„Minorities, Diversities, Securities“ First symposium of the Columbia-Marburg-Barcelona-Glasgow consortium

„Minorities, Diversities, Securities“ First symposium of the Columbia-Marburg-Barcelona-Glasgow consortium

Organizer
Council for European Studies at Columbia University New York; Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe Marburg; Instituto Barcelona d’Estudis Internationals; University of Glasgow; Collaborative Research Center-Transregio (SFB-TR) “Dynamics of Security”; LOEWE-Research Focus “Regions of Conflict in Eastern Europe”; Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen Center for Eastern European Studies; Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies and Marburg Center for Conflict Studies
Venue
Herder-Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe Marburg
Location
Marburg
Country
Germany
From - Until
28.09.2017 - 29.09.2017
By
Herder-Institut

This symposium is the first of a series organized on a bi-annual basis and aims at developing a new format for the analysis of current developments within Europe and in neighboring parts of the world that have a key relevance for Europe and its global partners. The symposi-um will be organized alternately at one of the locations of the three European partner insti-tutions: the Herder-Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, the Instituto Barcelona d’Estudis Internationals and the University of Glasgow. The permanent partner in the United States is the Council for European Studies at Columbia University (CES). The aim of the consortium is to support career paths of promising younger researchers orig-inating from Southern and Eastern member states of the European Union as well as from neighboring academic landscapes by bringing them in direct contact with scholars from the USA and Canada. For that purpose, early-stage researchers from the field of the Humanities and Social Sciences from both regions will be given the opportunity to enhance their individ-ual conceptual approaches against the backdrop of their own current or recently finished empirical studies. They will be joined by experts from the organizing institutions and the re-gional academic environment.
Since the beginning of the so-called refugee crisis in 2015/16, the discur¬sive shift away from multiculturalism and the agendas of ethnic, cultural, religious, and other minorities to a per-spective of assessing risks and challenges that evolve from societal diversity has intensified. In the political sphere and in print as well as social media in and outside Europe, the theme of migrants and cultural/religious diversity is becoming more and more intertwined with concepts of security, conflict prevention, and anti-terrorist determent. Parallel to that devel-opment, there is a tendency to re-frame or re-interpret assumptions on the relations between minority and majority populations. In some countries (like Russia, Hungary, or Mace-donia), we even see official polities that produce side-effects to re-marginalize minority groups by sociocultural, economic, and religious- or life-style-based dynamics of “othering.” As a consequence, security issues and processes of securitization lead to new intersections of social identities, renewed stereotypes and systems of domination, oppression, and dis-crimination. The Marburg symposium takes a critical stand against this tendency, aiming at assessing the concepts, paradigms, and methods for the re-evaluation of multi-ethnicity, diversity, and mobility in a globalized and “post-factual” era and seeking to identify factors and agencies that help to explain the current trends towards the obsession with security agendas. The discussions will provide ample opportunity for reflection on the theoretical implications from an interdisciplinary point of view. The participants will be invited to elabo-rate on the interfaces between concepts of ethnicity, diversity, and integration and different approaches to securitization and risk aversion. Discussions also aim at the re-evaluation of current theories of intersectionality, thereby addressing questions raised from individual empirical studies such as:
- What are social and political dynamics behind the new links between minorities, cultural diversity, and security issues?
- What are new trends and national longue-durée developments when we speak of the relation between kin-states, co-national minorities and the state they live in?
- Can we speak of a current transformation of concepts of integration and how they relate to security issues?
- How do security issues and the way they are verbalized influence group relations, group boundaries, and individual as well as collective identities?
- Is there a need to re-conceptualize agency, discourse, communication, and group behavior against this backdrop?
- How would we assess the role of European institutions when it comes to their interaction with national polities?
- What are the paradigms that function as an analytical tool? What is mainstream in the interpretation of individual conflicts?

Invited early-stage researchers:
Isa Afacan (Turkey, University of Giessen, political science): international relations, Turkish foreign policy and Northern Africa, the conflict in Syria
James Fitzgerald (Ireland, Dublin City University, International relations): International rela-tions and security studies, terrorism, political violence, and international security, discourse analysis, critical perspectives on knowledge production
Marina Germane (Latvia, University of Glasgow, history): European political history in 19th and 20th centuries, ethnic studies, ethnicity and national identity
Ana Nichita Ivaşiuc (Rumania, University of Giessen, political science): Minorities, govern-ance and security, Roma communities and national as well as European institutions
Tamir Libel (Israel, Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals and University College Dublin, International relations): Civil-military studies, security studies with a focus on Europe, North America and the wider Middle East
Federica Prina (Italy, University of Glasgow, law): Cultural and participatory rights of national minorities in the post-Soviet space, domestic implementation of international human rights law in post-Communist countries
Sergey Sukhankin (Russia, Autonomous University of Barcelona / International Centre for Policy Studies Kiev, International relations): Security in countries of the former Soviet Union, nationalism and violence, developments in the Baltic Sea region
Justyna Turkowska (Poland, University of Bonn, history): Nationalism, minority issues and regionalism in 19th and 20th century; history of the transfer of medical knowledge

Programm

September 28th

2:00-3:00 pm
Opening Remarks:
Nicole Shea (Council for European Studies at Columbia University)
Introduction to the subject:
Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe / Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)
Jan Willem Duyvendak (Council for European Studies / Amsterdam University)
Jacint Jordana (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals / Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona)
David Smith (University of Glasgow)

3:00-4:30 pm
Chair: Juan Díez Medrano (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals / Universidad Carlos III Madrid)
James Fitzgerald (Dublin City University): “Confronting the Terrorist/Refugee Narrative: The Promise of Storytelling”
Tamir Libel (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals / University College Dublin): “Rethinking Strategic Culture: Security Policy, Discursive Institutionalism and Computational Research Agenda”
Commentary: Thorsten Bonacker (Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg Center for Conflict Studies)
Discussion
Summary: Juan Díez Medrano (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals / Universidad Carlos III Madrid)

5:00-6:30
Chair: Andreas Langenohl (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen / Giessen Center for East Euro-pean Studies)
Isa Afacan (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen): “Kurds and the Turkish State: Quo Vadis now?”
Marina Germane (University of Glasgow): “Transnational Minority Activism in the Age of European Integration”
Commentary: Rachid Ouaissa (Phillips-University Marburg / Marburg Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies)
Discussion
Summary: Andreas Langenohl (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen / Giessen Center for East European Studies)

7:00 pm
Roundtable Discussion
“Minorities and Securities – Past Experiences, Current Challenges, Future Scenarios”
Participants:
Andrea Gawrich (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen / Giessen Center for East European Studies)
Olga Sezneva (University of Amsterdam / European University Sankt Petersburg)
Anna Veronika Wendland (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe)
Jan Willem Duyvendak (Council for European Studies / University of Amsterdam)
Moderator: Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe / Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)

September 29th

9.30-11.00
Chair: Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe / Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)
Ana Nichita Ivaşiuc (Justus-Liebig-University Giessen): “Securitization of Identities and Racial Eastern-Europeanization”
Justyna Turkowska (University of Bonn): “National Men’s Burden: Homogeneity, Ethnical Diversity and Medical Discourse as Space of National Securitization in the 1900s at Germany’s Eastern Frontiers and in Polish State in the 1920s”
Commentary by established scholar: Heidi Hein-Kircher (Herder Institute for Historical Re-search on East Central Europe)
Discussion
Summary by established scholar: Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)

11:30 am-1:00 pm
Chair: Olga Sezneva (University of Amsterdam / European University Sankt Petersburg)
Federica Prina (University of Glasgow): “Russia’s Virtual Equality: Individuals and Groups”
Sergey Sukhankin (Autonomous University of Barcelona / International Centre for Policy Studies Kiev): “Kaliningrad Oblast and challenges to the Baltic Sea region”
Commentary: Eamonn Butler (University of Glasgow)
Discussion
Summary: Olga Sezneva (University of Amsterdam / European University Sankt Petersburg)

2:00 pm-2:30 pm
Program Summary
Chair: Nicole Shea (Council for European Studies at Columbia University)
David Smith (University of Glasgow)
Jacint Jordana (Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals / Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona)
Jan Willem Duyvendak (Council for European Studies / Amsterdam University)
Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe / Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)
Closing Remark: Nicole Shea (Council for European Studies at Columbia University)

Contact (announcement)

Peter Haslinger
Herder-Institut
06421/184101
mail@herder-institut.de

https://www.herder-institut.de/go/4t-6ab93b
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Published on
11.09.2017
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