Activ­i­ties

The Russ­ian government’s war against Ukraine has exposed mul­ti­ple dimen­sions and geopo­lit­i­cal fault­lines of con­tem­po­rary author­i­tar­i­anisms: The sys­tem­at­ic hijack­ing of state insti­tu­tions and accu­mu­la­tion of wealth through the extrac­tion and cap­i­tal­iza­tion of gas, oil and coal clear­ly stand out as indis­pens­able pre­con­di­tions for Russia’s neo-impe­ri­al­ism and mil­i­tary pow­er. The inva­sion has been accom­pa­nied by the dis­sem­i­na­tion of state-steered lies, dis­in­for­ma­tion and eth­no-nation­al­ist nar­ra­tives. The rem­nants of inde­pen­dent media and the polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion are threat­ened by a sub­or­di­nat­ed judi­cia­ry. And on a glob­al scale the acqui­es­cence of Chi­na and India to Russia’s inva­sion indi­cates bol­stered alliances between author­i­tar­i­an and soft-author­i­­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments. Some pun­dits pre­dict a geopo­lit­i­cal con­fronta­tion between an author­i­tar­i­an block and seem­ing­ly re-con­­sol­i­­dat­ed “West”. The reluc­tance of many post­colo­nial states to sup­port Ukraine fac­ing this attack by its impe­r­i­al neigh­bor con­tributes to cur­rent­ly emerg­ing geopo­lit­i­cal complexities.

These dynam­ics pose new chal­lenges for any crit­i­cal engage­ment with con­tem­po­rary forms of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, which range from ful­ly fledged author­i­tar­i­an regimes to author­i­tar­i­an prac­tices with­in for­mal lib­er­al democ­ra­cies. War, secu­ri­ti­za­tion and anti-ter­ror­ism poli­cies, sup­pres­sion of move­ments against social inequal­i­ties and inhu­mane bor­der regimes have time and again brought about vio­lent polic­ing or author­i­tar­i­an legal and admin­is­tra­tive mea­sures also with­in lib­er­al democ­ra­cies. How­ev­er, in past years, we have wit­nessed an increased dis­man­tling of democ­ra­cy from with­in. In a num­ber of coun­tries, such as Turkey, Poland, Hun­gary or India demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed politi­cians have man­aged to erode demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples, prac­tices and insti­tu­tions. They attack inde­pen­dent media and put immense effort into bring­ing courts under their polit­i­cal con­trol. They med­dle with con­sti­tu­tion­al law to impede pro­ce­dures of account­abil­i­ty and dis­man­tle fun­da­men­tal human and cit­i­zens’ rights and free­doms, to inhib­it effec­tive polit­i­cal par­tic­i­pa­tion and a func­tion­ing oppo­si­tion. Often these shifts are accom­pa­nied by dis­cur­sive prac­tices vari­ably dis­cred­it­ing migrants, sex­u­al or reli­gious minori­ties and polit­i­cal oppo­nents. Grad­u­al­ly but sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly the rules of the polit­i­cal game are changed to secure the pow­er of author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments and lead­ers, while main­tain­ing a demo­c­ra­t­ic façade.

Dur­ing this autumn school we will take the emerg­ing geopo­lit­i­cal com­plex­i­ties as entry point to explore and sit­u­ate these forms of soft author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ment anew. We ask whether the cur­rent geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion impedes a fur­ther shift towards polit­i­cal rhetoric and inter­ven­tions hol­low­ing out demo­c­ra­t­ic pro­ce­dures and insti­tu­tions. Or does it per­haps offer new oppor­tu­ni­ties for the tac­it intro­duc­tion of more author­i­tar­i­an leg­is­la­tion, the mobi­liza­tion of hate speech and the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of pub­lic life? What forms of transna­tion­al net­works and rela­tions of author­i­tar­i­anisms can we observe?

In dif­fer­ent the­mat­ic mod­ules we will exam­ine some of the legal, admin­is­tra­tive, dis­cur­sive and dig­i­tal prac­tices with which democ­ra­cy is under­mined in detail. We will look at how illib­er­al dis­cours­es are nor­mal­ized, insti­tu­tions hijacked, laws rewrit­ten, and zones of excep­tion cre­at­ed. We will ask in which way these prac­tices and dis­cours­es real­ly man­age to cov­er up their author­i­tar­i­an inten­tions and deceive their cit­i­zens? And, final­ly, we will explore the forms and scales of vio­lence here­by engendered.

Through­out the whole autumn school, we will also revis­it the dif­fer­ent con­cepts that have been devel­oped to exam­ine the recent con­junc­ture of pop­ulist, anti-lib­er­al and author­i­tar­i­an trends inside nom­i­nal democ­ra­cies. Do we still dis­pose of the right vocab­u­lary to ana­lyt­i­cal­ly dis­sect the con­tem­po­rary moment? Or do we need to adjust our con­cep­tu­al and method­olog­i­cal toolset to make sense of author­i­tar­i­anisms in exac­er­bat­ed geopo­lit­i­cal complexities?

In this pub­lic open­ing event of our YIS­ARES 2022 autumn school four pan­elists will reflect on the effects of Russia’s war against Ukraine on soft author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments and ten­den­cies. On the one hand, they will address geopo­lit­i­cal con­se­quences: In which way has the war shift­ed the strate­gic posi­tion of coun­tries such as Turkey, India, Poland and Hun­gary? What new geopo­lit­i­cal align­ments and alliances between soft author­i­tar­i­an and author­i­tar­i­an gov­ern­ments can be observed? And which crit­i­cal insights can we gain by scru­ti­niz­ing the dis­cur­sive oppo­si­tion between author­i­tar­i­an­ism and democ­ra­cy fierce­ly enforced by some West­ern actors from a post­colo­nial per­spec­tive? On the oth­er hand, the pan­elists will exem­plar­i­ly exam­ine the domes­tic con­se­quences of these geopo­lit­i­cal shifts: How does the war affect soft author­i­tar­i­an agen­das in Hun­gary, India or Turkey? Do the inten­si­fied geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sions offer new oppor­tu­ni­ties to push for­ward rightwing poli­cies, the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of pub­lic life or the pro­mo­tion of hate speech in polit­i­cal dis­course? Or might new align­ments and risks on the inter­na­tion­al lev­el in some cas­es rather slow down the author­i­tar­i­an transformation?

Pan­elists
Evren Bal­ta (Özyeğin Uni­ver­si­ty)
Ran­abir Samad­dar (Cal­cut­ta Research Group)
Rena­ta Uitz (Cen­tral Euro­pean University)

Chair
Shali­ni Ran­de­ria (Cen­tral Euro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty & U Bre­men Excel­lence Chair)

To reg­is­ter send a mail to yisares(at)uni-bremen(dot)de or join our Youtube livestream!

Das weltweite Erstarken des Recht­spop­ulis­mus und des Autori­taris­mus, die Ein­schränkung der Men­schen­rechte in vie­len Län­dern der Welt und die Bedro­hung zivilge­sellschaftlich­er Akteure stellt die Mit­tleror­gan­i­sa­tio­nen der Auswär­ti­gen Kul­­tur- und Bil­dungspoli­tik (AKBP), die vor allem zivilge­sellschaftlich tätig sind, vor enorme Her­aus­forderun­gen. Für diese enger wer­den­den Spiel­räume hat sich der Begriff der „shrink­ing spaces“ etabliert. Er bezieht sich darauf, dass Frei­heit­sräume in den unter­schiedlichen Bere­ichen zivilge­sellschaftlichen Han­delns – u.a. in Kun­st, Medi­en und Wis­senschaft – durch staatliche und andere Akteure eingeengt wer­den.   

Im Zusam­men­hang mit dem rus­sis­chen Krieg gegen die Ukraine erfährt der Begriff eine bek­lem­mende Aktu­al­ität. Autor*innen, Journalist*innen und Aktivist*innen in Rus­s­land, die den rus­sis­chen Angriff öffentlich als solchen beze­ich­nen und kri­tisieren, wer­den ver­haftet oder müssen ihr Land ver­lassen. Ukrainis­che Kul­turschaf­fende und Intellek­tuelle benöti­gen Unter­stützung, um sich in Sicher­heit brin­gen und ihre Arbeit fort­set­zen zu kön­nen.   

Welche Rolle kommt der Auswär­ti­gen Kul­tur­poli­tik angesichts dieser Entwick­lun­gen zu? Ist sie nicht ger­ade unter solchen erschw­erten Bedin­gun­gen beson­ders wichtig? Wie kann eine tran­skul­turelle zivilge­sellschaftliche Sol­i­dar­ität in Krisen­zeit­en ausse­hen? Welche Ressourcen braucht sie, und welch­es Poten­zial hat sie? Kann die Auswär­tige Kul­­tur- und Bil­dungspoli­tik trotz Mit­telkürzun­gen weit­er an ihrem pro­gres­siv­en Kurs fes­thal­ten?   
 
Das Pan­el ist Teil der Dialo­grei­he: „Auswär­tige Kul­­tur- und Bil­dungspoli­tik unter Druck“, die gemein­sam mit dem DeZ­IM (Deutschen Zen­trum für Inte­­gra­­tions- und Migra­tions­forschung) organ­isiert wird. 

Mit
DR. JENS ADAM, Uni­ver­sität Bre­men
JAKOB RACEK, Leitung Infor­ma­tion & Bib­lio­thek am Goethe-Insti­­tut, ehem. Leit­er Goethe-Insti­­tut Min­sk
DIMA ALBITAR KALA­JI, Autorin (Syrien, Deutsch­land)
ANTHO­NY RICHTER, Direk­tor für Son­derini­tia­tiv­en bei den Open Soci­ety Foun­da­tions (OSF), New York

Mod­er­a­tion:
CAR­O­LINE ASSAD, DeZ­IM-Insti­­tut

Organ­isiert vom Goethe-Insti­­tut und dem Deutschen Zen­trum für Inte­­gra­­tions- und Migra­tions­forschung (DeZ­IM)

Kon­ferenzbeitrag von Dr. Nurhak Polat und Hagen Steinhauer

Im Zuge von zeit­genös­sis­chen Diskus­sio­nen und Diag­nosen zum Ster­ben und Ver­fall von Demokra­tien wer­den wir häu­fig mit dichotomen Vorstel­lun­gen von ‚Autori­taris­mus‘ und ‚Demokratie‘ als ein­deutig abgrenzbaren, sich gegen­seit­ig auss­chließen­den Regierungs­for­men kon­fron­tiert. Empirische Forschung fördert hinge­gen ‚san­fte‘ Übergänge, Ver­flech­tun­gen und ambiva­lente Gle­ichzeit­igkeit­en demokratis­ch­er und autoritär­er Prax­en und Diskurse zutage. Diese äußern sich in der gradu­ellen Aushöh­lung demokratis­ch­er Insti­tu­tio­nen und Prozesse eben­so wie in oft vehe­menten Kämpfen um die (Be-)Deutungen poli­tis­ch­er Grund­be­griffe, Wahrheits­ge­halte und den Sta­tus wis­senschaftlichen Wis­sens. Empirische Forschung­sprax­is ist auf vielfältige Weise – teils intendiert, teils unge­wollt – mit diesen Kämpfen und Ver­schiebun­gen ver­strickt und somit mit der Prob­lematik des ‚Posi­­tion-Beziehens’ und ‚Hal­­tung-Zeigens’ verwoben.

Den Aus­gangspunkt unseres Beitrages bildet die Beobach­tung, dass sich diese Prob­lematik in Forschun­gen ent­lang des Demokratie/Au­­tori­­taris­­mus-Nexus in beson­der­er Dringlichkeit stellt. Auf eine ganz grund­sät­zliche Weise hat jed­wede (Nicht-)Positionierung wis­sens- und zukun­ft­spoli­tis­che Auswirkun­gen wie ‚Risiken’ zur Folge, beispiel­sweise eine Öff­nung oder Schließung bes­timmter Zugänge und Per­spek­tiv­en, eine akademis­che wie indi­vidu­elle ‚Gefährdung’ oder eine gradu­elle Veren­gung der indi­vidu­ellen wie kollek­tiv­en Posi­tion­ierungs­freiräume. Anhand unser­er empirischen, teils fern-anthro­pol­o­gis­chen Forschun­gen in ‚autoritären Geflecht­en‘ in der Türkei, in Frankre­ich und in Polen möcht­en wir einige Dilem­ma­ta des Posi­­tion-Beziehens her­ausar­beit­en. Uns inter­essieren hier­bei ins­beson­dere drei Fragestellungen:

Erstens fra­gen wir nach Verän­derun­gen im Ver­hält­nis zwis­chen Teil­nahme und Reflex­ion als den bei­den Grundbe­standteilen jed­er ethno­grafis­chen Prax­is und Wis­senspro­duk­tion: Ist Dis­tanzierung über­haupt eine Option im Anbe­tra­cht kon­tinuier­lich­er Angriffe auf demokratis­che Insti­tu­tio­nen oder Wis­senschafts­frei­heit? Und wie gestal­ten sich Räume der Reflex­ion und Teilnahme?

Zweit­ens erkun­den wir Möglichkeit­en ein­er ‚kri­tis­chen Hal­tung‘ in Kon­tex­ten, in denen Begriffe und Wis­sens­bestände kri­tis­ch­er Forschung regelmäßig durch autoritäre Akteur*innen angeeignet und umgedeutet werden.

Und drit­tens disku­tieren wir ‚Hal­tung zeigen’ als eine Suche nach Per­spek­tiv­en und Möglichkeit­en für eine „antizipa­torische Ethno­grafie“ (Knecht 2009). Wir fra­gen danach, inwiefern eine empirische Kul­tur­wis­senschaft in und gegenüber autoritären Geflecht­en und Zeit­en vorstell­bar und mach­bar ist, die wed­er ‚alarmistisch’ auf die aktuellen all­t­ags- und forschungspoli­tis­chen Prob­leme hin­deutet, noch diese durch ‚beschreibende’ Analy­sen ‚nachvol­lzieht’, son­dern antizip­iert, zukun­ft­sori­en­tiert mitwirkt und interveniert.

Talk by Hagen Stein­hauer at the con­fer­ence The Power(s) of Lan­guage. Nego­ti­at­ing Voice and Recog­ni­tion (BTWSD#4)

In the wake of the 2020 ter­ror­ist attacks, the term islamo-gauchisme gained salience in French mass media dis­course. Mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment, specif­i­cal­ly the min­is­ters of nation­al edu­ca­tion and research, used it not only to con­demn fun­da­men­tal­ist and Dji­hadist ide­olo­gies, but also to accuse cer­tain aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines of intel­lec­tu­al com­plic­i­ty with Islamism. Islamo-gauchisme thus equates alleged left­ist sup­port for Islamist fun­da­men­tal­ism with crit­i­cal research projects like post­colo­nial stud­ies or inter­sec­tion­al feminism.

Islamo-gauchisme com­bines the denial of struc­tur­al racism and Islam­o­pho­bia with a dele­git­imiza­tion of cri­tique and the notion of an endan­gered white major­i­ty threat­ened from out­side as well as from with­in. Thus, it should be under­stood as part of the far-right’s larg­er strat­e­gy to push back against left-wing eman­ci­pa­to­ry pol­i­tics and to imple­ment their agen­da in the cen­tre of polit­i­cal discourse.

I argue that we are wit­ness­ing a broad­er author­i­tar­i­an shift which con­sol­i­dates eth­no-nation­al­­ly encod­ed iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics of the men­aced major­i­ty: far-right nar­ra­tives of Islamiza­tion and the grand rem­place­ment have become an inte­gral part of pub­lic dis­course. The main­stream­ing of these ide­olo­gies has already had effects on leg­is­la­tion: A new law on sep­a­ratism led to the dis­so­lu­tion of activist groups and NGOs speak­ing up against Islam­o­pho­bia. Islam in gen­er­al was fur­ther stig­ma­tized and cri­tique of insti­tu­tion­al Islam­o­pho­bia dis­missed as racisme imag­i­naire.    In my pre­sen­ta­tion I will exam­ine the his­to­ry of the term islamo-gauchisme to iden­ti­fy its under­ly­ing argu­men­ta­tion and its influ­ence on cur­rent debates around séparatisme and wok­isme. The dis­cur­sive func­tion of all of these buzz­words, I argue, is to deny the exis­tence of struc­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in order to uphold racial­ized and gen­dered hier­ar­chies. France is wit­ness­ing the rise of an author­i­tar­i­an iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics aimed at dele­git­imiz­ing claims for equal recog­ni­tion and rights of minorities.

A Con­ver­sa­tion with Deniz Yonu­cu, New­cas­tle University

This event is based on Deniz Yonucu’s recent­ly pub­lished book Police, Provo­ca­tion, Pol­i­tics: Coun­terin­sur­gency in Istan­bul. (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2022). In it she presents a coun­ter­in­tu­itive analy­sis of con­tem­po­rary polic­ing prac­tices, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion on the incite­ment of coun­ter­vi­o­lence, per­pet­u­al con­flict, and eth­no­sec­tar­i­an dis­cord by the state secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus. Shed­ding light on coun­terin­sur­gen­cy’s affect-and-emo­­tion-gen­er­at­ing divi­sive tech­niques and urban dimen­sions, the book shows how coun­terin­sur­gent polic­ing strate­gies work to inter­vene in the orga­ni­za­tion of polit­i­cal dis­sent in a way that both coun­ters exist­ing align­ments among dis­si­dent pop­u­la­tions and pre­vents emer­gent ones. Draw­ing on her insights into these forms of urban polic­ing in Istan­bul, we would like to dis­cuss how they are sit­u­at­ed in the glob­al his­tor­i­cal con­text and in which ways they pro­vide a back­ground to the author­i­tar­i­an state pol­i­tics we are wit­ness­ing in Turkey today. 

Deniz Yonu­cu is Lec­tur­er in Soci­ol­o­gy at the School of Geog­ra­phy, Pol­i­tics and Soci­ol­o­gy, New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty. She received her PhD in Social Anthro­pol­o­gy from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in 2014. She holds two MA degrees in Social Sci­ences from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go and in Soci­ol­o­gy from Bogazi­ci Uni­ver­si­ty. Her teach­ing and research inter­ests lie at the inter­sec­tion of polit­i­cal and legal anthro­pol­o­gy and urban stud­ies, with a focus on the Mid­dle East. She is a co-founder and co-con­venor of the Anthro­pol­o­gy of Sur­veil­lance Net­work (ANSUR).  

The event is co-organ­ised by the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy and Cul­tur­al Research and the Research Group Soft Author­i­tar­i­anisms. 

To reg­is­ter please send an email to: xiaoling@uni-bremen.de

The con­fer­ence is joint­ly orga­nized by Soci­ety and Legal Research Foun­da­tion (TOHAV) and Aberdeen University’s Cen­tre for Cit­i­zen­ship, Civ­il Soci­ety and Rule of Law (CIS­RUL)

An extra­or­di­nary range of coun­tries across the world tran­si­tioned to democ­ra­cy in the 1980s and sub­se­quent decades, intro­duc­ing mul­ti-par­­ty elec­tions, con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion for minori­ties, free­dom of speech and con­science, and oth­er mea­sures con­sis­tent with inter­na­tion­al human rights treaties and covenants. One set of pro-democ­ra­­cy actors came to be known as “civ­il soci­ety”: a loose term but which often refers to legal­­ly-estab­lished orga­ni­za­tions and asso­ci­a­tions, from NGOs and social move­ments to think tanks and the media, which main­tain a degree of auton­o­my from gov­ern­ments and polit­i­cal par­ties, and which attempt to place pres­sure on gov­ern­ments through mon­i­tor­ing, advo­ca­cy and pol­i­cy recommendations.

In the past decade, how­ev­er, author­i­tar­i­an prac­tices and poli­cies have been on the rise in many con­texts. Coun­tries as dif­fer­ent as Turkey, Hun­gary, Poland, Brazil, Mex­i­co and Tan­za­nia, all held to be con­sol­i­dat­ing as democ­ra­cies, have been crit­i­cized for “demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing”. The term is not whol­ly sat­is­fac­to­ry because some of the author­i­tar­i­an prac­tices are new – this is no sim­ple return to old habits – and there is no sin­gle trend across coun­tries. For exam­ple, though much atten­tion has been paid to shifts toward the polit­i­cal Right, Mex­i­co is a case of author­i­tar­i­an prac­tices on the Left. Nei­ther are the process­es exclu­sive to new­er democ­ra­cies: India is an old­er democ­ra­cy that is now accused of author­i­tar­i­an­ism, and Trump’s USA was arguably anoth­er exam­ple. Yet “demo­c­ra­t­ic back­slid­ing” does seem to cap­ture some of the expe­ri­ence of these coun­tries: their gov­ern­ments have aban­doned some of the demo­c­ra­t­ic agen­das and prin­ci­ples to which they appeared pre­vi­ous­ly committed.

One com­mon fea­ture is pre­cise­ly that gov­ern­ments tend to denounce “civ­il soci­ety” for being elit­ist and block­ing the will of the peo­ple, includ­ing by kow-tow­ing to inter­na­tion­al donors and pow­ers like the EU and the US. Civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions that once strug­gled against mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship or one-par­­ty rule have found that their long­stand­ing strate­gies are ill-suit­­ed to these times. For exam­ple, civ­il soci­ety was instru­men­tal in draft­ing demo­c­ra­t­ic con­sti­tu­tions and mon­i­tor­ing their imple­men­ta­tion, yet in recent years gov­ern­ments have mod­i­fied the con­sti­tu­tions and turned them to author­i­tar­i­an ends. Gov­ern­ments have also looked to har­ness the judi­cial insti­tu­tions that civ­il soci­ety used to work through and with. Mean­while, civ­il soci­ety has found itself vul­ner­a­ble to gov­ern­ments’ abil­i­ty to ral­ly new con­stituen­cies in order to com­mand elec­toral majori­ties, often by stig­ma­tiz­ing minori­ties which find them­selves per­ma­nent­ly exclud­ed. Gov­ern­ments use their new­found polit­i­cal pow­er to neu­tral­ize and frus­trate attempts to lim­it that pow­er, whether by civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, social move­ments, oppo­si­tion par­ties, the media, or autonomous insti­tu­tions like elec­toral tri­bunals and human rights commissions.

Diskus­sion­srunde mit Jens Adam (Forschungs­gruppe Soft Author­i­tar­i­anisms, Uni­ver­sität Bre­men) / Čar­na Brković & Sabine Hess (Insti­tut für Kul­tur­an­thro­polo­gie und Europäis­che Eth­nolo­gie, Uni­ver­sität Göt­tin­gen) / Bernd Kas­parek (Insti­tut für Europäis­che Eth­nolo­gie, Hum­boldt Uni­ver­sität zu Berlin)

Der Krieg in der Ukraine macht auch ‚Europa‘ erneut zu einem Gegen­stand öffentlich­er Diskus­sion und poli­tis­ch­er Prax­is: die Ver­schär­fung innereu­ropäis­ch­er Antag­o­nis­men und Grenzziehun­gen, die ras­ante Inte­gra­tion ein­er mil­itärischen Kom­po­nente in EU-Poli­tiken, die sukzes­sive Kap­pung langfristiger tran­skon­ti­nen­taler ökonomis­ch­er Ver­flech­tun­gen im Bere­ich der fos­silen Energie oder die Etablierung par­al­lel­er, höchst ungle­ich­er Migra­tionsregime an der östlichen EU-Außen­­gren­ze sind einige der Felder, in denen wider­sprüch­liche Refig­u­ra­tio­nen Europas aktuell deut­lich zutage treten.
Im Rah­men dieses Round­table möcht­en wir vier Schlaglichtern auf diese Entwick­lun­gen wer­fen und ins­beson­dere in ihren Kon­se­quen­zen für eine anthro­pol­o­gis­che Europäisierungs­forschung disku­tieren. Wie verän­dern sich unsere Begriffe von „Gren­ze“ und dem „Regieren“ ein­er supra­na­tionalen For­ma­tion? Was ler­nen wir über die Grund­la­gen und Mech­a­nis­men von Ein- und Auss­chlüssen in das europäis­che Pro­jekt? Und welche kri­tis­chen Per­spek­tiv­en eröff­nen sich auf diese Gegen­wart, wenn wir sie auf Basis von ethno­grafis­chen Stu­di­en zur EU-Süd­­gren­ze kontextualisieren?

Reg­istrierung per E‑Mail an xiaoling@uni-bremen.de

Out­raged by the bru­tal­i­ty of the Russ­ian government’s mil­i­tary inva­sion of Ukraine, this pan­el will assem­ble anthro­pol­o­gists to reflect about ways and approach­es to react to this war with the means of our dis­ci­pline. It will pro­vide a space to share our obser­va­tions and indig­na­tions, to engage with first care­ful attempts of sense-mak­ing and to debate about pos­si­ble pub­lic action. The pan­elists will focus espe­cial­ly on the fol­low­ing aspects:

• What do we know about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion on the ground? How does the war affect the con­di­tions of every­day and com­mu­nal life, the social fab­ric and sociopo­lit­i­cal forms in Ukraine? How can we con­tribute to doc­u­ment these con­se­quences of orga­nized violence?
• To which extent can we draw on already elab­o­rat­ed per­spec­tives of an anthro­pol­o­gy of polit­i­cal vio­lence to address and exam­ine this ongo­ing war?
• How does the war and its geopo­lit­i­cal reper­cus­sions chal­lenge our under­stand­ings of Europe and Euro­peaniza­tion as anthro­po­log­i­cal research fields?
• What steps could we take to cre­ate net­works of sup­port and sol­i­dar­i­ty for Ukrain­ian colleagues?

Par­tic­i­pants:
Volodymyr Artiukh (Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford), Eliz­a­beth C. Dunn (Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Bloom­ing­ton), Taras Fedirko (Uni­ver­si­ty of St Andrews), Daf­na Rachok (Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty Bloom­ing­ton), Andrey Vozyanov (Euro­pean Human­i­ties Uni­ver­si­ty Vil­nius), Cather­ine Wan­ner (Penn­syl­va­nia State University)

Con­venors:
Jens Adam (Uni­ver­si­ty of Bre­men), Čar­na Brković (Uni­ver­si­ty of Göt­tin­gen), Sabine Hess (Uni­ver­si­ty of Göt­tin­gen), DGEKW-Kom­mis­­sion “Europäisierung_​​Globalisierung: Ethno­grafien des Poli­tis­chen“, U Bre­men Excel­lence Chair Research Group „Soft Authoritarianisms

Pan­el at the con­fer­ence: “New Author­i­tar­i­anisms in the Con­tem­po­rary World”

Albert Hirschmann Cen­tre on Democ­ra­cy, Grad­u­ate Insti­tute Geneva

A spec­tre is haunt­ing the world – the spec­tre of new author­i­tar­i­anisms. From Brazil to Hun­gary, from Poland to the Philip­pines, from India to the Unit­ed States, a new wave of author­i­tar­i­an lead­ers, par­ties and move­ments has been under­min­ing democ­ra­cy from with­in and threat­en­ing its exis­tence. Until quite recent­ly, author­i­tar­i­an­ism was a phe­nom­e­non iden­ti­fied with the South. Today, how­ev­er, author­i­tar­i­an ide­olo­gies, move­ments, and par­ties, and the threat they pose to democ­ra­cy, are also very much a fea­ture of pol­i­tics in the West. The work­shop aims to bring togeth­er inter­est­ed grad­u­ate stu­dents and post-docs to explore this phe­nom­e­non from mul­ti­ple dis­ci­pli­nary and method­olog­i­cal perspectives.

With per­spec­tives from researchers around, this work­shop aims to share per­spec­tives on cur­rent author­i­tar­i­an regimes, the events that lead to author­i­tar­i­an­ism and the impact of the same on states. The work­shop brings spe­cif­ic exam­ples of research con­duct­ed in coun­tries around the world explor­ing the con­di­tions that fos­ter a vari­ety of author­i­tar­i­an sen­ti­ments, the links between var­i­ous  ide­olo­gies and the cur­rent sce­nario, and final­ly the strate­gies and tac­tics of these regimes. 

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