Dear all,

We are currently putting up a session on Power, Capitalism and Ecology in Rural Central-Eastern Europe for the first edition of Vienna Anthropology Days (19th-22nd September), and we are looking forward to receive your contributions.

Panel conveners: George Iordachescu, Stefan Voicu & Daniela Ana
Discussant: Guntra Aistara - Central European University (TBC)
Abstract
In the last three decades, the reconfiguration of Central-Eastern European states to fit into the neoliberal global circuits of capital entailed deep transformations. The countryside has been particularly affected. New power relations emerged with the liberalization of markets and the privatization and decollectivization of agricultural land, implements and other assets. As these processes advanced, already existing inequalities deepened and new forms of marginalization and exclusion were created.
While the first two decades of postsocialism have been extensively studied by anthropologists, the literature on the region's recent rural developments after the EU's South-Eastern enlargement and the financial crisis has been rather scarce. Moreover, the intertwinement of these social, political and economic transformations with ecological ones has been often overlooked.
The (re-)consolidation of agricultural land and technologization of agricultural work led by the EU's Common Agricultural Policy or through corporate finance and land-grabbing, as well as the establishment of protected areas through new environmental policies are transforming the rural social fabric redefining subjectivities, power relations and human-nonhuman interactions.
Determined by these transformations are processes such as the ageing rural population and the widespread out-migration for work to the city and abroad; or the corporatization of crop and food production, distribution and retail replacing subsistence agriculture, peasant markets and informal short-food supply chains with family and large-scale commercial farming, international markets and global value chains; or the criminalization of traditional land-use and exchange practices no longer considered compliant with new environmental and economic regulations.

With this panel we seek to understand which are the emerging challenges and developments of the Central-East European countryside. While not limited to the below, we invite reflections on the following topics:


  *   Historical transformations and current meanings of the term "peasant" in everyday life, political, economic and scientific discourses in Central-Eastern Europe.
  *   Changes in access to resources engendered by agricultural land consolidation, cash cropping , de-industrialization, technologization, green securitization, climate change
  *   (Re-)proletarianisation, mobilization and precarization of agricultural labour
  *   The rural environment  between conservation initiatives and neo-extractivist projects
  *   National politics and rural areas: patronage and clientelism, populism and abandonment
  *   Envisioning alternatives in old and new commons, cooperatives and short supply chains.


The abstracts (max. 4000 characters) should be submitted no later than June 1st 2018 through the conference website
https://vanda.univie.ac.at/call-for-papers/online-paper-submission/


Venue: New Institute Building (NIG), Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, Austria
More details at https://vanda.univie.ac.at/call-for-papers/

For any questions or concerns do not hesitate to contact us at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>, [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> or [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Best,

Daniela Ana
PhD Candidate IMPRS ANARCHIE
Department 'Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia'
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Advokatenweg 36
D-06114 Halle (Saale)
Email: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>


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