COST Action 18119 Who Cares In Europe? Workshop At the Nexus of Voluntary Action and Public Policies: Rethinking Care in Southeastern Europe (original) (raw)
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In May 2014, a dozen scholars gathered in Budapest for the Workshop « Voluntary Associations in the Yugoslav Space since 19th Century », supported by the CEU Institute for Advanced Study and CEU Department of Gender Studies. On that occasion, people from different academic backgrounds – History, Anthropology, Sociology, Gender Studies – together developed a challenging, two-day conversation on the changing forms and meanings of Voluntary associations/Non-governmental organizations (VAs/NGOs) in the Yugoslav space, from the age of empires to post-socialism. Individual papers, and in particular the discussions that accompanied them, sketched challenging research directions for an original understanding of social movements, activism and sociality in the Yugoslav space under a variety of state structures and social realities. Organized with the support of CETOBaC, LabEx TEPSIS, Idex PSL et Central European University, this second workshop aims to further explore and fine-tune some of these research directions. As the former meeting, the goal is to put together scholars working in various disciplinary traditions having in common two features: an interest for the Yugoslav space, before, during or after the existence of a Yugoslav state, and research experience with the specific institution of the voluntary association. Notwithstanding their temporal and spatial ubiquity, VAs/NGOs seem to have a number of unifying elements that make them identifiable: voluntary and selective membership, limited goals fixed in statutes, self-government with written rules, elected officers, decision making in regular meetings, compliance with the laws of the state but also autonomy from higher political bodies. Identified with a plethora of different names – Verein in German, cemiyet in Ottoman Turkish, udruženje, udruga, or društvo in the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian language, združenje in the Slovenian language, etc. – associations emerged when this part of Europe was integrated into the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Already in this early period, the associations entered and structured the public space with a number of missions: promoting education, taking care of the poor, facilitating sport, leisure and festive cultures, modern agriculture, promoting religious or national values, struggling for gender equality, etc. Supported, controlled and/or hindered by the state, associations maintained their organizational networks in the post-imperial space, expanding during the period of constitutional parliamentarism and surviving through periods of autocracy and royal dictatorship, war and foreign occupation. Even the establishment of a socialist state, legitimized by the dictatorship of the proletariat, did not erase completely this eminently “bourgeois” institution, which has continued – at least to some extent – to coexist with state organizations. During and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, voluntary associations – often known at this stage of the story as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – continued to play a major role in the transformation of civil societies of the successor states. In this second workshop, we would like to focus on one specific topic: the changing relationship between VAs/NGOs, the state and the family. According to traditional sociological views, civil society – and thus associations, as its most frequently evoked incarnation – are conceived as being opposed to both the state and the family, a sort of free space for collective agency escaping from the strictures of both kinship structures and of the state. More recently, scholars of civil society have convincingly shown the problems with drawing a clear-cut border between the state and VAs/NGOs, and tend to see this border as porous, shifting, and subject to negotiation. We thus ask: what kinds of relationships have VAs/NGOs in our region have with empires, states, and super-national actors (e.g. European Union)? How did this relationship – shifting among collaboration, collusion, and conflict – change over time? Is it somehow legitimate to speak, at least to some extent, about a “socialist civil society” or “fragments of civil society under Yugoslav socialism”? In what ways have states attempted to hinder, support, and/or coopt the activities of VAs/NGOs? In what ways have associations used the state to reinforce their legitimacy and to collect resources? Older scholarship on civil society placed VAs/NGOs in opposition to the family as well, a delineation that can likewise been called into question. How did kinship ties affect the membership and agendas of the associations? How did family networks affect access to associational decision making and the gendered division of associational labor? With a view that will range from the imperial age to post-socialism, going through the interwar and socialist periods, this workshop aims to develop a cross-disciplinary conversation on the historical trajectory of the voluntary association in this part of Europe. Of particular interest to this workshop is the way in which voluntary associations also become implicated in relationships to states and empires, clientelistic practices, kinship ties, and the consolidation and politicization of collective identities. The workshop aims to privilege an actor-centered perspective, focusing on the trajectory of individual organizations across space and time.
Social History of Medicine, 2008
In recent years there has been a general upsurge in interest in the history of Central and Eastern European medicine. Monographs and edited volumes published in and on these countries now appear regularly, highlighting the scholarly importance of these largely unexplored medical traditions in Europe. Compared to its precursor, a scholarship vitiated both by its ideological manipulation and its abduction by medical practitioners, current medical history in Central and Eastern Europe not only brings together significant themes and developments in medicine as part of social history, but also forcefully engages with some of the most central topics pertaining to the national traditions of those countries. While debates about this field's significance to the general historiographic traditions of these regions are yet to happen, it is clear that the social history of medicine in Central and Eastern Europe is enjoying its most creative period to date. This review examines three complementary and interconnected aspects of the current directions of research in the social history of medicine in Central and Eastern Europe: collaborative research, critical editions of original sources and, finally, monographs.
May 16-17, 2014 Organised by Institute for Advanced Study & Department of Gender Studies - Central European University Budapest 1051 Nador u. 9, Monument Building, Gellner Room This two-day workshop aims to reflect on voluntary associations in the Yugoslav space from the XIX century to the present. More precisely, the goal is to put together scholars working in various disciplinary traditions having in common two features: an interest for the Yugoslav space, before, during and after the existence of a Yugoslav state; familiarity with the specific institution of the voluntary association. Notwithstanding their temporal and spatial ubiquity, associations seem to have a number of unifying elements that make them identifiable: voluntary and selective membership, limited goals fixed in statutes, self-government with written rules, elected officers, decision making in regular meetings, submission to the law of the state and autonomy from the control of some higher political body. Identified with a plethora of different names – Verein in German, cemiyet in Ottoman Turkish, udruženje, udruga, or društvo in the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian language, združenje in the Slovenian language, etc. – associations emerged in during the era of Empires, when this part of Europe was integrated in the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. Already in this early period, the associations entered and structured the public space with a number of missions: enforcing education, taking care of the poor, disseminating sport, leisure and festive cultures, modern agriculture, enforcing religious or national values, obtaining gender equality, etc. Supported, controlled or hindered by the state, associations maintained their organizational networks in the post-imperial space, expanding during the period of constitutional parliamentarism and surviving through periods of autocracy and royal dictatorship, war and foreign occupation. Even the establishment of a socialist state, legitimized by the dictatorship of the proletariat, did not erase this eminently bourgeois institution, which has continued to coexist with state organizations. During and after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, voluntary associations – often known at this stage of the story as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – continue to play a major role in the transformation of civil societies of the successor states. Participants are asked to prepare ten minutes of reflections on how they see the development of voluntary associations from their particular disciplinary perspective and research focus. With particular emphasis on the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires, First Yugoslavia, NDH, Socialist Yugoslavia, and the post-Yugoslav states, this workshop aims to develop a cross-disciplinary conversation on the historical trajectory of the voluntary association in this part of Europe. Of particular interest to this workshop is the way in which voluntary associations also become implicated in relationships to states and empires, clientelistic practices, kinship ties, and the consolidation and politicization of collective identities. Thus, while we anticipate that participants will focus their comments on previous research, we also offer the following areas as suggestions for themes around which to build the conversation: → Local level “domestication:” How were associational forms and practices adapted to particular local situations, social norms, and physical space? Here we have in mind the ways in which associations operated in societies largely segregated along confessional and gender lines, or how contemporary NGOs have adapted models and discourses provided by donors and foreign institutions to fit local needs. → Associations in/and war: How did armed conflict affect the agendas, discourses, and possibilities of voluntary associations and how did these organizations contribute to particular wars in material or discursive ways? → Associations organized around identities and interests: What categories of identity and collective interests were mobilized through associations at different historical junctures (and not others)? How did associations contribute to the process of testing and contesting particular constructions of gendered, classed, national, and religious collectivities? How did associations participate in the visibility of such forms of collective expression in public arenas? → Associations and the state: Scholars of civil society have convincingly shown the problems with drawing a distinct border between the state and voluntary associations as the most frequently evoked materialization of civil society. What kinds of relationships have voluntary associations in our region had with states, empires, and state-like actors? In what ways have states attempted to hinder, support, and/or coopt the activities of voluntary associations? → Associations and family ties: Older definitions of civil society placed it not only in opposition to the state but also to the family, a delineation that can likewise been called into question. How did family and kinship ties affect membership, positions of power, agendas, and access to decision makers within associations, political structures, and economic actors? How were metaphors of family and familiarity mobilized in association discourses and practices?
Historický časopis
The article is directed towards describing and analysing three thematic parts. The first is directed towards the social conditions in the modern European societies of around 1900, which stimulated the development of public care for the young. These conditions are classified as follows: the end of the first demographic transition, an economy of human resources motivated by utilitarian thinking, nationalist populationism and militarism. In the specific conditions of building Czechoslovakia, state propaganda emphasizing building the image of a democratic, tolerant and progressive republic must be added to these facts. The second part is devoted to the problematic fusion of the different traditions of care for the young in the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the Habsburg Monarchy. Analysis of the problems of unification focuses on three thematic parts: 1) differences in the legislation of the two parts of the state, 2) the institutional structure and its development, 3) traditions of civil charity. In spite of the transfer of the Czech organizational structure of District Youth Care and its centralized building based on ethnic principles into Slovakia and Sub-Carpathian Ruthenia, strong elements of continuity with the prewar system remained. The third part deals with nationalism and ethnic factors in social care for the young. Precisely here, there was strong continuity with the 19th century, when national rivalry between the Czechs and Germans influenced the development of the institutions of social care. Special attention is devoted to the Roma and the application of the vague concept of the "Gypsy way of life" to care for the young.
The right to care: Entering outside in the southern European crisis of welfare
2019
In these notes, we share the questions and challenges around care and health that emerged in the research project Entrar Afuera (Entering Outside, 2016-2018), a multi-site and multi-format dialogue around critical practices of healing and caring in three sites in southern Europe, Trieste (Italy), Madrid (Spain) and Thessaloniki (Greece). As we will see, we focus this text in Trieste and the dialogue with Madrid. Driving us in this project was our common aspiration to reflect about the urban practices of care during and after the crisis that began in September of 2008. However, there was also a common ethic of emancipation in the institutional critique – the examination of how institutions were caring for people in that critical moment and toward a horizon of change – the imagination of how people could use and fashion institutions in order to care for each other.
The Politics of Care in a State of Crisis: The Romanian Case
2013
The present paper aims to investigate the Romanian public discourse and policy-making regarding care during the post-communist transition and its possible implications in the context of the present financial crisis and Romanian political realities. The paper is divided into three main sections, corresponding to the three main dimensions of analysis: one detailing the theoretical framework used in the present approach, one presenting a brief overview of the politics of care during the Romanian transition and one addressing the new issues put forward by the present context. Drawing from the insights of feminist scholarship on the ethics of care, the analysis of Romanian policies and discourse will be broken down along three distinct but interdependent research variables: the status of care-taking activities and the situation of care-takers and care-receivers themselves, especially related to their risk of social exclusion. A list of priorities will be put forward, both for future rese...