Brief description: 
 
This special topic volume investigates the fate of the social contract in the contexts of the post-national order. Modern social contract relied upon the idea of stable state territories and homogenous ethno-cultural communities. Social bonds were nurtured through institutes of citizenship, membership and belonging, whereas rationalization of cultural heritage through processes of (re)traditionalization and collective memory production assured a socially cohesive understanding of public culture; and patriotic commitments to the notions of nationhood and homeland. This constellation guided public imagination and social sciences alike: in the words of Ulrich Beck, this was the era of the methodological nationalism. 
 
State, regional and global rebordering, changing of the paths and classes of migrations, and profound decomposing of the welfare state, to name but a few, have created conditions of permanent instability, fluidity and proliferation of contradictions in the relationship between the citizen and the state. This includes the fracturing of the democratic public sphere and value politics due to meaning contestation of key modern principles of solidarity, justice, welfare; as well as a growing incommensurability between the post-humanitarian ethics of neoliberal consumer society and the rational choice agency ideal of the modern Enlightenment subject. This, then, is the era of the post-national constellation (Habermas).
 
Contributions should cover diverse topics, related to modern heritage of contractualism its development  in the 21st century, including questions of:
 
- migration, including currrent refugee crisis in Europe;
- austerity and decline of social welfare state;
- citizenship, borders, postnational belonging
- Enlightenment values and neoliberal individualism
- cultural identities and the European idea
- subjects, governmentality, control
- globalization, transnationalization, cosmopolitization
- Empirical research as well as theoretical reflections are welcome.
 
Contributors should send the proposal (approx. 500 words) and a short bibliography to  ksenija.vidmar@ff.uni-lj.si  by 25 April 2016. The completed, previously unpublished article (6000-8000 words) will be due 1 September 2016.
 
With kind regards,
Gregor Starc
Managing editor

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