CFP: Zones of Violence: An Invitation to Potential Contributors

Zones of Violence: An Invitation to Potential Contributors
Beginning in 2003, in association with OUP, we initiated the go-ahead for a series of monographs whose common aim was to consider the historical origins and morphology of persistent including genocidal violence across whole regions. Our aim was intentionally trans-national: subverting more standard academic views that political, mass violence ought best be examined within specific countries and arguing instead that a better way of analysing many
such instances was through an approach in which traditional mosaics of human ecology, complex ethnic identities and porous regional economies were then set against modern, nationalising trajectories within state-bounded polities, not to say exogenous political and economic pressures emanating from an emergent, globalising ‘system.’  The aim of the series, moreover, was not to delimit itself to supposedly hard and fast cases of genocide but to consider a range of aspects – war, coercive population displacement, ‘ethnic cleansing’, massacre, refugee flows, overt, or covert foreign interference, environmental breakdown – which might fall under a wider definition of violence, especially where these tendencies appeared to replicate themselves in some form or other across time, space and internationally-recognised boundaries.

The series conception envisaged some nine or ten studies. Three to date have been published, Alexander Prusin’s ‘The Land Between’; Mark Biondich’s ‘The Balkans’ and Richard J. Reid’s ‘Frontiers of Violence in North-East Africa’. A further commissioned volume by Fikret Adanir on ‘The Caucasus and Its Hinterland,’ is awaited with anticipation. Each of these volumes were conceived as being conceptually rigorous, thematically-orientated yet with a strong sense of chronological development. At this current moment of time, however, further volumes in the series have yet to be commissioned. These include studies of : Central America, West Africa, The Pakistan-Afghanistan border region (Hindu Kush), the African Central Lakes region, Israel-Palestine and its hinterlands (Sykes-Picot belt in short-hand) and possibly the South-East Asian archipelago region. Other  monographs might be considered where a robust case for their inclusion in the Zones of Violence remit could be demonstrated. Similarly, a reconceptualisation of some of the proposed zones above might also be entertained where a strong argument for doing so prevailed.

In short, we are looking for further potential contributors to this series and are inviting any area expert, from whatever appropriate discipline who might wish to make a serious proposal to contact us. We should perhaps add as caveat that acceptance of submissions is a rigorous process. The series editors’ themselves have had to decline some previous proposals which failed to meet the specification. OUP, too, has its own rigorous vetting procedure. In addition, we regret that we cannot accept edited collections which might otherwise fall within the rubric. This is thus proffered as an invitation for either a single or two-authored proposals. But putting aside the strictures in the previous lines, both ourselves and OUP are now very eager to match up the remaining zones with authors.

If you think you could be one of that select group and would like to know more, please contact both Mark Levene at M.Levene@soton.ac.uk and Donald Bloxham at Donald.Bloxham@ed.ac.uk for more detailed information.