FYI: Conference: Ludwig Fleck´s theory of thought styles and thought collectives-Wroclaw

https://www.collegium.ethz.ch/fileadmin/autoren/docs/ch_events/1603_fleck_conference_poland.pdf

CFP: Identities In-Between: East-Central Europe, c. 1900-present

Wolfson College, Oxford, 12-13 September 2016

This two-day conference invites submissions for 20-minute papers that engage with a specific definition of ‘sub-cultures’ (see below) through case studies drawn from the East-Central European region, over the period c. 1900-present

Funding is available for travel and accommodation in Oxford for accepted submissions, with details to follow. Participants may be invited to contribute to a summative volume or special edition on the titular subject.

Deadline for proposals: 1 June 2016

Interrogating the notion of ‘identity’ remains a central concern in Humanities and Social Sciences research. For East-Central Europe, the subject has particular resonance: this was a region forged in diversity, remade after 1945 along ethno-national lines, and which in the present, continues to resist alternative narratives.

The conference concludes a four-year research project that proposes a new definition of the term ‘sub-cultures’ to understand identities that do not conform to the fixed, standard categories imposed from the top down, such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘majority’ or ‘minority’. Instead, a ‘sub-culture’ is an identity that sits between these categories. It may blend languages, e.g. dialect forms, cultural traditions, or ethnic identifications. It may be drawn on particular conceptions of race and biology that, similarly, sit outside national projects, or else in the interstices. In short, a ‘sub-culture’ in these terms is not ‘subaltern’, but is an identity resisting complete incorporation into the standard categories of ‘majority’ and’minority’. The region offers many examples of such identities: among working-class inhabitants of Lodz or Lviv in the early 20^th Century, with their mixed dialect practice; Germans who lived in Wroclaw after the city became Polish in 1945, with their blended tradition and mixed identifications.

A full definition of the term and a working case study can be found in the article by Robert Pyrah and Jan Fellerer, ‘Redefining ‘sub-culture’: a new lens for understanding hybrid cultural identities in East-Central Europe with a case study from early 20th century L'viv-Lwów-Lemberg’, Nations and Nationalism, Volume 21, Issue 4, pp. 700–20, October 2015. DOI: 10.1111/nana.12119. Further information on the project, the concept, and its evolution may also be found on the dedicated website: http://subcultures.mml.ox.ac.uk.

To help participants select their topics, we propose a number of governing themes, which may cut across disciplines:

• Uses of history, memory, myth and tradition;
• Ritual practice, religion and religious observance;
• Minority policies ‘from above’
• Subjective experiences among groups / populations ‘from below’
• Linguistic forms and practice
• Biology and essentialism

Submissions: please include your name, title, the title of your presentation, and a short abstract (up to c. 500 words) to the address: subculturesoxford[AT]gmail.com

Informal enquiries: these may be made to robert.pyrah[AT]history.ox.ac.uk

Fyi: Entangled Science? Relocating German-Polish Scientific Relations

International Conference of the Cooperation Initiative of the Leibniz Association and the Polish Academy of Sciences: "Cross-border Scientific Dialogue. Potentials and Challenges for the Human and the Social Sciences", in cooperation with Ludwik and Alexander Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science

Date:

28-30 October 2015

Venue:

The Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe - Institute of the Leibniz Association, Gisonenweg 5-7, 35037 Marburg

Conference committee:

Marcin Dolecki, Maciej Gorny, Gregor Feindt, Peter Haslinger, Adam Kozuchowski, Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen, Piotr Madajczyk, Ewa Manikowska, Grzegorz Marzec, Thomas Strobel, Jan Surman, Leszek Zasztowt

Local Organizer / Contact:

Jan Surman (jan.surman@herder-institut.de)

Research of transfers and entanglements has been a vital field of inquiry in history of science for several decades. Various studies have highlighted the role of contacts across languages and questioned the cultural and power dichotomies proposing terms like transculturality, pluriculturality or appropriation as most adequate for research on entangled spaces.

Our conference follows this direction of critical inquiry enlarging it to Central European space revising the contacts and intersections that one usually calls German-Polish. It seeks for alternative ways to tell the stories of scholarly entanglements in the space shaped by power inequalities, imperialism and nationalisms. In particular, we aim at questioning the widespread center-periphery dependence, which has implicitly and often explicitly dominated the approaches to research thus far. By choosing the perspective on entanglements, we also consciously argue against “methodical nationalism” highlighting pluricultural multilingual space as the primary object of our inquiry.

The conference if open to public and free of charge. Since papers will be precirculated, organizers ask for registration with

 jan.surman@herder-institut.de.

More Information and programme:

https://www.herder-institut.de/veranstaltungen-ausstellungen/fachtagungen/2015/entangled-sciences-relocating-german-polish-scientific-relations.html