A quick look at the latest issue of Amsterdam Social Science – Founded in 2008 at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) by Jonathan Mijs and Thomas Franssen, and currently managed by an editorial board of graduate students from both the Vrije Universiteit (VU) and UvA, Amsterdam Social Science (ASS) is a journal by graduate students for graduate students. Financially supported by the UvA and VU Graduate Schools of Social Sciences, ASS is a fully-fledged peer-reviewed journal that publishes empirical and/or theoretical articles and normative essays pertaining to all (sub)fields in the social sciences. Now in its fourth edition, the latest issue (4,1) is packed with stimulating articles spanning a theoretical spectrum stretching from gender and media studies, through international relations and anthropology. Here’s a quick summary of the vibrant content available in the new issue.
Drawing on the red-thread of subject formation, Megan Raschig prefaces edition 4,1 with a heerlijke summary of the developments that have taken place at the journal over the last year, describing how the board’s efforts have helped shape the journal’s burgeoning public image. Lucy Hall’s article, Erasing Agency: Representations of Women Terrorists and the Intersection of Gender, Race and Ethnicity, leads the issue, picking up on the mediated concept of Black Widows, or Chechen female suicide bombers, tracking its prevalence in mainstream online news media and interrogating its underlying premises using feminist and post-colonial theory. Continuing with the theme of mediation, next, we are whisked off to Indonesia where Leonie Schmidt engages with popular cinematic representations of religion gender and politics in her article, Post-Suharto Screens: gender politics, Islam and discourses of modernity. Outside of Asia, Karel Hendriks raises the question of whether it is still pertinent to hold the view that African interstate violence has declined in his piece, African Vultures: the new prevalence of interstate war in Africa. Gender makes a fishy return in Robbie Voss’s concise, engaging Derridean reading of the Disney classic, The Little Mermaid; while Itamar Shachar takes another look at the UvA Start Magazine using ‘anthropological image analysis and auto-ethnography’ as part of his broader, deep and thoughtful analysis of representations of safety and discourses about ‘international students’ and ‘migrants’ in Amsterdam. The issue concludes with a Comment by Danilo Mandic on ‘Eckhards “Political Engineering in Kosovo”, which deals with the complex political dynamics regarding the state of Kosovo, discussed in an article published in the previous issue.
Interested in finding out more? Pick up a hard-copy in the VU Graduate Room (Z-403) or a range of different locations at the UvA. Otherwise, point your browser to our website, www.socialscience.nl where you can find all our inspiring articles online.