The Congress of Nations and States (CNS) is issuing a call for abstracts for chapters in an upcoming volume for a new series on Indigenous and Minority rights. CNS aims to develop scholarship and accounts from under-represented scholars and witnesses from around the world.    

Based on a two-year CNS project and preliminary report this volume of original essays is devoted to exploring the range and gravity of peoples’ speech suppression in a world disorder that is deeply divided into tribal battles for partisan supremacy. In addition to documenting the ascendance of speech suppression worldwide from World War II on as a means of social control, it argues that, on the contrary, the amplification of peoples’ free and responsible expression of words and images not only remains dynamic, but, to the extent that it exists, also promises to inoculate a society from social and political division without resorting to the exercise of social control.

The editors are seeking original chapters supported for the most part by documented research and anecdote that consider the following topics:

Ø  State-centric power structures and their suppression of minority and indigenous words and images that appear competitive if not threatening and therefore as repugnant.

Ø  The global breadth of neo-colonial speech suppression

Ø  The influence of speech suppression on hyper-cautionary self-censorship

Ø  The ascendant postcolonial resistance in response that paradoxically has given rise to new, heterodox discoveries beyond the pale of speech suppression

Ø  First-person accounts to illustrate competitive strategies for achieving social peace

Ø  The decisive futility of controlling expression in our age of social media

Ø  The elusive self-discipline that would limit if not avoid volatile and provocative street expression

The purpose of this volume is to acknowledge two strategies in contention for social order: top-down state control of rival expression and bottom-up heterodox expression limited only by self-restraint against degrading others. Each essay should explicitly address one or both strategies and, in place of polemics, should rely mainly on research or mainly on first-person observation. 

Chapters should achieve a 6,000–8,000-word count; include photos, charts, and other images – four or so per essay – and evidence of permission for adoption; and requisite footnotes as well as an annotated bibliography in Chicago/Turabian style. The editor of this volume will be Dr. Dennis Klein.

Abstracts are due by July 31, 2025. All applicants will be notified of the status of their submission by the beginning of August.