CFP- Becoming Urban?: Investigating the P-S Landscape
Posted by: Serguei Alex. Oushakine <oushakin@Princeton.EDU>
For further information, please feel free to contact either Nerijus
Milerius (nerijus_miler@yahoo.com) or Benjamin Cope (b.cope@zacheta.art.pl )
Call For Papers
Becoming Urban?: Investigating the P-S Landscape
We are calling for contributions in the realms of culture studies,
social studies, urban studies, media studies, architecture and
anthropology to the volume Becoming Urban?: Investigating the P-S
Landscape. This volume aims to explore the metamorphosing urban,
rural, social and media landscapes in the geographical space usually
referred to as 'post-socialist', i.e. potentially from the Balkans to
Vladivostok, including all that lies between.
However, we are acutely aware that, especially in terms of an
investigation of questions related to urban forms, this territory was
constituted as other in relation to the developed urban territory of
the Western world well before the advent of communism. In addition, it
is far from certain that socialism or communism was a distinct form of
urban organisation or whether it just represented one branch of the
modernist urban project. Also, not only was the experience of
socialism lived very differently in the different countries usually
grouped under the heading 'post-socialist', but we have now had at
least 15 years of something different: is it therefore accurate to
label this territory under the heading 'socialist' even in conjunction
with the epithet 'post'?
Thus, we have chosen to opt for the title "P-S" which, although
representing the first letters of Post-Socialist, also reflects our
hesitation as to whether this specific historical legacy is really the
dominant influence on the region. For P-S might equally stand for
Post-Soros and thus suggest that it is the way in which the urban
societies of this region now plug into global flows of capital and
knowledge that, at least intellectually, plays the dominant role in
fashioning this geographical space as a coherent region. Another sense
of P-S which plays an important role in our thinking is that of
Post-Scriptum as a challenge to Francis Fukuyama's controversial
assertion that the liberal urban democracies of the West constitute
the end of history; in this sense, are the urban forms emerging in the
P-S landscape simply footnotes to this conclusion or are they
significant enough to suggest that there is more to history than we
have yet understood? In addition, P-S has a further connotation which
might help in interpreting this uncharted landscape, since P-S is also
the German abbreviation for horse-power (in German, Pferd-Sterke).
Might it be that the absence of stable urban structures and the
difficulty of understanding what is happening in this region gives the
cities here a specific dynamism of their own?
So are the P-S civilisations at last becoming urban, in the sense of
catching up with the western and only model of urban civilisation, or
does the relationship to the legacies of history here open up new
forms of urban interaction? Or is it, in the age of the
post-metropolis or post-modernity, too late to become urban: what kind
of urban forms are emerging in the age of the domination of the global
media village? Or do these societies remain obdurately rural - or
perhaps the 'rural' elements in the P-S cities give them a special
form of urban energy? Or are there also radical changes happening in
provincial and rural settlements, and in the countryside, which are
also linked to changes in urban life and the dominant modes of
economic production?
We see all these questions as being open and requiring new theoretical
and empirical approaches to try to map this confusing cultural space.
For simply importing Western urban theories seems inappropriate to map
a space which is itself being produced by a distorting/distorted
encounter with forces from the West? Equally, while Marxism is
appealing in a context where the questions of who owns what and where
does the profit go are complicated and urgent, returning to Marx as a
tool for analysing the ruins of communism also seems questionable.
Thus, to try to bring thinking closer to what is really happening in
P-S societies, an anthropological turn might seem a fruitful direction
to take, but what then might be the role of thinking in seeking to
build models to explore this experience?
Articles, therefore, are expected be based on empirical evidence from
a city, cities, or the countryside in the region, but will also seek
to open up new theoretical avenues for dealing with the complex
socio-cultural organisation of this region.
Contributions should be in Russian and preceded by an abstract and
keywords in Russian, and followed by an abstract and keywords in
English. Please also attach short biographical information: i.e.
institution where you work and a brief mention of books/articles
already published. Articles should be submitted to us in electronic
form before July 1st 2007, but it would be helpful if those wishing to
contribute an article could signal their intention to do so earlier.
The publication is a product of an International Higher Education
Support Programme and will be published through the European
Humanities University Publishing House in Minsk. It is also planned
that the best articles from this volume will form the core of a
publication in English under the same title, scheduled for 2008.
For further information, please feel free to contact either Nerijus
Milerius (nerijus_miler@yahoo.com) or Benjamin Cope (b.cope@zacheta.art.pl )
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