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 September 2008.
In November 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 CISR (St. Petersburg) and Tsypylma Darieva (Department of European Ethnology at the Humboldt-University in Berlin).
The deadline for submissions to this issue is 1 August 2008.
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:
Nastya Tsygankova -
Enquiries concerning this thematic issue should be directed to:
Tsypylma Darieva (tsypylma.darieva@staff.hu-berlin.de) or Viktor Voronkov -
Nastya Tsygankova or editor-in-chief Mischa Gabowitsch (about the journal) -