[Bilimsel Haber] Controversies over the post-communism (re-)construction of social ties and the political production of togethern

[Gonul Pultar]

	*Controversies over the post-communism (re-)construction of social ties 
and the political production of togetherness *
*Location:* 	Quebec 
<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=Canada&location=Quebec>, 
Canada <http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=Canada>

	

	

	

Controversies over the post-communism
(re-)construction of social ties and the political production of 
togetherness
Conference of the Canada Research Chair in the Comparative History of Memory
Laval University, Quebec city, February 8-9, 2008

The post-communist transition led to the dissolutions of old and new 
identity and memory referents, and gave the occasion to question the 
past, be it recent or not so recent. It also allowed re-examining the 
distribution of roles between heroes and victims, innovating by 
renouncing old traditions in favour of new ones, and revealing signs of 
identity fragility like nostalgia, the confusion of markers or the so 
called identity deficit. Our conference examines the dynamic 
relationship between and within social groups, a new mechanism that 
allows them to better adapt to a complex and ever-changing world and to 
look for new meaning in the multiple facets of their collective being. 
Inspired by the theoretical framework of Bruno Latour and the school of 
pragmatic sociology, we invite participants to identify and to analyse a 
controversy that permits the identification of newly established 
relationships between social actors in order to better understand the 
stakes, internal tensions and boundaries of the continuous negotiation 
that prompts social actors to come together. Such analyses should 
highlight the particularities of the controversy, to spell out what 
appears hard to distinguish initially, to acknowledge the actors’ 
capacity to produce their own “social theories”. From this perspective, 
the controversy can be an entrance point because, despite its 
conflictual appearance, it allows us to understand the roots of 
agreements and disagreements, acceptance and exclusion, to know moderate 
and radical, traditional as well as new positions. The aim is not to 
judge or to label, but to assess the actors’ creativity, to analyse the 
traces they leave us, to shed light on the social relations they build, 
reconfigure and try to reset, in order to spin out them when faced with 
the threat of concurrent meanings.

If you are interested to participate, send your proposal, including the 
title of the presentation, an abstract (one page maximum) and your 
university affiliation, before December 1, 2007, to olgazazoulia at yahoo.fr

	Olha Zazulya
Canada Research Chair in the Comparative History of Memory
Laval University, Quebec city
(418)681-0483
Email: olgazazoullia at yahoo.fr <mailto:olgazazoullia at yahoo.fr>