[Discussion] CONF.: Post Post-socialism, March 4-5, 2005, Indiana U

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

  SOYUZ, the Post-Communist Cultural Studies Interest Group of the
American Anthropological Association (AAA) will be holding its annual
meeting on March 4-5, 2005, at Indiana University in Bloomington. The
two-day symposium is an intimate forum where scholars (including
graduate students, junior faculty, and senior faculty) from across the
world can exchange ideas and engage in dialogue. /All events are free
and open to the public./

Scholars have recently begun suggesting that many aspects of social and
cultural life once considered unique to socialist and post-socialist
societies actually have parallels in post-colonial, post-modern, and
post-welfare societies. Just what these parallels are still requires
concrete discussion, but in all cases we sense that old analytical
models that anticipate stability in social organization and relations,
centralized systems of political power, and master cultural narratives
have lost much of their explanatory potential. Empirically, we see
societies in transition, states struggling to maintain authority,
citizens who hold diverse hierarchies of values, and a general
fragmentation of order, power, and cultural norms and expectations. Is
this kaleidoscope of social and cultural forms really a new phenomenon?
Has it always been there? Does it really reflect a transitory moment, to
be resolved soon into new patterns of order and authority? Or will the
study of culture and society be increasingly challenged by these changes?

We would like to develop this line of inquiry as it applies to the
postsocialist societies of Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union,
Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Participants in SOYUZ symposia have
traditionally been specialists in the study of Eastern Europe and the
former Soviet Union. In the last several years, however, we have
encouraged specialists on other socialist and post-socialist societies
to join our discussions to better clarify what social and cultural
patterns are best identified as "socialist" or "post-socialist"; which
are local variations of these broad patterns; and which ought better to
be considered under other analytical categories ("European," "national,"
"rural," etc.).

Please see the schedule at http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eiaunrc/soyuz/ for
information regarding the individual panels to be presented.