Beyond 1989: Childhood and Youth in Times of Political Transformation in the 20th Century
Institute of Advanced Studies at the Central European University, Budapest
5-7 June 2019
Conference Outline:
“Memories of Childhood are folded into the present of the adult person remembering,”1 Silova, Plattoeva and Miller observed in their 2018 study of post-socialist childhood. In the past years not only in Germany the so-called “Children of the Transition” have come to raise the question of how 1989 and its aftermath affected children’s lives in the past and how their memories still shape their individual and collective biographies up to today. This new perspective on the years of post-socialist transformation allows for examining the historical moment of “1989” not primarily as a political rupture but rather as a social transformation which altered the (everyday) lives of the young. Indeed, when it came to children’s everyday lives, massive privatization, high unemployment, new housing and living conditions/ standards, migration to the West, and new pedagogic ideas of children’s care and education brought about fundamental change to children’s upbringing.
But how unique was the post-communist transformation actually in terms of its short- and long-term impact on children’s lives, when compared to other political watersheds of the 20th century? And in what way does the history of childhood contribute to a better understanding of the social implications of political transformations, both for the concerned societies in the past and their remembrance up to today? Throughout history children were seen as a “political tabula rasa;”2 thus, they literally embody systemic changes and political and social transformations. Hence, this conference proposes to approach the study of childhood and youth as a means to scrutinize how political transformations affected and brought about distinctive childhoods and even particular ‘generations’.
Departing from these assumptions, this international conference aims to shed light on a series of political transformations in the twentieth century and their impact on ideas and everyday realities of childhood and youth. The organizers are interested in innovative contributions which tackle historical and anthropological case studies of post-imperial, post-war, post-dictatorial and post-socialist childhoods. The conference goes explicitly beyond the East-West binary and invites proposals that deal with case studies on political transformations in Central, (South-)Eastern, and Western Europe (focusing for instance on political ruptures such as 1917/18/20, 1933, 1939, 1945, 1968, 1974, 1975, 1989/1991, post-Yugoslavia). Studies that provide comparative analysis of various transformations and/or offer transnational/transregional perspectives are most welcome. We are seeking contributions that engage with the lives of ‘ordinary’ children whose everyday lives witnessed and adapted to the aftermath of political ruptures. We also invite applications that shed light on the ‘extra-ordinary’ lives of
children: for instance, of displaced, orphaned, disabled or disadvantaged children, of children born of war, of borderland children, of children of occupation and rape, of young survivors of ethnic cleansing or forced migration, of Jewish child survivors after the Holocaust, of Spain’s “stolen children”, of children of ‘class enemies’, of “Ceaușescu’s children”, of the winners and losers of transition, of the offspring of the new rich/new poor, of the children of post-communist labour migrants, of children of ethnic minorities in past and present.
Exemplifying the life stories and experiences of these and other groups of children and adolescents, this international conference engages with changing conceptions of children’s education and upbringing; children’s institutional care and entertainment (infant care, kindergarten, schooling, after-school care, orphanages, children’s vacation programs, child and youth organizations); everyday spaces and places of childhood (home, family, street, playground); children’s consumer culture and material “things” (foods, toys, children’s rooms); family dynamics and children’s social relations (friendship); children’s bodies and health, new gender roles and their everyday implications; children’s emotions, needs and identities. Uncovering how children lived through and experienced periods of abrupt political change this conference proposes to uncover the lasting impact of historical caesuras on historical subjects. In this way, this conference offers to identify causes of social disintegration, which still shape
today’s societies.
We welcome papers that address (among others) the following questions:
How did political change foster new conceptions of (ideal) childhood, children’s upbringing and education?
In what way did political ruptures affect and alter children’s (everyday) lives?
In which ways did children adjust/resist to the repercussions of political rupture? What does their resilience/adaptability tell about the quality of the political rupture itself?
What agency did children have in times of political transformation? How did children impact and possibly even trigger political change?
Can we identify specific generations that embodied political change in a unique way?
To what extent does the analytical concept of ‘generation’ help us to grasp the reciprocal relationship between political change and the different stages in childhood and youth?
What kind of historical continuities can we identify–through the lens of children’s lives–that persisted beyond political ruptures?
What are the long-term implications and repercussions of growing up in times of political transformation?
How were/are those childhoods that witnessed and lived through political ruptures remembered in past and present?
We are seeking proposals for 15-minutes papers in English in the form of a 300-word abstract, plus a short descriptive CV (including reference to 2-3 selected publications) of no more than 150-200 words until January 31st 2019 to Friederike.Kind-Kovacs@mailbox.tu-dresden.de Proposals should include paper title, the presenter’s name, contact information, and institutional affiliation. We explicitly encourage young doctoral and postdoctoral researchers from the field of history, social anthropology, sociology, literature, educational sciences and psychology to present recent findings from their empirical research. Final decisions about the submitted proposals will be made by 15th of February. As we plan to have commentaries for each session, papers of 2000 words are required to be pre-circulated on 22nd of May. Selected papers may be considered for a special issue for an English-language peer-reviewed journal.
The programme for our collaborative conference with Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena is now available.
The conference will form Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena’s annual conference and will take place on the 14-15 June 2018 at Friedrich-Sschiller-Universitat Jena. A number of papers will be given by members of 1989 after 1989 and the University of Exeter, including Tobias Rupprecht on Pinochet in Prague: Latin American Neoliberalism and (Post-) Socialist Eastern Europe; James Mark on Europe and its Others: Re-imagining a Continental Space in Late Socialism; and Ned Richardson-Little on Lawyers, Human Rights and Democratization in Eastern Europe.
The conference will combine perspectives of intellectual and conceptual history, social history of expert cultures, new institutionalist studies, cultural anthropology, history of sciences etc., the focus of the conference is on the creation of expert knowledge, its political implications as well as direct influences during late State Socialism and the liberal democratic regimes after 1989. It will also concentrates on concepts of social management and social control formulated by scientists and experts, political applications of expert knowledge, and interactions between the technocratic, managerial and expert elites, both at home and internationally, as well as the entanglements of political rule and scientific knowledge and expert skills in dynamically changing social contexts.
Call for Papers International Conference: “Criminalising Violent Pasts: Multiple Roots and Forgotten Pathways 1950s-2010s”
London South Bank University
15-16 November 2018
Deadline for submissions: 31 May 2018
Over the last half century, discourses and practices connected to the idea that violent or dictatorial pasts should be marked as criminal have proliferated. A variety of actors – from victims groups to social movements, to expert groups such as lawyers, museums specialists and even economists – have contributed to the emergence and circulation of the notion that political violence could only be overcome through its criminalization in courts, lustration procedures, history writing, activism or memorial sites. Produced across different fields of action and expertise, this assumption has become dominant in the political and judicial sphere at a global level and has permeated many political cultures and everyday life practices. Even where decriminalisation (amnesties, pardons, closure of archives) prevailed, debates worked within the set of assumptions about the past established through this globally expanding paradigm.
Despite its dominance, we still lack a truly international history of its roots. This is in part because modern day practices of criminalisation often play down their own historicity. Coming of age at the so-called ‘end of history’, their promoters came to see their application as a natural end point in the achievement of human rights, democracy or good governance. When histories are offered, they too often provide a rather linear narrative that links these developments to – mainly Western – political processes established to address the legacies of Nazism after World War Two. Such accounts have also commonly resisted incorporation into broader frameworks supplied, for example, by histories of globalization, neoliberalism or postcolonialism. Only recently have a few authors sought to make sense of the emergence of the modern criminalisation paradigm in new ways, connecting it, for example, to the rise of the homo economicus and a concomitant individualistic approach to human rights.
This conference seeks to explore the history of the (often forgotten) pathways and contested visions through which the criminalization paradigm developed. This conference welcomes contributions that explore the emergence of multiple, potentially competitive visions of criminal pasts. Taking as its starting point the moment of an acceleration of decolonisation, globalisation and de-Stalinisation in the 1950s, we encourage papers that explore the variety of actors, activisms and political projects that lay behind the global expansion of such ideas. Human rights organisations, international legal associations, post-colonial and Communist states, all variously developed the idea of overcoming criminal pasts as they sought, to legitimate new political projects, reconceptualise the relationship between the individual and the state, or seek collective or socio-economic justice for past wrongs. We welcome papers that, for example, address the complexity and interplay of these ideas in different arenas and seek to connect these phenomena to wider literatures. We are also wary of easy teleologies, and are as interested in the histories of the marginalization of some visions, as in the growing dominance of others.
Papers might address the following topics:
Historicisation. How did processes of criminalisation/decriminalisation of fascism, authoritarianism, colonialism, communism, and other violent historical episodes evolve over time? What were their political/ideological roots and consequences, and how did they influence each other? Which particular paradigms of criminalisation were internationalised or globalised from the 1950s? What turning points can we identify in the shift of these paradigms at international and regional levels (e.g. decolonisation in the 1960s, the end of Cold War)?
Rethinking Paradigms. Are there new historical frameworks into which the history of criminalising violent pasts could be written? The history of neoliberalism? Or postcolonialism? Should it bring together traditions of scholarship, which have often remained separate? (e.g. postcolonialism and communism; histories of the ‘semi-periphery’ with those from ‘the West’).
Rethinking ‘Third Wave Criminalisation’ (1980s-). How might these multiple histories help us understand the values and practices of ‘third wave criminalisation’ in new ways? Which groups and alliances helped produce this? Were alternative visions of historical culpability marginalised, or did they survive? Does such a historicisation enable us more fully to appreciate the variety of visions and practices that constitute this recent criminalisation paradigm?
Rethinking Actors. How did states, social movements, peace keepers, or experts produce ideas about what should be criminalised and in which ways? How did actors generally unrecognised – such as socialist and other authoritarian states, or professional groups such as economists –produce and globalise new paradigms? Do we over-privilege the role of western actors in this account? How do relevant actors change over time? (e.g. from states to non-state actors including private individuals and companies)?
Rethinking Chronologies. How did the meanings, relevance and objects of criminalisation shift over time? How were specific crimes selected as subject to criminalisation at particular moments, which were sidelined, and why? How are the processes of criminalisation linked to processes of politicization or de-politicisation of past conflicts and violence? Was there a move from collective/ systemic criminalisation to one based around the idea of individual crime and responsibility?
Abstracts of 300-500 words, together with an accompanying short CV should be submitted to criminalisingviolentpasts@gmail.com by 31 May 2018. The selected participants will be notified by the end of June 2018. Financial support for travel and accommodation is available, but we ask that contributors also explore funding opportunities at their home institutions.
A new MA programme has just been announced with Leipzig University in co-operation with the Leibniz ScienceCampus “Eastern Europe – Global Area” (EEGA). The course entitled “European Studies – Eastern Europe in a Global Perspective” will start in the winter semester of 2018 and call for applications are now open until the end of May.
The Course
One of the goals of EEGA is to break down regionally compartmentalised approaches and to promote an informed understanding of Eastern Europe in its diverse traditions and positions, developments and dynamics. The new Master’s degree course on Eastern Europe in a global perspective helps to promote this understanding among young researchers at postgraduate level.
The 2-year MA programme offers the opportunity to deal with both cultural traditions and current innovation processes in Eastern European countries. Transformation and identity formation processes are addressed and interpreted in a comparative perspective. The students will be enabled to recognise future cultural and socio-political tendencies and situating them in the pan-European context. The interdisciplinary studies programme includes not only economics, social sciences and law but also cultural history and literary studies modules. The focus is placed on relevant research approaches and methods that will shed light on the subject, for example on cultural or social phenomena in Eastern Europe.
The Global and European Studies Institute works closely with the Institute for Slavic Studies, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Theology, the Historical Seminar and the Collaborative Research Center 1199 “Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition” of Leipzig University. Additional perspectives result by cooperations with non-university research institutions such as the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), the Simon-Dubnow Institute and the Leibniz ScienceCampus Eastern Europe Global Area (EEGA), as well as with the Graduate School Global and Area Studies. Seminars and lectures are partly held in English. In the third semester, students are also recommended to study abroad at one of the partner universities of the GESI (eg Wroclaw, Budapest, Zagreb, Vilnius) or generally at a partner university of the University of Leipzig (among others St. Petersburg, Minsk, Kiev, Sofia).
Deadline for Applications
The Call for Application is open until 31 May 2018.
GLOBAL NEOLIBERALISMS: LOST AND FOUND IN TRANSLATION
A British Academy Conference
Thursday 7 June 2018 and Friday 8 June 2018
The British Academy
10–11 Carlton House Terrace
London
SW1Y 5AH
Charing Cross/Piccadilly Circus Tube
This conference addresses questions about neoliberalism’s intellectual (and other) origins, and why it came to play such a powerful role across the globe. It will develop and extend new work which seeks to understand the rise of multiple neoliberalisms as ideology and practice.
James Mark, Richard Toye, Tobias Rupprecht, Ljubica Spaskovska
9.30-11 – CIRCULATIONS: THE COLD WAR AND AFTER
Chair: James Mark (Exeter)
Vanessa Ogle (UC Berkeley)Diplomat Capitalists, Spooks, and the spread of Free-Market Capitalism: Revisiting the Global Cold War, 1960s-1970s
Quinn Slobodian (Harvard/Wellesley)White Supremacy and the Neoliberals: South Africa as Laboratory and Limit Case
REFRESHMENTS
11.15- 12.45 – CIRCULATIONS: THE COLD WAR AND AFTER (2)
Tobias Rupprecht (Exeter)Pinochet in Prague: Latin American Neoliberalism and (Post-) Socialist Eastern Europe
Richard Toye (Exeter) and Daisuke Ikemoto (Meiji Gakuin University)Contesting ‘economic miracles’: neoliberal exchange and resistance in the UK and Japan
12.45-1.45 – LUNCH
1.45 – 3.15 – LABOUR, GENDER AND NEOLIBERALISM
Chair: Matthew Eagleton-Pierce (SOAS)
Pál Nyíri (Amsterdam) “Culture talk,” spectres of socialism and neoliberal management techniques in a Chinese-run factory in Hungary
Artemy Kalinovsky (Amsterdam)Abandoning the Factory: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Soviet Central Asian Entrepreneur
REFRESHMENTS
3.30- 5.00 – LABOUR, GENDER AND NEOLIBERALISM (2)
Pun Ngai (Hong Kong University)Neoliberalism in Crisis: Producing new subjects of Migrant Labour in China
Bernhard Rieger (Leiden)Making Homo Oeconomicus? Unemployment Policy Since the Sixties in Transatlantic Context
FRIDAY 8th JUNE
9-10.30 – INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL
Chair: Ljubica Spaskovska (Exeter)
Alexander Kentikelenis (Oxford) The Making of Global Neoliberalism: The IMF, Structural Adjustment, and the Clandestine Politics of International Institutional Change
Jennifer Bair (Virginia)The Long 1970s: NIEO, Neoliberalism and the Right to Development
10.30 – 10.45 – REFRSHMENTS
10.45- 12.15 – INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS: BETWEEN THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL (2)
Stephanie Decker (Aston Business School)The World Bank in Ghana, 1970-1985 – Neoliberalism and institutional voids
Jörg Wiegratz (Leeds)Embedding the neoliberal moral order: The political economy of moral change in Uganda
12.15-1.15 – LUNCH
1.15-2.45 – SOCIALISM/POSTSOCIALISM AND THE RISE OF NEOLIBERALISM
Chair : Artemy Kalinovsky (Amsterdam)
Johanna Bockman (George Mason)Recovering the Socialisms in Neoliberalism: Anti-Colonial Banking, Anti-Capitalist Markets, and Revolutionary Structural Adjustment
“Historical Reckoning in Belarus” is the latest chapter published by Dr Nelly Bekus. This forms part of the edited volume Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past, Looking Toward the Future published by Cambridge University Press, February 2018. It is considered the most comprehensive account to date of post-Soviet efforts to address, distort, ignore, or recast the past through the use, manipulation, and obstruction of transitional justice measures and memory politics initiatives. Editors Cynthia M. Horne and Lavinia Stan have gathered contributions by top scholars in the field, allowing the disparate post-communist studies and transitional justice scholarly communities to come together and reflect on the past and its implications for the future of the region.
Bekus’ chapter takes an alternative view to most scholars of post-communist transitional justice, who primarily consider the reckoning programs adopted by various former Soviet republics after they declared their independence in 1991. Instead she examines initiatives passed as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika in 1987–91, measures introduced in 1990–4, and more recent
efforts under Lukashenka. She also focuses on the transitional justice initiatives promoted by the Soviet and post-Soviet governments, as well as those proposed since 1991 by the opposition to Lukashenka, formed from the nationalist Belarusian People’s Front (BPF) and civil society organisations, such as the Association of Victims of Political Repression, the Saving Kurapaty organization, Memorial, and others.
Dr Nelly Bekus, alongside Kulshat Medeuova (Eurasian National University, Astana, Kazakhstan) has recently published the article Reinterpreting National Ideology in the Contemporary Urban Space of Astana in the Urbanities Journal. This forms part of a Special Issue: The Dreams and Nightmares of City Development Vol. 7 · No 2 · November 2017.
The article analyses the way in which the Soviet legacy has been combined with practices of public representation of national ideology in the space of the new capital city of Kazakhstan, Astana. It examines how cultural and political elites exploit various archaic elements of the traditional imagery of the nation in the context of modern state-building. Referring to various examples in cityscape the article aims to show how the national ideology handles tradition not as a coherent corpus of ‘inheritance’, but as a reservoir of potential symbols, which can be used creatively for the fashioning of a national image of the capital city both in the international and in the domestic arena.
Global Neoliberalism: Lost and Found in Translation
British Academy Conference
7-8 June 2018
The University of Exeter and 1989 after 1989 will be holding a British Academy Conference on the 7-8 June 2018 entitled Global Neoliberalism: Lost and Found in Translation. This conference aims to provide a truly global account of the rise and entrenchment of the modern neoliberal order. Contributors will consider how neoliberal ideas travelled (or did not travel) across regions and polities; and analyse the how these ideas were translated between groups and regions as embodied behaviours and business practices as well as through the global media and international organisations. As the fate of neoliberalism appears in question across many regions, it is an opportune moment to make sense of its ascendancy on a global scale.
Convenors: Professor James Mark, University of Exeter and 1989 after 1989 Professor Richard Toye, University of Exeter Dr Ljubica Spaskovska, University of Exeter and 1989 after 1989 Dr Tobias Rupprecht, University of Exeter
Speakers include: Professor Jennifer Bair, University of Virginia
Professor Susan Bayly, University of Cambridge
Professor Johanna Bockman, George Mason University
Professor Stephanie Decker, Aston Business School
Mr Julian Gewirtz, University of Oxford
Professor Daisuke Ikemoto, Meijigakuin University
Professor Artemy Kalinovsky, University of Amsterdam
Dr Alexander Kentikelenis, University of Oxford
Professor Pun Ngai, Hong Kong University
Professor Pal Nyiri, University of Amsterdam
Professor Vanessa Ogle, University of California, Berkeley
Professor David Priestland, University of Oxford
Professor Bernhard Rieger, University of Leiden
Professor Quinn Slobodian, Wellesley College and Harvard University
Dr Jorg Wiegratz, University of Leeds
Registration: A registration fee is payable at the time of booking. For further information and details of how to book please see the British Academy website.
Dates:
7-8 June 2018
Times:
Opens 9am on the 7 June, closes 5pm on the 8 June
Location:
The British Academy
10-11 Carlton House Terrace
London
SW1Y 5AH
Standard Admission: £95 for both days; £50 for one day
Early Bird booking (before 31 January 2018): £75 for both days; £40 for one day
Concessions: £36 for both days; £20 for one day
Supporting the work of Professor James Mark, 1989 after 1989 and the AHRC Socialism Goes Global, we have 3 vacancies for Postdoctoral Research Associates with immediate start.
The 12 month fixed term post with 1989 after 1989 and based in Exeter, UK will focus on the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe in global perspective, focusing on political, economic and cultural themes.
Socialism Goes Global, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, have two Postdoctoral Research Associate vacancies (fixed term for 9 months, based in Exeter), the first addressing themes of gender and labour and the second focusing on the themes of war, peace and authoritarianism.
Deadline for applications is 17 January 2018
Interviews anticipated late January 2018
About Exeter University
We are a Russell Group university boasting a vibrant academic community with over 21,000 students. Ranked in the top 1% of universities in the world, 98% of our research is rated as being of international quality and focuses on some of the most fundamental issues facing the world today. We encourage proactive engagement with industry, business and community partners to enhance the impact of research and education and improve the employability of our students.
The Posts
The College of Humanities wishes to recruit for three posts
Postdoctoral Research Associateto support the work of the project 1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective http://1989after1989.exeter.ac.uk/This full-time Leverhulme Trust-funded post is available immediately on a fixed term basis for 12 months. The research will address the fall of state socialism in Eastern Europe in global perspective, focussing on political, economic and cultural themes.
Postdoctoral Research Associateto support the work of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)-funded project Socialism Goes Global. Cold War Connections Between the ‘Second’ and ‘Third Worlds’ http://socialismgoesglobal.exeter.ac.uk/This full-time post is available immediately on a fixed term basis for 9 months, research will focus on the themes of gender and labour.
Postdoctoral Research Associateto support the work of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK)-funded project Socialism Goes Global. Cold War Connections Between the ‘Second’ and ‘Third Worlds’http://socialismgoesglobal.exeter.ac.uk/This full-time post is available immediately on a fixed term basis for 9 months, research will focus on the themes of war, peace and authoritarianism.
Please indicate in your application which post(s) you are applying for (candidates are welcome to apply for all three).
About You
The successful applicants will have the skills to carry out research at historical archives; be able to carry out historical analysis on archival material (with guidance); possess a reading capacity in one or more languages of the region, to a high academic standard; be able to report effectively on research progress and outcomes; be able to write academic texts; and to communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically in academic English.
Applicants will possess a relevant PhD (or be nearing completion) or possess an equivalent qualification/experience in a related field of study. They will be able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of research methods and techniques needed to work within these research projects. Experience of work in related research fields would be beneficial.
Interviews are expected to take place in late January 2018.
What We Can Offer You
Salary will be from £28,936 per annum pro rata within the Grade E band (£26,495 – £33,518) depending on qualifications and experience.
Freedom (and the support) to pursue your intellectual interests and to work creatively across disciplines to produce internationally exciting research;
Support teams that understand the University wide research and teaching goals and partner with our academics accordingly
An Innovation, Impact and Business directorate that works closely with our academics providing specialist support for external engagement and development
Our Exeter Academic initiative supporting high performing academics to achieve their potential and develop their career
A beautiful campus set in the heart of stunning Devon
Please ensure you read our Job Description and Person Specification for full details of this role.
To view the Job Description and Person Specification document please click here.
Call for Papers: Socialist Heritage Around the World: A Heritage Without Borders?
Abstract：
This session intends to shed light on the heritage of Socialist pasts around the world. We particularly would like to explore and compare cases of former Soviet States and Republics, but also those of Asia, Latin America and Africa. Indeed, Socialist world seemed to have been, if not excluded, not enough analyzed in heritage history. Therefore, we propose, not to project ‘Western’ categories onto Socialist countries, but rather to analyze specificity of Socialist conceptions and uses of heritage (Smith 2006) – taking thus on board the new guidelines of the growing scientific fields that are critical heritage studies.
Indeed, in these regimes base(d) on Marxism-Leninism, the edification of Socialism – in the literal and figurative sense – determined artistic, cultural and heritage policies. Ideology undeniably influenced the way of theorizing and ‘making’ heritage (Heinich 2006): it indeed oriented the choice of preserving the monuments of the past, as well as the type of artistic and cultural productions in the present, as also their way to be preserved for the future. Socialist regimes thus left material remains, especially monuments and architectures, that are still omnipresent all around the world. But is Socialist heritage a heritage without borders?
We invite cross-disciplinary papers to explore two main (but not limited) directions:
* First, the session aims to put into perspective ways of thinking and using heritage in Socialist countries. How did the Marxist-Leninist conception of Space and Time directly influenced heritage? What were profound reasons of heritagization in Socialist countries? Is there a “Socialist” interpretation of heritage? How did the Soviet conception of heritage influenced other countries? What are the differences between Socialist conceptions of heritage and those found in the capitalist world?
* Second, the session intends to better grasp the complexity of these “ideological heritages” in the era of post-Socialist transitions and social rupture. Policies toward material remains of Socialist pasts diverge indeed greatly and are often paradoxical, ranging from abandonment to “museumfication” depending on national contexts. We invite paper to precisely analyse the link between history writing, memory, identity (re)constructing and Socialist heritage in post-Socialist countries.
“Historical Reckoning in Belarus” is the latest chapter published by Dr Nelly Bekus. This forms part of the edited volume Transitional Justice and the Former Soviet Union: Reviewing the Past, Looking Toward the Future published by Cambridge University Press, February 2018. It is considered the most comprehensive account to date of post-Soviet efforts to address, distort, ignore, or recast the past through the use, manipulation, and obstruction of transitional justice measures and memory politics initiatives. Editors Cynthia M. Horne and Lavinia Stan have gathered contributions by top scholars in the field, allowing the disparate post-communist studies and transitional justice scholarly communities to come together and reflect on the past and its implications for the future of the region.
Bekus’ chapter takes an alternative view to most scholars of post-communist transitional justice, who primarily consider the reckoning programs adopted by various former Soviet republics after they declared their independence in 1991. Instead she examines initiatives passed as a result of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika in 1987–91, measures introduced in 1990–4, and more recent
