Friendship, Trust, and Conflict: From Conceptual History towards Studies of Social Ontology

Warfare, social conflicts, revolutions, shifts of national borders, and mass migration continue to transform the existing social order that emerged in Europe by the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21th centuries. The previous special issues of the Russian Sociological Review on borders and warfare discussed these transformations of social order that is now in jeopardy, and thus may change unexpectedly. However, the notion of social order is a complex one, and has other crucial aspects. Although dissolved and disintegrated, social order is still omnipresent despite all the challenges facing it. States and global state systems are not the only fundamental phenomena that maintain social order.

While solidarity was the essential feature of civil society within the borders of nation states, theories of global society have emphasized the phenomena of mobility and touristic gaze on social worlds. However, to understand recent social and political transformations, one needs to go beyond this agenda and to focus on those aspects of interpersonal relations that are still important for social order, even within the spaces of conflicts. Among other phenomena that continue to define and maintain the “grand orders” are trust, friendship, and conflict.

Call for Papers, Special Issue 2016.

Abstract submission deadline: April 20, 2016 May 20, 2016.