Call for papers Issue 48/2027

Between Proximity and Distance: Methodological and epistemological challenges in studying communities in Central and Eastern Europe.

Guest editors: 

Tomasz Błaszczak (Vytautas Magnus University)

Violetta Parutis (Vytautas Magnus University & University of Essex)

Central and Eastern Europe has long been framed in academic and public discourse as a ‘problematic region’: post-socialist, post-traumatic, politically fragile, and perpetually catching up with Western modernity. Its societies have often been analyzed through lenses of deficit, transition, or incompleteness. In recent decades, the region has frequently been described through narratives of emigration, demographic decline, post-socialist trauma, and social closure. Yet recent global crises—most notably Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, but also broader geopolitical shifts and insecurities—challenge this established framing. Countries long perceived as migrant-sending, cautious, or even xenophobic have rapidly become spaces of arrival, transit, and settlement, marked by the emergence of new forms of solidarity, hospitality, and civic engagement.

This thematic issue starts from the hypothesis that Central and Eastern Europe may no longer be understood solely as a region reacting to global crises, but rather as a space where such crises are translated into concrete social, cultural, and moral practices.

It proposes to explore newly emerging communities, grassroots initiatives, solidarity networks, migrant and refugee communities, volunteer groups, and informal collectives—not merely as responses to crisis, but as key indicators of regional specificity and transformation. These formations illuminate how transnationalism, moral obligation, and everyday geopolitics are lived, negotiated, and institutionalized in Central and Eastern Europe, often in ways that diverge from Western European models of integration and policy-driven responses.

The proposed conceptual approach to community, in the classical sociological sense (e.g., F. Tönnies, É. Durkheim, R. Williams), is grounded in everyday social practices, networks of solidarity, and moral responsibilities. Community is understood not merely as a territorial or administrative group, but as a dynamic social and cultural formation that emerges through shared actions, experiences, and relationships—both spontaneous and organized. Accordingly, we invite contributions that highlight regional specificity, post-socialist histories, and crisis contexts, analyzing how people create, sustain, and transform social, cultural, and moral practices in their daily lives.

A notable tendency in current research shows that studies from Central and Eastern Europe tend to be more empirically grounded, qualitative, and focused on everyday integration and micro-level experience, while research from Western Europe more often adopts quantitative, structural, and policy-oriented approaches. This issue invites reflection on these regional differences in research traditions, methodologies, and epistemologies, without reproducing hierarchical divisions between them.

At the same time, across Europe there is a shared and growing scholarly focus on refugee integration, particularly in relation to labor markets, education, housing, and social participation. We encourage submissions that situate such processes within broader cultural, moral, and relational contexts, paying attention to how integration is experienced, practiced, resisted, or reimagined at the level of everyday life.

The issue seeks contributions rooted in cultural and social anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and related disciplines. Empirically grounded papers, especially those based on ethnographic research, qualitative interviews, participant observation, or mixed methods, are particularly encouraged. We also welcome theoretically informed reflections that engage with broader debates on crisis, community, solidarity, and regional knowledge production.

By focusing on communities as indicators rather than mere outcomes, this thematic issue aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of Central and Eastern Europe—not as a passive periphery, but as an active site of social experimentation and moral agency in times of global uncertainty.

We particularly welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following questions:

• How do newly formed communities respond to war, displacement, and geopolitical uncertainty in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region?
• In what ways do communities act as indicators of regional historical experience, post-socialist legacies, or moral orientations?
• How are solidarity, hospitality, exclusion, or fatigue negotiated in everyday encounters with refugees and migrants?
• What methodological and epistemological differences emerge between research conducted in Central/Eastern and Western Europe, and what do these differences reveal?
• How do grassroots initiatives and informal networks interact with state institutions, NGOs, and international frameworks?
• How are global crises translated into local moral decisions, emotional practices, and social relations?

Expressions of interest (300-word abstracts) should be sent by email to ethnologia.polona@iaepan.edu.pl before 01.06.2026. Invited Authors will be notified by 30.06.2026.

Full articles (between 6000 to 8000 words, including bibliography) should be submitted through the Ethnologia Polona submission system. See the Author’s Guidelines. The deadline for submission of full articles is 31.01.2027. The issue will be published by the end of 2027. For informal inquiries and questions concerning potential contributions please contact us at ethnologia.polona@iaepan.edu.pl.