Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary conference, May 23-24, 2013
Modernity Junctures: Post-Socialist Institutions, Subjectivities, and Discourses in Comparative Perspective
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, scholars in social sciences applied a range of concepts in their attempt to describe the emergent social and political reality. However, twenty years after, it becomes clear that neither temporal categories, such as post-Soviet and post-socialist, nor the references to global phenomena, i.e. capitalism, can advance our understanding of these societies. The processes marking the beginning of the twenty first century require new theoretical frameworks, which would be capable of maintaining both universalist and particularistic research standpoints. These new frameworks would allow for explicating constitutive tensions among the political aspirations (political modernity as emancipation project), the economic realities of production and distribution (economic modernity as capitalism), and the human subjects who struggle to make sense of radically changing life worlds (cultural modernity). A theoretical framework of “social modernity,” propounded in recent studies focuses less on traditional “teleological notions” and addresses the actual heterogeneity of social fabric, woven of many, often contrasted, threads. The present day realities of post-socialism are regarded as a paradoxical configuration of neoliberal and socialist orders, where mechanisms of market regulation concur with the invasive methods of state control, and the state’s favoring of the interests of selected corporations is accompanied with the rhetoric of welfare state. The “post-soviet social” can be understood, then, as an “assemblage” of historically diverse regimes of governmentality, economic models, institutions, public discourses and subjectivities.
The conference “Modernity Junctures: Post-Socialist Institutions, Subjectivities, and Discourses in Comparative Perspective” aims to explore the imbrications and overlaps of various models of post-socialist modernities through diverse research strategies and within a broad set of cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and cross-regional comparisons. The organizers encourage a multidisciplinary approach to the topic in East European and Eurasian contexts and welcome submissions from such diverse fields as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, international relations, and others.
Conference topics.
Contributions related, but not limited, to the following topics of interest are expected:
1. Political forms of modernity and changing types of legitimacy within contemporary post-socialist contexts;
2. The categories of classical political modernity (human rights, autonomy, sovereignty, democracy, public sphere, ideologies) vs. postmodern politics (consumer politics, etc.);
3. New class-formation (precariatization), socio-political movements, protests (oppositional and anti-oppositional), and class struggle;
4. The changing regimes of governmentality and biopolitics: life reproduction in the context of marketization of post-socialist welfare;
5. Urban assemblages: contingencies and ruptures in urban spaces, practices and imagination;
6. Discursive practices and subjectivity production: self-responsibilization practices, alternative cultural practices, new media, blogging, literary and visual art representations, etc.
The plenary presentations and outstanding presentations by participants will be published in the Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Conference languages: English, Russian
Keynote speakers will include:
Professor Martin van Gelderen (University of Göttingen, Germany)
Professor Don Kalb (Central European University, Hungary)
Professor Maxim Khomyakov (Ural Federal University, Russia)
Professor Mark Lipovetsky (Leiderman) (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
Professor Elena Trubina (Ural Federal University, Russia)
Application requirements:
Please, submit a 300-word abstract (in English or Russian) by March 18 to the following e-mail address:isps.politphilos@gmail.com. The submissions should include the speaker’s name, place of work and position, as well as the contact address,
phone number, e-mail and the title of the proposed paper. Those selected to give presentations at the conference will be contacted by March 31.
Modernity Junctures: Post-Socialist Institutions, Subjectivities, and Discourses in Comparative Perspective
After the collapse of the Soviet bloc, scholars in social sciences applied a range of concepts in their attempt to describe the emergent social and political reality. However, twenty years after, it becomes clear that neither temporal categories, such as post-Soviet and post-socialist, nor the references to global phenomena, i.e. capitalism, can advance our understanding of these societies. The processes marking the beginning of the twenty first century require new theoretical frameworks, which would be capable of maintaining both universalist and particularistic research standpoints. These new frameworks would allow for explicating constitutive tensions among the political aspirations (political modernity as emancipation project), the economic realities of production and distribution (economic modernity as capitalism), and the human subjects who struggle to make sense of radically changing life worlds (cultural modernity). A theoretical framework of “social modernity,” propounded in recent studies focuses less on traditional “teleological notions” and addresses the actual heterogeneity of social fabric, woven of many, often contrasted, threads. The present day realities of post-socialism are regarded as a paradoxical configuration of neoliberal and socialist orders, where mechanisms of market regulation concur with the invasive methods of state control, and the state’s favoring of the interests of selected corporations is accompanied with the rhetoric of welfare state. The “post-soviet social” can be understood, then, as an “assemblage” of historically diverse regimes of governmentality, economic models, institutions, public discourses and subjectivities.
The conference “Modernity Junctures: Post-Socialist Institutions, Subjectivities, and Discourses in Comparative Perspective” aims to explore the imbrications and overlaps of various models of post-socialist modernities through diverse research strategies and within a broad set of cross-cultural, cross-temporal, and cross-regional comparisons. The organizers encourage a multidisciplinary approach to the topic in East European and Eurasian contexts and welcome submissions from such diverse fields as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, political science, cultural studies, international relations, and others.
Conference topics.
Contributions related, but not limited, to the following topics of interest are expected:
1. Political forms of modernity and changing types of legitimacy within contemporary post-socialist contexts;
2. The categories of classical political modernity (human rights, autonomy, sovereignty, democracy, public sphere, ideologies) vs. postmodern politics (consumer politics, etc.);
3. New class-formation (precariatization), socio-political movements, protests (oppositional and anti-oppositional), and class struggle;
4. The changing regimes of governmentality and biopolitics: life reproduction in the context of marketization of post-socialist welfare;
5. Urban assemblages: contingencies and ruptures in urban spaces, practices and imagination;
6. Discursive practices and subjectivity production: self-responsibilization practices, alternative cultural practices, new media, blogging, literary and visual art representations, etc.
The plenary presentations and outstanding presentations by participants will be published in the Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology (St. Petersburg, Russia)
Conference languages: English, Russian
Keynote speakers will include:
Professor Martin van Gelderen (University of Göttingen, Germany)
Professor Don Kalb (Central European University, Hungary)
Professor Maxim Khomyakov (Ural Federal University, Russia)
Professor Mark Lipovetsky (Leiderman) (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
Professor Elena Trubina (Ural Federal University, Russia)
Application requirements:
Please, submit a 300-word abstract (in English or Russian) by March 18 to the following e-mail address:isps.politphilos@gmail.com. The submissions should include the speaker’s name, place of work and position, as well as the contact address,
phone number, e-mail and the title of the proposed paper. Those selected to give presentations at the conference will be contacted by March 31.
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