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Mapping Neoliberalism and Its Countermovements
in the Former Second World
a five-day workshop, July 23rd-27th, 2012
Budapest, Hungary
DESCRIPTION
In early July 2011, under the auspices of Budapest’s Central European
University, a summer school took place. Its unwieldy title (The
“(Neo)liberalization of Socialism and the Crises of Capital”) and
stellar faculty attracted a group of young scholars interested in
transcending the worn-out paradigms through which postsocialist
societies are still interpreted in media, policy analysis, and
academic research: communism v. democracy, transition, “return to
Europe.” Many of the participants turned out to be no mere detached,
Weberian scholars but social movement activists in their own contexts,
whose theories draw on their political practices.
Inspired by the experience of mutual recognition, by the stakes of our
conversation, and the opportunity to talk to other scholars from a
region whose cultural and intellectual interconnections have been
largely severed, we have organized a workshop from July 23rd to 27th,
2012, once again in Budapest. We have conceived it as at the same time
a narrower and more ambitious event than last year’s. Narrower,
because we lack the institutional affiliations, the major funding, and
the intellectual resources that made last year’s summer school
possible. Ours will be a summer school without teachers. More
ambitious, because the conversation has already begun, the
commonalities/ camaraderies have been established, potential allies
identified, and the urgency to formulate intellectual and activist
agendas and link them up across national borders — even greater!
In this spirit, we propose the following three themes as our main
intellectual agenda for the workshop:
• Postsocialist neoliberalism. What is the explanatory power of
concepts such as "neoliberalism" and "peripheral capitalism",
“Third-Worldization” and "dependent development” when applied to the
former Second World? What are their material expressions in people’s
everyday lives? What ideological justifications have been propagated
to legitimate this developmental model?
• Countermovements. What forms does resistance to postsocialist
neoliberalism take? Can the strength of right-wing and nationalist
parties be explained this way? What does the left look like in every
one Uof the societies represented at this workshop?
• We ourselves, as postsocialist scholars and activists. What are
our locations in the academy and outside of it? How can we carry out
critical research and participate in social movements? How can we help
each other, across borders?
PARTICIPANTS AND CONTRIBUTORS
Over the course of a week in late July, more than 40 participants from
a dozen of postsocialist countries will be answering the above
questions. We hope, however, to reach a wider audience by opening
sections of the workshop to the general public, audio-recording
others, and linking it with regional journals/ internet sites of
social critique with which our participants are affiliated: Commons
(Ukraine), Critic Atac (Romania), Krytyka Polityczna (Poland), New
Left Perspectives (Bulgaria), Prasvet (Belarus), Rabkor (Russia), and
others.
The event is made possible thanks to the help of Corvinus University’s
College for Advanced Studies and Theory (TEK), CEU’s Center for
Historical Studies (Pasts, Inc.), the Global Civil Society Program of
Tomori Pal College, Social Center Xaspel in Sofia, and the Budapest
Center for Architecture.
PROGRAM
Monday, 23 July
12.00 – 13.00
Registration and coffee
13.00 – 14.30
Talk: Mary Taylor via skype
The 2011 Neoliberalizing Socialism in Budapest: the 2011 CEU summer course
15.00 – 17.00
First Round of Introductions
All participants will briefly explain who they are, what they are
fighting for (in research and activism) and introduce the
institutions, publications, and groups with which they are affiliated.
18.00 – 19.00
Attila Melegh talk, “"The Global 1950s”"
TUESDAY, 24 July
10.00 – 11.00 József Böröcz talk, "Whitening Histories"
11.30 – 14.30 Excavating the origins of the neoliberal present in the
late socialist past
Coordinators: Dan Cirjan, Rossen Djagalov, Piotr Wcislik
One of the recurring problems of most scholarship on postsocialism has
been its tendency to build its analyses against the background of an
undifferentiated socialist past, a homogenous set of institutions,
economic practices and types of governance, which seem to have
remained constant throughout the communist period only to be reshaped
by the “great transformation” of the 1990s. This panel, by contrast,
is based on the premise that a more nuanced, global, and historically
informed perspective on late socialism will provide us with the
much-needed understanding of the elements that were “re-formed”,
reframed and re-organized through neoliberal policies under
neoliberalism.
Late socialism also saw the emergence a particular type of discourse
coming from dissidents, the “democratic opposition”, and reformists,
which framed and interpreted “actually existing socialism” and its
“crisis” outside of the official Party monologue. This type of
discourse proved pivotal in shaping the postsocialist public sphere
and paved the way for the “neoliberalization of the Left,” especially
the reformist left, after 1989. In this sense, the panel has a dual
aim: on the one hand, it seeks to understand the late-socialist
reforms in the spheres of production and welfare provision and their
relationship to world-economic processes, especially the capitalist
restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s. On the other, it aims at
reconstructing the process through which elements in the political
thinking of the Left could lead to embracing neoliberalism as a
progressive project.
15.30 – 18.30
History of class formation in CEE
Coordinators: Mikolaj Lewicki, Maciek Gdula, Adam Ostolski, Przemyslaw Sadura
The transformation of social structures after 1989 in so called
post-communist countries is rarely analyzed with reference to the
notion of class. The popularity of concepts such as inequality, social
mobility and stratification contribute to naturalization of capitalism
and do not form a basis for critique of new order. We would like to
offer an analysis of social structures in Central and Eastern Europe
from a number of class-oriented perspectives. The focus will be on
three interconnected aspects:
changes in composition of class system, different class cultures and
social conflicts. This approach offers not only a much richer
perspective on what has happened during last twenty years but also
allows us to pose questions about the prospects of social and
political change.
Wednesday, 25 July
10.00 – 14.00
"Is the revolution necessarily urban?"
Coordinators: Mariann Dosa, Csaba Jelinek, Zsuzsanna Pósfai
Many writings from critical/radical urban studies scholars since the
1980s highlight the pivotal role of cities and urban landscapes in
neoliberal restructuring and governance. Apart from these theories,
the emerging leftist struggles against the neoliberal hegemony have
often been situated in and focused on the urban realm. An especially
powerful and well-known concept encapsulating the intimate
relationship between urban phenomenon and (counter-)hegemonic forces
of neoliberalism is the Right to the City (RTC) framework developed by
David Harvey. Recognizing the fact that many of the young critical
scholars from our region have a special interest either in critical
urban research or in urban movements, this session tries (1) to
theoretically reflect on the role of cities in leftist
countermovements, (2) to explore postsocialist specifics and
differences within the region regarding urban scholarship, marginality
and movements and (3) to speculate about the potentials of a future
urban focused coalition among the leftist actors in the region.
We will begin this session by introducing Harvey's urban theories and
his Right to the City concept. Two case studies — the Hungarian City
is for All and the Polish RTC movement — will inform our discussion.
Workshop participants will help us establish our empirical base by
answering the following questions about urban life in their societies:
How was the privatization of the housing stock/ urban space carried
out? Is there a housing crisis, and if yes, what characterizes it (is
it quantitative, qualitative or accessibility crisis)? What is the
structure of the housing sector and what are the main processes in it?
What are the forms of urban marginality?
We will then move on to discuss the specificity of postsocialist
cities and the applicability of the RTC framework to urban struggles
there. Can we agree with Harvey that — in this region not unlike his
Western and Third-World examples — cities and urban movements should
be crucial sites for leftist struggles? Who are the agents of
postsocialist urban movements (middle-class hipsters? vulnerable
groups?) and what are the issues that they problematize (homelessness,
the urban environment)? What are the main topics and dynamics of
critical urban research in the various countries? How can we urban
research and urban struggles?
15.00 – 19.00
Crisis, austerity, and countermovements, Part I. Movements on the right
Coordinators: Marek Mikus, Piotr Wcislik
In this panel we want to question the entanglements between neoliberal
crisis, the postsocialist condition and the countermovements on the
right. The goal is to see the real thing behind the various
caricatures which proliferate in the academic descriptions, including
on the Left. Most interpretations of nationalist protest movements
classify them according to their sources or their political functions
in the dynamics of postsocialist capitalism. As far as the sources are
concerned, the interpretations range between the extemporaneous and
contemporaneous arguments. The privileged trope of the former
(traditional liberal) approach has been the "homo sovieticus,"
designating a type of mentality unable to adapt to the postsocialist
realities both in the marketplace (outdated welfare demands) and in
the sphere of values (unprocessed xenophobia, traditional values,
nationalism). The latter (more critical) argument assimilates the
protest movements on the right under the umbrella term of "populism,"
which is considered to be the product of the postpolitical condition
of both Western and Eastern societies after 1989. As far as the
political functions of those countermovements are concerned, the
interpretations range between a "Troyan horse of capitalism" and a
"surrogate Left" perspectives. In the first case, the focus is on how
the objective economic sources of popular indignation are steered
towards an (ethnic or ex-Communist) Other while redeeming the image of
capitalism as a nice thing if run by decent people. In the second
case, the ideological fundamentals of the nationalist right - such as
the defense of popular sovereignty, critique of — hegemony and
anti-elitism — are taken seriously to the extent that they overlap
with left's own agenda.
All these conceptual problems should include a comparative dimension
in both time and space. Are the CEE nationalist protest movements from
the 1990s the same as today’s? How do they compare with the far-right
movements in Western and non-Western worlds?
The objective of the panel is to rethink these interpretations with
the view of the Left's own strategy. Where is the place of the Left?
With the liberals in a "popular front of modernization" or with the
"people,” that is, the current constituency of right-wing protest?
Thursday, 26 July
10.00 – 14.00
Crisis, austerity, and countermovements, Part II. Movements on the left
Coordinators: Natalia Buier, Agnes Gagyi, Mariya Ivancheva, Piotr
Wcislik
In the second session on countermovements to neoliberal regimes we
discuss the contemporary movements associated with the left or
considered as progressive both inside and outside the academia. We
invite participants to introduce countermovements they know well so
that we could reach a larger, international perspective of their
workings as well as a sense of „what is to be done.”
Beyond serving to introduce relevant regional developments, the panel
will problematize the study of social movements through a dual
epistemological concern: on the one hand, it will ask how the array of
recent social movements challenges our analytical tools as
sociologists, anthropologists, students of history and culture; on the
other hand, it also asks seeks to understand the inscription of
dominant ideologies in the act of studying these movements and the
complicity of academics in obscuring histories of militance. Our own
relationship to those movements as both researchers and participants
will be further discussed in the next panel: Academic struggles.
15.00 – 19.00
Academic struggles: the position and task of the CEE academic left
Coordinators: Jana Bacevic, Natalia Buier, Rossen Djagalov, Agnes
Gagyi, Mariya Ivancheva
The panel aims to be a theoretical reflection on our own work, as well
as a strategic discussion about what we could do together,
internationally. We will begin with a discussion of the role of
universities (as institutions) and higher education (as a field of
knowledge production) in reproducing neoliberal ideology as well as
its political and economic elites deploying that ideology. What are
the implications of the changing conditions of knowledge production
for the possibilities, stratagems, and spaces of resistance within the
academe? Could critical pedagogy and activism be aligned within the
university we know? What kind of epistemological challenge do
practices such as militant ethnography pose? What do we make of the
differences in position, history and vocabulary from similar questions
asked in Western academia? From the institutional context, we will
then move to the disciplinary one. Each of the disciplines represented
at this workshop — anthropology, sociology, history, and so on — has a
specific capacity for legitimating and critiquing neoliberalism.
What would a leftist academic project look like in each of them?
Finally, many of us also inhabit non-academic spaces, be they NGOs,
journals of social critique, political parties. What is the
relationship between our academic and non-academic engagements?
We invite participants to introduce the academic context of their
work, join the debate about our common task, and think of
possibilities of collaboration.
Friday, 27 July
10.00 – 14.00
Interview Day
As many workshop participants happen to be editors or contributors to
leftist magazines and web sites and as other, local publications might
also join us, the last morning is left open for group/personal
interviews and inter-publication networking.
--
M.
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