Call for Papers: Ab Imperio 2011, ≪The Concept of the “Sec ond World” at the Crossroads of Social Sciences and Imperial Histor y≫

[Sergey Glebov]

Dear colleagues,



The editors of Ab Imperio would like to invite contributions to the
journal’s issues in 2011. You can access the journal’s program at



http://net.abimperio.net/ru/node/1320



Sergey Glebov





≪SECOND WORLD - SECOND TIME? THE CONCEPT OF THE “SECOND WORLD” AT THE
CROSSROADS OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND IMPERIAL HISTORY≫



The concept of the Second World underlies a range of theories that explain
the emergence and spread of Communism and objectify political divisions
during the Cold War. This concept formed part of modernization theories as
an attempt to understand the specifics of modernization processes triggered
by socialist revolutions. In theories of convergence, the concept of the
Second World helped distinguish the vector of development and the hierarchy
of historical experience from the Third World to the First. However, the end
of “really existing socialism” and decline in popularity of modernization
theory in recent decades have drastically reduced use of the Second World
concept.

The editors of Ab Imperio suggest that the concept of the Second World, once
freed from its geopolitical connotations, can be productive today to
describe historical and social experience that does not fit the framework of
classical colonial theory or normative theories of modernity. Maybe by using
this category we can also use research instruments and models developed by
new imperial history to study modern, mass and composite societies of the
twentieth century. Potentially, the Second World can be used as a rhetorical
device, a metaphor, or an analytical category. The editors of Ab Imperio
invite scholars of imperial history to reflect upon the potential of the
category of the Second World.

Our turn to this concept in the context of new imperial history allows us to
raise a number of interesting and important questions. Can the concept of
the Second World be used in working with theoretical models and newly formed
fields (such as Central European or Central Asian studies) instead of the
culturally and geopolitically determined “Eurasia?” Could the Second World
be useful in discussions of “peripheral” imperial formations, that is, in
discussions of imperial experiences that do not entirely fit in with the
experiences of bourgeois colonial empires? Scholars working in the fields of
continental empires of Europe and Asia often face the problem of difference
in processes that seem structurally similar in colonial overseas and
continental empires. Historians of the Russian Empire have long debated the
applicability of categories developed in studies of the British or French
Empires. Yet, we also need to think about how the experience of the
continental Russian Empire can complicate our understanding of the past of
bourgeois colonial empires. Likewise, can the Second World change the
mainstream ways of thinking about postcolonial phenomena such as hybridity,
multiple identities and subjectivities, which emerge as constitutive
elements of the history of the Second World itself? By opening this
discussion about the Second World, Ab Imperio seeks to explore the prospects
of this largely forgotten but potentially rich way of thinking about the
post-Soviet historical regions and its place on the map of scholarly
knowledge.

Within the framework of this discussion we propose to revisit such
traditional dichotomies as “center vs. periphery,” “modern overseas vs.
premodern territorially contiguous empires,” “colonizers vs. colonized,”
but with special attention to the specifics of the modern and most recent
periods. In regard to the territorially contiguous empires one can recall
the discussion on the “colonial” nature of Soviet expansion in Central
Asia and Central Europe; the contradictory and ambitious attempt to apply
the frame of decolonization to the post-Soviet period; the specifics of the
postsocialist “transition”; theories of “failed state”; and so on. In
historical articles for this year we seek to use the concept of the Second
World to review the gaps between normative categories of analysis and the
richness and diversity of the historical material in the experience of the
post-Soviet space. We are especially interested in the applicability to the
Soviet period of new imperial history with its characteristic attention to
diversity and dynamics. On the other hand, we are interested in
possibilities to enrich our understanding of the imperial period using
analytical categories developed by scholars of the USSR and socialism.

Besides the main theme of the Second World, Ab Imperio plans to continue its
regular rubrics and fora: “Discussions with Authors” (series of interviews
with scholars who have influenced the development of new imperial history);
“Empire of Archives” (a series that views archives as centers of the
production of knowledge and power in a culturally divided space); “The Art
of History Writing in Empire and Nation” (translation and publication of
classical works); and “Battles for History” (a series focusing on the
current politics of history and memory).


Tentative contents of the issues in 2011:


No. 1/2011 “The Diversity of Otherness: Studies of the Second World and New
Historical Paradigms”

Historical experience in identifying “norm” and “otherness” beyond
linear hierarchies ● attempts to define the Second World in positive terms
(its special contribution to the world intellectual legacy, the
reengineering of society, uses of nature) ● the Russian intellectual
tradition of the second half of the nineteenth century: projects of the
Second World and their critics ● the history of critiques of normative
theories of empire and colonialism ● critiques of postcolonial theory ●
apology and nostalgia for historical empires: the British Empire as a
forerunner of globalization, the Habsburg Empire as an ideal of liberal
multinational polity ● nostalgia for Yugoslavia, the USSR, and East Germany
● the prefix “neo” in “post” situations: the problem of fluidity of
traditional political contrapositions (e.g., liberalism and conservatism in
the postmodern era and afterward) ● analytical models of the Second World
as an attempt to translate approaches of new imperial history for the study
of composite societies of the twentieth century ● Marxism in the Second
World ● formalism and structuralism in the Second World ● contemporary
nationalism and the Second World.

No. 2/2011 “The Second World Beyond Geopolitics: Political Trajectories and
Spatial Configurations”

Critiques of geopolitical conceptions ● what is the “Second World,” a
location or an idea? ● constructions of the “gradient of backwardness”
and attempts to localize the “true West” ● the dual meaning of
“chronotop”: an instrument of historization of research as well as a
mechanism for ascribing the structural characteristics of “epoch” to
territory and its inhabitants ● how stable are regional historical
boundaries? ● does a region have a “historical destiny?” ● ascribing
identity to a region (Islamic Republic, Cossack region, “historical
center”) ● problematizing the region: how is the production of “Russian
culture” connected to territory/region ● from social engineering to
political technologies: the era of simulacra ● compensatory reactions in
the era of globalism: the concepts of “Russia island,” “Fifth Empire,”
“sovereign democracy” ● gender regimes of socialist societies and
post-Soviet transformations.

No. 3/2011 “Time of the Second World: Imperial Revolutions and
Counterrevolutions”

The breakup of the USSR: the process of transition from informal to formal
sovereignty ● post-Soviet history of the former republics ● the breakup of
the USSR revisited by historians: twenty years later ● the anthropology of
postsocialist transformations: lessons for understanding the disintegration
of the USSR? ● USSR: scenarios of power - scenarios of disintegration ●
comparative context of the Soviet breakup ● perestroika: revolution as
normalization? ● decolonization as an interpretative resource for analyzing
the Soviet breakup: problems and challenges ● world order after the Cold
War ● imperial disintegrations and fascism ● the disintegration of empires
and the October revolution ● global crisis of the leftist ideology as a
result of Second World disintegration.

No. 4/2011 “The Second World Between Comparative and Global Histories”

Self-representations of “empires” of the Second World as a synthesis of
the First and the Third Worlds: between colonies and metropoles ● the place
of the Second World in the schemes of world (global) history ● the Second
World as a trope of self-perception and self-description of “noncanonical”
modernity ● the Second World between “multiple modernities” and normative
“Western modernity” ● peripheral and “nonclassical” empires of the
modern period ● revisiting comparative approaches to totalitarianism and
communism ● rethinking the Second World in the twentieth century: a history
of totalitarianism or a comparative history of colonialism? ● whether the
world is one: writing the history of globalization ● history of the
environment as a frame for universal history ● relativization of the
concept of the First World and normative modernity in new narratives of
comparative and global history.






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