THIRD ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

The Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg Branch) in cooperation with the Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies of the Russian Academy is organizing on July 4-7, 2002 in St. Petersburg the Second International Conference "HIERARCHY AND POWER IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATIONS".

The First Conference held in Moscow in June 2000 brought together over 150 scholars. While the majority of participants were from Russia, others came from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain, the UK, Ukraine, and the USA. Billed as a discussion of 'the general trends and mechanisms of socio-cultural evolution and the processes of socio-political evolution in their regional and temporary variation', it turned into a series of debates about the relationship between anthropology and history of the longue durée with contributions from (and implications for) those working in Political Science, Sociology, Cultural Studies, and related disciplines. The accounts about the First Conference are published in the journals Vostok /Oriens/ (2000, no. 5, p. 163) and Anthropology Today (vol. 16, 2000, no. 6, pp. 23-24).

The success of the First Conference suggested to its participants an idea to create an international consortium which could ensure the regularity of further conferences. Now we intend to hold the “Hierarchy and Power” Conference biannually. Furthermore, it has been decided to broaden its disciplinary scope by inviting to participate in the Second Conference not only anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, but also political scientists, sociologists, jurists, and specialists in other related fields. Much of Western Social Science has gone up a postmodern cul-de-sac, interested only in its own concepts rather than in trying to understand the external world. Those Western social scientists who profess to combine history with ethnography often only mean by this very recent history, especially colonial history. The proposed conference seeks to explore patterns of human history in the widest possible sense and the various theoretical models.

The participants of the First Conference came to the conclusion that in contemporary social sciences we observe a rather effective and sophisticated system of data collection and their initial analysis (on the level of individual cultures and civilizations). In the meantime, we seem to lack a similarly effective and sophisticated system of the synthesis of the obtained results. It was through understanding this problem that the First Conference participants came to an idea to make the “Hierarchy and Power” Conferences regular, aiming at the filling of the above mentioned gap, at the creating of a world-wide network of scholars concerned with the solving of the above discussed problem.

The immediate objective of the Second Conference is to discuss the following issues:

Institute of Oriental Studies (St. Petersburg Branch)
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191186 St. Petersburg, Russia
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Center for Civilizational and Regional Studies
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Tel. + (7 095) 291 41 19; Fax: + (7 095) 202 07 86
E-mail: dmitri.bondarenko@inafr.ru ; dbondar@hotmail.com