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FORMS
OF INCLUSIONS AND EXCLUSIONS
WITHIN
AND AROUND THE NEW EUROPE
20 - 31 July, 1998
Course directors:
Peter Niedermüller
(Humboldt University, Berlin)
Violetta Zentai (Janus Pannonius University, Pécs)
Resource persons:
Michal Buchowski
(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland)
Margit Feischmidt (Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Hungary)
Zoltan Fejõs (Institute for Central European Studies, Budapest)
Susan Gal (University of Chicago, USA)
Uli Linke (Rutgers University, USA)
Enikõ Magyari-Vincze (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania)
Verena Stolcke (Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain)
Miklós Vörös (Janus Pannonius University, Pécs,
Hungary)
Course Description
The course will discuss a topic that
reflects major intellectual anxieties in contemporary cultural anthropology.
The topic embraces cultural perplexities that recent dramatic transformations
in Central and Eastern Europe and the progress towards European integration
have evoked. These perplexities have reconstructed concepts and classifications
constitutive of social and political forms of inclusions and exclusions
within and among societies of Europe as well as Europe and the rest of
the world.
The course also pursues the goal of testing
the theoretical, analytical and critical potentials of the anthropological
inquiry that has recently been acknowledged in Central and East European
academic circles as well. The composition of the resource team is to intensify
reflexive cross-currents among the Anglo-Saxon, Mediterranean, German,
and various Central European traditions of thoughts in anthropology and
the related disciplinary fields.
The course is built on the underlying
assumption that societies involved in the European unification project
and societies of Central and Eastern Europe are linked by various historical
conjunctions, transnational and subnational flow of people and knowledge,
and exchanges of thought and culture. Thus, transformations in societies
of Central and East European countries should be investigated in various
perspectives that are not constrained narrowly to the region. The notion
of Europe, including images, hopes and fears associated with it in various
legal, political and cultural debates, creates one of these perspectives.
Experiences and concerns of late (also called as post-, second, post-welfare,
etc.) modernity, which cut across different socio-political and national
divisions within
and outside Europe, shape the other
perspective.
The major topic incorporates four distinctive
yet interconnected subjects. These subjects designate particular domains
of social practices that shape, represent, legitimate, or resist old and
new forms of inclusions and exclusions:
(1) identity politics in transnational,
national and subnational arenas
The course will examine ideas that conceptualize
community as cultural difference, identity, and space instead of social
class, structure, and shared past; recent theories of identity that affirm
the rapidly changing social environs and propose flexible and multiple
identities for individuals and groups as well; investigations that cast
light upon liminal positions (political and ethnic minorities, immigrants,
aliens), from which new transfigurations of identity may emerge. Lectures
and seminars will explicate how narrative evocations of past events serve
as sources of legitimation and basis for "localism".
(2) discourses on market, wealth,
and capitalism
The course will discuss official and
popular perceptions of economic crisis and restructuring in transitional
societies; social cleavages and cooperations created by hopes in and discontent
with democratic political order, civil society, and market relations. The
course uncovers the ideological arenas in which public debates on viable
and just economic systems are taking place and new social distinctions
and alliances emerge. The production of cultural meanings at various types
of marketplaces, such as ethnic and national stereotypes, moral judgments
on consuming practices and small business activities, in transitional societies
will also be examined.
(3) state practices and forms of violence
Lectures will explicate that in the
context of the unifying Europe as well as post-socialist transitions, territorial
and cultural orders seem to be in flux and long-term legitimisation of
the nation-state is often questioned. By the same token, nationalism as
a system of practices and sets of ideologies has remained a potent form
of constructing identities and building powerful political ideologies.
Lectures also offer the anthropological critique of the concept of violence
via portraying genocide as the technological and organisational achievements
of advanced industrial societies. The course highlights intersections of
racism, misogyny, and the culture of political and military violence in
the practices of post-socialist and post-unification European states.
(4) concepts of cultural difference
Contemporary articulations of social
inclusions and exclusions hark back to different traditions of imagination.
The course will closely examine the roots of the dilemma of human unity
and cultural difference in the history of ideas and its current reconfiguration
in a transnational production of culture. Arguments for and against multiculturalism
will be critically compared and read against contemporary practices of
ethnicity. The legitimisation of boundaries within the "new Europe" and
the notion of citizenship that draw on the concept of cultural difference
will be investigated. The course also illuminates the symbolic significance
of urban-rural distinctions and relations.
The course intends to juxtapose significant
conceptual treatments of the four subjects within the anthropological scholarship.
Discussions will evaluate innovations that resource persons as well as
participants have applied to examine different issues related to the four
subjects. Resource persons are prepared to be critically challenged by
theoretical perspectives and field expertise of participants coming from
transitional societies not yet or not directly involved in the process
of European unification. Beside the formal lectures and discussions, workshops
will be organized for presentation and discussion of various research and
teaching projects in which the participants are involved. Accordingly,
the course will strongly rely on the contribution of participants.
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