The Russian Sociological Review, an international peer-reviewed academic journal published by the National Research University — Higher School of Economics, invites contributions from philosophy, social sciences and cognate fields for the special issue entitled Spontaneous Orders and New Forms of the Social: Between the Mundane and Institutions.

Abstract submission deadline: June 20, 2017.

We agree that today’s global phenomena such as flows and networks cover the world and horizontal connections continue to be omnipresent like any other new global social institution. Yet nowadays, radical changes are taking place that will become more sophisticated on the global scale, and will question and reduce the importance of what has been used to be a symptom of globalization. This is exemplified through the new reinforcement of the State, the reducing power of the international law institutions and the authority of the international organizations, the emergence of new forms of spontaneous order everywhere, and the growing avalanche of information on various episodes of social interaction.

Globalization is questioned with respect to the process of the blurring of political borders of states and other territories. Where social events take place, states gain their role as a main social unity anew. Still, they are permeated by global flows. The interaction of the global and the local takes a new shape. Furthermore, new forms of social interaction emerge, and it is not possible to definitely classify them as global or local. Neither traditional institutional nor newer network- and flow-inspired languages of description can be used to make sense of them. These interactions—often spontaneous, slightly formed, and embedded in the routine practices—may emerge and then quickly dissolve. However, they may become the origin of the yet-unknown future.

New forms of social order may reveal themselves in various configurations of order and disorder, in unprecedented or partially transformed situations, or in episodes of social life in time and space. The novelty may be traced in unexpected eventsor in issues of communication, in the distribution of sourcesand in the shifting of centers of activities, or in the composition of new types of inert communication. Spontaneous orders relate to the shop floor of the social where new forms of interaction emerge and are tested. The times and situations, when the dominant tendencies are not yet defined, and the future is still open, are the most favorable to these orders.

 Call for Papers