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.
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