CFP: “Still taming nationalism? 25 years of political community building in the Baltic States”

Call for papers “Still taming nationalism? 25 years of political community building in the Baltic States” for the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) conference “Europe, Nations, and Insecurity: Challenges to Identities,” which will be held on 30 June – 2 July, 2016 in Kaunas, Lithuania.

Panel convenors: Dovile Budryte & Timofey Agarin

Twenty five years after the declaration of independence, the Baltic states are widely regarded as consolidated democracies that overcame ethnic polarization and “earned” membership in the European Union and NATO. Yet many challenges related to political community building remain. Though Lithuania adopted inclusive citizenship and was not subject to intense international scrutiny, tensions between the Lithuanian ethnic majority and the minorities remain on agenda: Resident Poles are perceived as pro-Russian and disloyal.  In addition, there are confrontations over the use of Polish characters in official documents and about the content of minority education. There is an ongoing stigmatization of a small and economically disadvantaged Roma minority and occasional ultra-nationalist outbreaks. In Latvia, voting still takes place mostly along ethnic lines, and the crisis in Ukraine has complicated majority-minority relations even further. In Estonia, the participation of Russian speakers in political and civic life remains very low, and there is a noticeable ethnic segmentation in the labor market. Furthermore, the three states have experienced significant out-migration after joining the EU, which further exacerbates fears of ethnic majority survival and insecurity about national sovereignty.

Both of us have raised questions about the ability of Baltic democracies to foster domestic cultures necessary for promoting minority rights norms as early as ten years ago (Budryte 2005, Agarin 2010). When both of us were working intensely on and in the region around the time of Baltic EU accession, we have witnessed that the three states have adopted legislations and followed the European normative blueprint as in Holocaust education in order to earn their re-entry into the “West”. Yet, as recent studies on interethnic relations and community building issues in the Baltic states suggest, there is still copious work to be done in creating open-minded, secure and confident political communities beyond ethnic affinities. Studies exploring the persistent obstacles to the creation of inclusive political communities in the Baltic states have been far and few between and we are keen to explore the conflictual relations between groups residents in the Baltic states as tools for further democratization of the region.

We welcome papers exploring practices by local, national, and international actors that stand up to the challenges listed above. We are particularly interested in practices that create dialogic relations between groups with different identities, such as recent attempts to build bridges between Litvaks and Lithuanians, recognition of contemporary exclusion of Roma and genocide of the group during the WWII, relations between the Balts living abroad, and similar cases of cross-cultural relationality, challenging exclusive ethnocentric nationalism of nation-state building projects in the region.

Please submit your paper proposal online at: http://form.jotformeu.com/form/43244899969377

Proposals for papers should include contact details of the author(s) and an abstract of up to 200 words by November 15, 2015.

If you have questions about the panel please contact us: t.agarin@qub.ac.uk and dbudryte@ggc.edu 

More information on the conference, can be found at the website: http://www.pmdf.vdu.lt/asn-kaunas