When people in the CEE region report how they feel about the change of political regime and current lives in their own words, their narratives neither replicate the winners/losers distinction nor allow for a simple attribution of the speaker to either side of this division. Instead of measuring their biographical trajectories in economic or material terms only, they talk about victories in personal and professional lives; about values such as dignity and social recognition; about regular, adapted and inconspicuous, lives (see e.g. Marody et al. 2019). Thus, we posit that the understanding of the current political dynamics in the CEE region can be advanced by investigating “deep stories” (Hochschild 2016), that is, personal “truth” experiences, “feels-as-if stories” (Ibid.), frequently narrated through emotions.
We propose an event “Transformation Narratives Beyond Winners and Losers: Deep Stories in Central and Eastern Europe” to explore these questions in the context of diverse societies of the CEE region. The event consists of two parts (conference and workshop) and aims at bringing together scholars from different national and institutional backgrounds interested in the in-depth reflection of these topics.
The conference (on the first day of the event on June 17) is dedicated to papers dealing with the above formulated questions. We welcome researchers in every stage of their academic career, working in different countries and disciplines. We accept papers from the fields of history of emotions, memory or regional studies, emotion sociology, political psychology, affect and discourse theory, political science, social anthropology and political ethnography. Comparative research, as well as case studies, qualitative and quantitative methodologies, are of interest.
The workshop (on the second day of the event) is organized for those interested in a more extensive collaboration and comparative analyses of data pertaining to the dynamics, legacy, and long-term consequences of the systemic transformation in the region. The workshop aims at comparative analysis of the data collected by participants prior to the event. Qualitative interview collections and deep text analyses much too often remain case studies and cannot or do not aim at broader comparisons with similar studies from other countries and cultural backgrounds. We want to overcome this gap and look for possible intersections for materials from different research projects, settings, and contexts. Therefore, the main body of the workshop will be dedicated to the identification of these intersections between investigations carried out by participants, and discussion aiming at outlining potential scientific articles which could be written in collaboration.
For the conference (June 17), please submit an abstract of 250 words presenting your current research on the topic of the event tspmi[at]tspmi.vu.lt by March 20. For the workshop (June 18), please submit an extended abstract (1000 words) of a possible contribution to tspmi[at]tspmi.vu.lt by March 20.
Read more here.
