The crisis of globalization has been talked about for several years. Long before actual political changes, doubts about the world-order began to emerge. The Covid 19 epidemic and quarantine regimes, military conflicts and migration flows have shown the fragility and unreliability of previous political solutions, somehow oriented towards a “borderless world”, with its presumption of openness, international tourism, free information flows and financial connectivity. The decline has lasted for a decade or even longer. And yet, until recently, it may have seemed that it was still the same old, familiar world that could be at least partially brought back to its previous state of normality. Apparently, it was not scientists, but politicians who put a symbolic point on the matter. On April 6, 2025, the office of the British Prime Minister, explaining his position in the tariff conflict with the United States, announced the end of globalization and the beginning of a new era. Not a single politician in the world challenged this assertion. The concept of “the West” is gradually disappearing from political rhetoric, which means that notions that seemed promising not so long ago, like the “Global South,” may also lose their former meaning.

Social scientists are often reluctant to consider policy statements as their main frame of reference for setting research objectives. However, we assume that politicians are not only stating but also shaping a new reality. The new world is being created before our eyes, among other things, by political decisions, the distant consequences of which are difficult to foresee. Studying of the new reality thus becomes an agenda for social science. The destruction of the global world is accompanied by the strengthening of the role of the state; powerful states, empires, as they are sometimes called, as well as alliances of states, which are becoming a kind of empire. On the one hand, old borders are being reinforced. On the other, borders are proving to be more contested and fluid than ever in all the years since the collapse of the USSR. The problems that arise here may seem like the old, familiar problems that always accompany geopolitical change. Theseseem like the old, familiar problems that always accompany geopolitical change. These days, however, many of them have a new character. This is precisely because states that deny the global world do not emerge in a desert or on the ruins of civil war. The global world has generated its own culture, its own way of life, its own supporting groups und units like world cities or those groups that Zygmunt Bauman called “the elite of globalization.” Contrary to the outdated but still widespread notion that modernity with its rationality is replacing more emotional and tradition-rooted ties, today empires and states appealing to more traditional elements of culture are trying to replace new value communities nurtured by globalization. Global capitalism, global information systems, social media, entertainment, and more are still to a large extent carriers of the old, global culture, which is provided by the value commitment and expertise, tastes and habits, life plans and preferences of millions of people around the world.

The Russian Sociological Review plans to devote a special 2025 issue to this topic. We invite our colleagues to participate in it. The main questions we expect to be answered in the articles of this issue are as follows:

- Do concepts such as “global capitalism,” “world society,” “world-systems,” and others retain their heuristic potential?
- What significance can the growing tendencies to strengthen the role of the state in social life have for sociological theory?
- Can we speak of the return of the age of great powers and large empires as a sociologically relevant phenomenon, which determines the formation of new research perspectives?
- How is the main topic of sociological research changing in the post-global era?
- What do the latest macro-political trends mean for the culture of global communication, basic structures of everyday life and lifeworlds?

Schedule
June 15, 2025 — 500 words abstracts deadline
August 15, 2025 — Invitation to submit full papers
October 1, 2025 — Full papers deadline
October 15, 2025 — Notification of acceptance
November 1, 2025 — Revised papers deadline
December, 2025 — Publication

Contributions should be sent via e-mail to the Editor-in-Chief Professor Alexander Filippov (afilippov@hse.ru) and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Marina Pugacheva (puma7@yandex.ru; sociologica@hse.ru).

Papers should be no more than 10,000 words and written in English. See website of the RSR for the detailed guidelines for authors (sociologica.hse.ru/en/authors).