one of the central questions of our
first issue in 2008, we pose the problem of imperial exceptionalisms and the
problem of academic languages that describe them. Can dichotomies between
colonial and land empires (which lead to specific configurations and
isolation of research fields) be overcome through a dialogue between
research traditions and their mutual translation, and through exploration of
connections and knowledge circulation within and outside of historic
empires? Can a post-colonial paradigm shed light on the history of the
Russian Empire? And can the latter, in turn, generate new insights and
complicate post-colonial studies?

These and other questions naturally lead to the problem of gardening the
imperial subject, the focus of the second issue of the journal in 2008.
Overcoming the nation-centered and top-down political history, is it
possible to enrich our understanding of the history of empire by looking
into traditional themes of post-colonial studies: the relationship between
the intimate and the collective across the divide between the metropole and
the colony? Borrowing research topics from post-colonial studies (family,
sexuality, nurture, upbringing) and combining them with established research
programs in Russian imperial history (schooling, languages, socialization),
can we identify and describe multiple gardeners - and perhaps gardens - and
come to an understanding of the mechanisms of imperial subjectivity?

Gardening imperial and national spaces invokes establishing an ideal,
utopian harmony of well-regulated and orderly relations among humans and
between human societies and nature. How is this ideal order challenged and
contested, and what are possible forms of violating and vandalizing imperial
and national gardens? In the third issue of 2008 we are interested in
exploring different forms of violence as practices of signification, as
forms of rationality and irrationality, and as means to making and unmaking
of groupness. At the same time, we are looking for articles focusing on
rationalization and standardization as forms of (symbolic) violence.

In the last issue of the journal our focus is on the ecology of imperial
gardens as reflected in languages and practices in imperial space. As
gardening transgresses the divide between the social and the natural, it
generates languages of authenticity and nurture. Problems in this issue may
range from ecological discourses in constructing imperial and national
identities, to sanitary and hygienic projects of different imperial and
national gardeners.

$B-b(B 1/2008 Imperial Exceptionalisms: Mechanisms and Discourses

Discourses and mythologies of exceptionalism in representations of empires
$B!&(B Politics of comparison in studies of empires: the promise and limits of
postcolonialism and the problem of translatability of historiographies of
empires $B!&(B Exceptionalism as an operative mode of empires: empires as
hierarchies of legal, social and cultural particularisms and exceptions $B!&(B
Uniformity and individuation in governance and cultural encounters in the
imperial space $B!&(B Benevolent, modernizing and oppressive empire: the
Russian/Soviet $B!H(Bmission$B!I(B in the East, the West, and the world $B!&(B The
making of social and cultural differences as a practice of imperial
governance $B!&(B Historiographies of imperial exceptionalisms and national
Sonderwege $B!&(B Localizing globalization: contested meanings of the
post-Soviet and Eurasian space $B!&(B Is a comprehensive theory of empire
possible? Overcoming exceptionalist languages of self-description $B!&(B
Regional and national exceptionalisms as practices of difference-building $B!&(B
Entangled experience of empire: communication and learning from different
imperial ventures $B!&(B $B!H(BGardening state$B!I(B as a metaphor in the context of
imperial and post-imperial histories.

$B-b(B 2/2008 Gardening the Imperial Subject: Intimate and Collective in the
Imperial Space

Social practices of subjecthood in the imperial and national space $B!&(B
Biographies of transitional selves: between old imperial and new national
elites $B!&(B The site of difference and uniformity: the imperial army as an
instrument of gardening the imperial subject $B!&(B Regulating family,
reproduction, and nurture: mixed marriages, family, and children in imperial
and national space $B!&(B Upbringing of imperial subjects: pedagogy of unity and
diversity $B!&(B Education, reform, and citizenship: between imperial and
national subjects $B!&(B Practices of socialization in ethnically diverse
milieus: mimicry, translation, and assimilation $B!&(B The intimate of imperial
and national subjecthood: emotions, attachments, loyalties $B!&(B Intimate
relations and collective subjects: agents and objects of gardening in
imperial and national space $B!&(B Imperial minds: psychiatric discourses in the
empire $B!&(B Religiosity and subjectivity: confessional and interconfessional
practices of the self.

$B-b(B 3/2008 Vandalizing the Garden: Multiple Forms of Violence in the Imperial
Space

Between anarchy and tyranny: theoretical problems of violence understood as
a social and political phenomenon in a heterogeneous space $B!|(B Social
engineering as violent interventionism $B!|(B Rationalization and
standardization as repression $B!|(B Violence as the language of local
exceptionalism and uniqueness $B!|(B The rationality and irrationality of
violence in culturally divided space $B!|(B Jewish pogroms; exterminations of
small nationalities; social landscapes of war zones and ethnic conflicts $B!|(B
Violence as a $B!H(Blegitimate$B!I(B politics: political terrorism and imperial and
national tensions $B!|(B Genocides, deportations and traumatic experience of
ethnic conflicts $B!|(B The ambiguity of the concept of criminality in the
empire: drawing and violating cultural, social and political borders $B!|(B
Violence as a social practice of vertical and horizontal communications in
the empire $B!|(B Imposing languages: symbolic violences in imperial and
national spaces.

$B-b(B 4/2008 Nature and Nurture: Ecology of Imperial Gardens

Organic metaphors of the social order $B!|(B Discourses of environmental
determinism: from Arnold Toynbee to Lev Gumilev $B!|(B The emergence of
environmental thought in imperial and national discourses $B!|(B Ecology,
sanitation, and empire: landscaping national and imperial spaces $B!|(B
Ecological disasters or imperial triumphs: colonization, depletion of
resources, re-making of spaces $B!|(B Ecological limits of expansion and
adaptation of imperial rule $B!|(B Ecology of communications in the expansion
and integration of empires $B!|(B Regionalism through the prism of environmental
history $B!|(B Hygienic and sanitary projects in empire and nations across the
1917 divide $B!|(B Rationalizations of imperial spaces and the trope of
preservation of archaic authenticity $B!|(B Postcolonial claims on bodies and
territories.

Permanent Sections:

Theory and Methodology n History n Archive n Sociology, Anthropology &
Political Science n ABC: Empire & Nationalism Studies n Newest Mythologies n
Historiography and Book Reviews.

For subscription please contact our authorized commercial distributors: www.
amazon.com,
East View Publications, EBSCO, and
KUBON & SAGNER Buchexport-Import.

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