CFP – Urban Movements and Local Politics in CEE countries: Recent Developments and Conceptual Ambivalences

International Workshop

Urban Movements and Local Politics in CEE countries: Recent Developments and Conceptual Ambivalences 

DATE: 4-6.11.2021 (Thursday evening: keynote and reception; Friday: presentations, Saturday morning: critical urban tour in the Karlín district: from a working-class neighborhood to a symbol of gentrification)

Deadline for submission: 30.5.2021

Organized by the CEFRES (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences) in Prague in cooperation with Institute of Sociological Sciences (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague), Fundacja Zatoka (PL) and Periféria (HU)

The workshop explores the role of political institutions and social movements in the process of urban change in the CEE countries. The case of Prague demonstrates that post-communist cities have particular historicity in terms of urban development after 1989. On the one hand, there is an overnight introduction of the free market ideology, on the other, there are unprepared institutions that are not capable to include citizens in the debates about urban space – the state and municipal power is either technocratic and elitist or exclusionary towards civic organizations (Horák 2007; Sýkora a Bouzarovski 2012). Mutual delegitimization of the state officials and activists, lack of trust in the municipal politics, misusing municipal politics as a channel for promoting developers’ interests are phenomena influencing the urban development in the 1990s.

Specific historical, institutional, and political development in the CEE countries gave rise to a critique of the blind application of the conceptual apparatus from the Western social sciences without further critical reassessment. “Catching-up-with-the-West” narratives are being revaluated from the perspectives of more complex approaches including West and East as components of the same global system (Gagyi 2015). Distinct local political culture also represents a matter of interest (Císař 2008). In terms of urban development, factors like democratic deficit on the municipal level leading to absent mechanisms of public engagement, or the image of urban planning as hostile to the free-market ideology are few factors specific for the post-communist countries (Jacobsson 2015; Pixová 2018, 2020; Sýkora a Bouzarovski 2012; Temelová 2009). How do we apply and re-think the concepts for studying social movements, including radical social movements, in this context?

Finally, urbanity is not only about governance and resistance but about a physical urban map. A variety of open spaces, squats, social and youth centers constitute an infrastructure for the social movements. Considering the notion of socio-spatial dialectics coined by Edward Soja (the space and social relations are mutually influential) (Soja 1989), one could follow the relations between governance of urban space, accessibility of urban space to the local initiatives and activist projects, and the development of the social movements.

Scholars working on urban development/policies, radical and moderate urban movements, urban civic initiatives and self-organized groups, tenants’ movements, autonomous and decommodified spaces are invited to participate in this call. Critical social and historical reflections of urban development in the CEE countries, as well as personally involved researchers and activists-researchers, are welcomed. The goal of the workshop is to share the knowledge and practices along three axes (but not exclusively):

  • historicity of the institutional mechanisms in CEE countries and governance of urban space in the big cities: persisting tendencies and new actors?

Local urban development in the 1990s and 2000s was marked by several uneven phenomena. To name a few: low public participation, mutual delegitimization of the activists, state officials and local politicians, big political parties rather than grassroots initiatives present in municipal politics – the case of Prague (Horák 2007). These tendencies fueled the change on the municipal level, for example, activists entering politics aiming to open political opportunity structures to grassroots actors (Pixová 2020), new locally based progressive political movements, and parties emerging in the big cities. How do other institutional, political, and social phenomena that could be traced from the 1990s influence politics in the cities today? What role do big cities play in progressive politics in CEE countries? Can we observe tendencies that could be regarded as “new municipalist” (see Purcell 2006; Russell 2019)? And what is the role of periphery in the process of urban change?

  • applications of the concepts used for the study of urban activism in the Western counties and its critical reassessment in the CEE/EE countries.

Are the “usual conceptual suspects” of the social movement studies (political opportunity structure, recourse mobilization, etc.) suitable for the CEE context? What can we say about such concepts as prefiguration and direct action applied in the research of the radical movements? While both sets of concepts are applied in the context of CEE, the critical reassessment of their compatibility with the local context is still missing.

  • socio-spatial dialectics – no space – no movement?

While in Poland, squatters’ and tenants’ movement is rather strong, in other CEE countries, the situation is different. The Czech Republic is a country of one political social center, but with a plurality of self-organized urban initiatives. How is this development connected to the physical space (infrastructure) that the movement is able to acquire and sustain? How do different types of urban spaces influence the strength of the movement and what type of spaces can we observe in CEE countries? What are they struggling with? While capitalist urban development pushes the local inhabitants to the periphery by financialization set in stone graved, what spatial strategies of resistance remain?

The workshop language is English. Send you paper proposals (abstract of up to 300 words) for 20-minute talks and a short biography (150 words) to Yuliya Moskvina (yuliya.moskvina@fsv.cuni.cz). Help with travel and accommodation costs may be offered to participants who are not able to secure funding from their institutions. The workshop will take place in Prague on 4-6.11.2021 at the CEFRES (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences).                                  

Scientific committee:    

Jérôme Heurtaux (French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences, Prague)

Yuliya Moskvina (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague)

Lukáš Kotyk (Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague)

Zsuzsanna Pósfai (Periféria Policy and Research Center, Budapest)

Grzegorz Piotrowski (Institute of Sociology, University of Gdańsk)

Yoann Morvan (CNRS, Paris)

 

Identities in crises and “total institutions”: the case of imprisonment in 18th century

Falk Bretschneider, associate Professor at the EHESS

will be taking part in the seminar called Current Issues. Reflection on Crises organised by CEFRES.

Date: Wednesday,  April 21th 2021, 12h30 – 13h50
Where: Online on Zoom.
Organisators
:  Maria Kokkinou (post-doc at CEFRES / Charles University), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)
Language: French

Link to join the seminar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84097191940 

For more information about the programme and the seminar,  see the website: http://cefres.cz/fr/seminaires/penser-les-crises.

Higher education and research in Slovakia: witnesses and actors of the country’s transformations since 1989

The French Institute of Slovakia and the French Centre for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES) invite you to a round table during which we will focus on the world of higher education and research in Slovakia, particularly in the field of humanities and social sciences, as markers of the country’s history since 1989.

Date: April 15th, 2021 at 5 pm
Location: Online on Zoom (see link below)
Languages: SK-FR with simultaneous translation
Organizers: IFS, CEFRES
Registration:  Google forms

With the participation of Christophe Léonzi, French Ambassador to Slovakia.

Moderator:
Jérôme Heurtaux, Director of CEFRES

Speakers:

  • Etienne Boisserie, professor-researcher, Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) / co-director of the CREE (Europe-Asia Research Center)
  • Adam Hudek, researcher, Institute of History, Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV)
  • Dagmar Kusa, professor-researcher, Bratislava International School for Liberal Arts (BISLA)
  • Peter Terem, Vice-Rector for Science and Research, Matej Bel University (UMB)

The world of higher education and research has undergone many changes since 1989, as has the whole of Slovakia. The most salient of these are the end of the socialist bloc, the splitting of Czechoslovakia and the entry into the European Union. How has academic research and the world of ideas been impacted by the ordeal of communism and then by the hope born of the transition to democracy? What effect did Slovakia’s European integration have on Slovak higher education and research institutions, and on the content of research, while at the same time a process of liberalization and internationalization was taking place? More recently, the academic community has been impacted by other developments such as the growth and tertiarization of the economy, globalization and demands for more rule of law. Universities and research institutes have thus been both actors and witnesses of the changes in Slovakia during the last decades and the question of their autonomy and the freedom of researchers has been raised again in the spring of 2021.

In this round table, we will focus on the world of higher education and research, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, as markers of the country’s recent history. Partner of Slovak academics since its creation in 1991, the French Centre for Research in Social Sciences (CEFRES) celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2021. This is an ideal opportunity to analyze thirty years of Slovak research and international cooperation and to consider their future.

Please click on the link below to join the webinar:
https://zoom.us/j/94054349216 .

Penal practice and confessional alterity: banishment in the modern Holy Roman Empire

Falk BRETSCHNEIDER (Associate Professor at the EHESS, Paris)
will be taking part at Franco-Czech historical seminar organized by CEFRES and Charles University

Date: Thursday April 15th, 9h-12h30
Where
: CEFRES and online (see below)
Organisators
: CEFRES and Charles University
Language
: French

The seminar will be followed by a workshop: Banished’s lifes, starting at 10:30 am, on the same link.

To visit the website and see the complete programme of the seminar, click here.

Click here to join the Zoom meeting : https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/96694269885
To register, please contact Jaroslav.svatek@ff.cuni.cz

Displaced Histories Without Traces and Traces of Past Without History

CEFRES and Primorska University organize the first Proteus Webinar as part of the bilateral program PHC Proteus.

When: Wednesday April 14, 2021, 2 p.m.- 6 p.m.
Where: Online (see below fo the link) 
Language: English
Organisators: CEFRES and Primorska University
Funding and Evaluation: Campus France, French Institute in Slovenia, MEAE, MESRI (France) Slovenian Research Agency,  Slovenian ministry of science (Slovenia)

This webinar focuses on the current representations of the “dismantling” and “re-membering” of intra- and extra-European empires, following the First and then the Second World Wars, that recast populations, landscapes, borders, historiographies, belongings and memories. Today, while European countries work to form a common world, space and history, they remain reluctant to address these ghostly legacies of empires and wars that led to the forced displacement and loss of millions of people, such as ethnic minorities expelled from East Prussia and Silesia, Germans from the Sudetenland and Bukovina, Italians from ex-Yugoslavia, Portuguese from Angola and Mozambique, among others. 

 How and why have some of the memories of displacements been erased, ignored, forgotten, and others memorized and commemorated? In what ways do they still matter in Europe and beyond today? Under what circumstances, some of the features of the past have remained so persistent and resilient?

The proposed webinar objective is to answer these questions by exploring parallel collective memories, offering mirror images of each other: the memories of the displaced, and the memories of those who remained and/or (re)populated the cultural and physical spaces after them. From specific case studies of depopulation and repopulation movements linked to the troubled European History of the 20th Century and in the remnants of empires and wars, we intend to explore what memories and silences do to places and what places do to memories and silences.

Program

2.00 -2.20 pm

Short presentation of the Proteus Program by Valentine Morel, Attaché for Scientific and Academic cooperation at Ministère des Affaires étrangères français Slovenia, and of the project by Michèle Baussant and Katja Hrobat-Virloget

Divided and uprooted

2.20-2.35 pm

Aleksej Kalc, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Slovenian Migration Institute (Ljubljana), University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities (Koper)
Population transfers and ethnic transformations in Koper and Trieste after WWII: some aspects

2.35-2.50 pm

Neža Čebron Lipovec, University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities
Visual continuity” of the landscape« in a contested city: The role of architecture in the process of (up)rooting a community

2.50-3.05 pm

Petra Kavrečič, University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities
Living on the border. Everyday life in the border region of Istria after WWII

Short Discussion 3.05- 3.20 pm, Ghislaine Glasson-Deschaumes, Head of Project Labex Pasts in the Present, Université Paris Nanterre

Break 3.20-3.30 pm

Remade, remained and planted

3.30-3.45 pm

Felipe Kaiser-Fernandes, CEFRES/ IIAC
When torn apart landscapes are remade: the politics of post-socialist bazaars in the Czech Republic.

3.45-4.00 pm

Katja Hrobat Virloget, University of Primorska, Faculty of Humanities
About the ones who came. Symbolic boundaries and questions of  “home” after “exodus” in Istria

4.00-4.15 pm

Irene Dos Santos, CNRS/URMIS, ICM Fellow
Imperial Debris in post-colonial Angola: the silence of those who remained after 1975

Short Discussion 4.15- 4.30 pm, Ghislaine Glasson-Deschaumes, Head of Project Labex Pasts in the Present, Université Paris Nanterre

Break 4.30-4.40 pm

Traces and in-between spaces

4.40-4.55 pm

Maria Kokkinou, CEFRES and Charles University
Tiehonin: Persistent memories of transformed spaces

4.55-5.10 pm

Johana Wyss, Czech Academy of Sciences/CEFRES and Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Silesian identity: caught in between hegemonic and counter-narratives

5.10-5.25 pm

Michèle Baussant, CNRS, CEFRES (USR3138, CNRS, Mae), ICM Fellow
Displaced histories without traces and traces of past without history:  Egyptian Jews in and out Egypt

Discussion 5.25-6.pm, Ghislaine Glasson-Deschaumes, Head of Project Labex Pasts in the Present, Université Paris Nanterre

To join the  meeting, click on the following link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87114991116 

                      

         

Humanities and Social Sciences Facing the Unexpected

PhD Students Workshop organized by EHESS and CEFRES will be held on the theme of  Humanities and Social Sciences Facing the Unexpected.

Date: April 12, 2021 (9 a.m. – 7 p.m.)
Location: online and at CEFRES (see the link below)
Language: English
Coordination: Falk Bretschneider (EHESS), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)

Supervisors: Michèle Baussant (CEFRES, CNRS), Falk Bretschneider (EHESS), Emmanuel Désveaux (EHESS), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES), Pavel Himl (FHS UK), Claire Madl (CEFRES), Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS)

The sanitary crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the whole world into deep uncertainty and radically shaken almost all our habits. This also applies to the research community. Lockdowns, travel restrictions, curfews, closures of libraries or archives and other measures of distance and protection have a direct and sometimes brutal impact on many scientific projects, especially those of many young researchers on fixed-term contracts. This context therefore leads us to question the ways in which humanities and social sciences can deal with uncertainty, the unexpected and the unforeseen, and this in two directions: read more about the workshop here.

Program

9 a.m.  Opening by Falk Bretschneider (EHESS) / Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)

9.30 a.m. – 11 a.m.

Introduction:   Pavel Himl (FHS UK)

  • Arthur Pérodeau (EHESS / UK, associated at CEFRES): Marc Bloch and His Book L’étrange défaite. A Historian Facing the Fall of France
  • Tomáš Razím (FHS UK): Oral History in the Time of COVID

11.30 a.m. – 1 p.m.

Introduction:   Emmanuel Désveaux (EHESS)

  • Miroslav Sedláček (PRF UK): Are Humanities and Social Sciences Strong Enough to Deal with the Unexpected if They Are Overspecialized?
  • Zuzana Terry (FHS UK): Facing Unexpected in School Ethnography

Lunch Break

2 p.m. – 3.30 p.m.

Introduction: Silvia Sébastiani (EHESS)

  • Maeva Carla Chargros (‎Palacký University, Olomouc): Rethinking Opportunities & Challenges within an International Context: Networking & Planning
  • Elizaveta Getta (FF UK): Challenging Archival Research in Translation Studies

4 p.m. – 5.30 p.m.

Introduction:   Michèle Baussant (CNRS, CEFRES)

  • Rose Smith (FSV UK / University of Groningen): Wider Acknowledgement of Cyberspace as a Valid Milieu to Do Academic Work in as Well as a Valid Research Context
  • Mert Koçak (CEU): Doing “Forced” Digital Ethnography on Forced Displacement: How Does Hyper Visibility/Accessibility of Digital Platforms Affect Ethnography?

6 – 7 p.m.  General Discussion

With an intervention of:

  • Felipe Kaiser Fernandes (EHESS / CEFRES)
  • Tereza Havelková (FF UK)
  • Igor Zavorotchenko (FHS UK)
  • Ekatarina Zheltova (FSV UK / CEFRES)

To join the meeting:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83259649736?pwd=RG95RzhyMFlLdjNhUXUzamQzSkhFZz09   

twitter