CONF./CFP- IUAES, Florence Italy, July 2003: Post-Socialism Panels
POST-SOCIALIST SOCIETIES:
CULTURAL ECOLOGY OF A PERMANENT CRISIS
Conference pre-session of the 15th World Congress of the
International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES)
HUMANKIND/NATURE INTERACTION:
PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
Florence, Italy, July 5-12, 2003
Convenors:
Irena Sumi, Ph.D.
Institute of Ethnic Studies
Erjavceva 26
1000 Ljubljana
SLOVENIA
Phone: + 386 1 2001879
Fax: + 386 1 2510964
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Duska Knezevic Hocevar, Ph.D.
Institute of Medical Sciences, Zrc Sazu
Novi Trg 2
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia
Phone: +386 1 4706 442
Fax: +386 1 4255 253
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Workshop Summary:
The post-socialist condition can be said to be marked by a seeming general
paradox. After an odd decade of nominal democracy and capitalism, the
conceptual agendas as promoted in virtually all public discourses are,
rather than thoroughly liberalised, saturated with radically essentialised
notions of self and Other, and of the categorically positive and negative.
This essentialisation is evident everywhere, to the extent that both
implicit and explicit chauvinist and racist discourses on e. g. fertility,
women, ethnic and other minorities, immigrants, diasporas, religious
communities, and even political opposition are widely accepted as
pseudo-natural, generally perceived even as 'liberalising' in the sense of
doing away with socialist 'hypocrisy', in public and power discourses:
notions of political correctness of any kind remain marginal and even
stigmatised, and attempts at analytical perspectives censored or
systematically discouraged. Radical nationalist discourse and its teleology
are the unquestioned, widely accepted 'new' societal purpose.
On the other hand, large portions of the rapidly spawning social scientific
literature on post-socialism adopt commonsensical, progressivist perspective
according to which the ex-socialist contexts, now 'liberated of
totalitarianism' and opened to an uninhibited observation, are
'transitioning', ostensibly towards the 'higher' social order of capitalism
and western-style democracy. This social evolutionist flavour is strongly
reminiscent of colonial writings on the Other both in its organisation of
perspective and its agenda. It is therefore tempting to propose that a
specific type of colonial relationship between 'old' and 'new' 'democracies'
and their proponents and interpreters is setting in.
The possibilities of exploring the parallels between post-colonial and
post-socialist contexts have been noticed. Do either of the vast bodies of
literature which have sustained ongoing investigation into these areas have
anything to offer one another? The abrupt re-modelling of the legal and
governance systems in societies once organised under socialist and colonial
domination seems at first glance to offer a wide variety of parallels which
could inform the study of both post-socialist and post-colonial contexts.
The 'ethnic nationalisms' which flourished in the aftermath of socialist and
colonial regimes' dismantlings, for example, might offer further
corroboration of significant parallels. At a more abstract level, some have
suggested that both contexts might be understood vis-a-vis a model of
'consummate technologies of power' and the ways in which such technologies
leave uniform, similar, structurally comparable or identifiable imprints on
the societies and social imaginations they once organised.
The places where these parallels can arguably be most obvious, and most
clearly explored, are elitist public discourses on the one hand, and the
eminently formative systems of public education on the other.
Papers Invited:
The convenors, and the panel chairs do not call primarily for full-scale
comparisons of colonial, socialist, post-colonial, and post-socialist
situations; instead, any case study or problem exposé that can contribute to
illuminating these situations and processes is most welcome. The session is
aimed at developing a nascent dialogue between scholars of post-socialism
and the post-colony with reference to specific ethnographic case studies. As
such, participants are invited who might be in a position to offer a
description of their ongoing research together with some discussion of how
the particularities of their field concerns were adequately addressed by,
neglected or creatively informed with recourse to post-socialist and
post-colonial theory alike. The fruitfulness of such a comparative endeavour
remains a topic for debate within the panel as a whole, and papers are
encouraged which both support and reject this comparison as a useful axis
for ongoing discovery and discussion.
The convenors, and the panel chairs strongly encourage other possible
pertinent ideas and studies to be submitted for consideration.
Themes:
1. Imagining the nation in post-socialist discourse (Chair: Dr. Duska
Knezevic Hocevar):
* how do elitist discourses describe the post-socialist nation and its
borders, and the civil society;
* how do bottom-up perceptions imagine the nation and civil society in
post-socialism;
2. Remembering socialism (Chair: Dr. Irena Sumi):
* how do elitist, bottom-up, diasporic etc. discourses remember socialism;
* how is socialism remembered in distinctly 'western' settings;
3. Imagining the 'west' and 'transition' in post-socialism (Chair: Dr. Nancy
Ries):
* how do people in post-socialist states perceive the west and things
western;
* what is the ideation on 'transitioning' in relation to the perceived west
and things western;
4. Post-Socialist contexts in scientific discourse (Chair: Dr. Michal
Buchowski):
* is the social scientific discourse on post-socialist condition a variant
of Orientalism;
* what is the impact of social scientific production of post-socialist
studies, who does it inform, and how;
5. Post-colonial and post-socialist contexts interpreted: (un)easy
parallels? (Chair: Dr. Sari Wastell):
* are there indicative cases, or parallels between social processes in
post-socialism and post-colonial developments;
* if so, what are fruitful venues of comparison in concrete cases;
6. Representations of colonial, post-colonial, socialist and post-socialist
contexts in public education (Chair: Dr. Daniel Wildcat):
* are public education systems as systems of mass indoctrination comparable
in their dealing with colonial, post-colonial, socialist, and post-
socialist Other; how did the demise of colonialism on the one hand, and
the demise of socialism on the other, affect public education worldwide;
* what are cases of wiping-out and/or suppressing the knowledges of the
Other, and is that, and in what ways, a mutual (in)formative process
between Us/Other.
Deadline:
Proposals with a title and a short summary (max 250 words) in English may be
submitted to the organisers
(<http://www.icaes-florence2003.com/icaes_800X600/abstracts.htm>), and a
copy sent to the convenors' addresses (above). The deadline for abstracts is
December 31, 2002.
Location and organisation of the event:
The session will take place in Siena near Florence. All panels of the
session are envisioned as successive events, not simultaneous. For further
information on all aspects of the session and the congress, please check the
IUAES web site (www.icaes-florence2003.com
<http://www.icaes-florence2003.com>) periodically.
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