Presentation
Amnis is an online multidisciplinary French-language journal with an international editorial board. It was founded in 2000 by Severiano Rojo Hernandez, currently professor in the Spanish department at Aix Marseille Université and researcher at the CNRS laboratory TELEMME (Temps, Espaces, Langages, Europe Méridionale – Méditerranée). The aim of Amnis is to provide researchers with a tool that contributes to an extensive, diversified reflection on the past and present of European and American societies (19th-21st centuries). The journal (one issue per year) publishes original, previously unpublished articles as well as information of a scientific nature (colloquia, conferences). Amnis is open to the whole scientific community. However, an article is only published if the author’s objective, whatever their approach and discipline, has been to analyse a historical, political, economic, social or cultural phenomenon relating principally to contemporary European and American societies. In addition, articles are only published once they have been subject to an expert appraisal, which consists of a reasoned opinion from two external reviewers on the study’s originality and the scientific nature of its method.
After almost twenty years as Amnis, the journal is modifying its title and defining itself as a Journal for Studies on Contemporary Societies and Cultures (Europe-America). The objective is to consolidate and make much clearer the multidisciplinary anchoring that the journal has always claimed and which is essential now more than ever for an understanding of the European and American territories in all their complexity.
The geographic area covered by Amnis remains restricted to the ‘Europes’ and the ‘Americas’ for the following reasons. On the one hand, the journal is keen to focus its research on societies whose model or models are considered, rightly or wrongly, to have been hegemonic over the past few centuries, particularly in contemporary times (United States, Western Europe). On the other, a geographical area that stretches from the Urals to Patagonia has the potential to reveal not only to what extent these models are reproduced but also how each society retains its own specificities. A comparative, multidisciplinary approach is preferred because it facilitates our understanding of the continuities and discontinuities that occur at continental level. Finally, studying these two continents provides a better understanding of how contemporary societies have adapted since the 19th century to the process of globalisation, which has presented a constant challenge to some of the foundations that underpin them. Hence, Amnis proposes to better understand the changes underway in the two continents in question and their impact on the practices, behaviours and beliefs of individuals, groups and institutional systems.