Von: Leutloff-Grandits, Carolin (carolin.leutloff@uni-graz.at)

International Association for Southeast European Anthropology (InASEA)

7th InASEA Congress in Istanbul, Sept. 18–21, 2014
Cultures of Crisis: Experiencing and Coping
With Upheavals and Disasters in Southeast Europe

Call for Papers

Both the history of the last two centuries and the present of Southeast Europe are marked by deep
transformations and upheavals. The emergence and disappearance of states, ethnic conflicts and
wars, the fundamental changes of political systems and social order, deep economic crises as well
as natural disasters are only the more visible ones of these upheavals. Many of these events were
experienced as deep crises that forced people to adapt to often radically new situations. Experien-
cing and coping with uncertainties and crises can thus be considered one of the important features
of the processes of modernization on the Balkan Peninsula.

For entire societies, social groups and individuals all these upheavals and crises meant the
experience of fundamental discontinuities, of historical and social ruptures that divided time into
periods ‘before’ and periods ‘after’, experiences that structured peoples’ lives and historical
memories. In many cases the ongoing crisis became a way of life. People react to such upheavals
and crises in various ways, with subjugation or adaptation, most often, though, with employing
cultural techniques and everyday strategies, with using traditions of submission, appropriation or
refusal. In trying to interpret such upheavals people may take recourse to religion, to conspiracy
theories or utopian ideas as well as to nostalgia, fatalism or dread of the future.

The primary goal of the conference will not be to elucidate the natural, political, military or
socio-economic causes of societal, social or individual crises. The papers should rather focus, from
an ethnological or anthropological perspective, on the reactions of societies, of social groups (such
as families) or of individuals to such crises, on their impact on the everyday life of people, on their
various strategies of managing and coping with them, on the processes of adaptation and inter-
pretation, and on peoples’ concepts and attitudes, shortly: on the cultures of crisis in Southeast
Europe.

We seek papers based on empirical ethnographic, folkloric, or anthropological research that
analyse the experience, perception, and interpretation of crises in Southeast Europe at various
points in history or the present. The papers should – in some way or other – relate to the following
dimensions of crisis and crisis management:
Social context: societal level (supra-national, national); public social level (regional, local, city,
village); level of small social groups (family and kin, neighbourhood, etc.); sphere of work and
business (farms, workplaces, companies); level of the individual (personal, emotional, life crisis).
Causes of crises: nature (natural disasters such as earthquake, flood and draught, fire, bad
weather, climate change, etc.); human fallibility, criminal acts; war, armed conflict; political
changes, social conflicts (uprising, revolt, revolution, etc.); system transition, transformation;
legislation, legal conflicts, legality vs. legitimacy; economic or financial causes (unemployment,
poverty, famine, etc.); migration, expulsion, etc.
Coping with crises: experiencing and living through a crisis; crisis and social order; socio-
cultural expressions of crisis; everyday life and crisis: strategies of coping: patterns, habits,
’culture of coping’; (popular) concepts, ideas, mentalities, awareness; reactions towards crises:
explanations, attitudes, interpretations (conspiracy theories); remembering crises; narrating or
singing about catastrophes, disasters, crises.Please submit a proposal that contains your full name, institutional and disciplinary affiliation with
a very brief academic CV, the title of your paper and an abstract of 200-250 words with specific
information about research methods and sources. The organizers give preference to submissions
based on fieldwork and/or the use of ethnographic, folkloric, or closely related archival materials.

The paper proposal must be in English, while the papers presented at the conference can be in
English, French or German.
The deadline for the submission of paper proposals: 15 February 2014

Please send your proposal to:
Prof. Asker KARTARI, Kadir Has University kartari@khas.edu.tr
and/or Prof. Klaus Roth, Munich University k.roth@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Participants will be notified before the end of April 2014 about the acceptance of their paper.
Conference Site, Travel and Accommodation
The congress will be held at Kadir Has University, Cibali Campus, Istanbul.
Depending on availability of funding, the conference organizers will cover at least part of the
travel and accommodation costs for participants from Albania, Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey.
Accommodation for participants who qualify for financial support will be pre-arranged. Other
participants will also be assisted in making hotel reservations. More information about accom-
modation will be published on the conference website (sites.khas.edu.tr/inasea/) in due time.

Registration Fee
InASEA members who have paid their dues for the last two years are exempt from registration
fees.
Non-InASEA members will be asked to pay an on-site registration fee equivalent to:
20 € (for participants from the above-mentioned SEE countries) or
40 € (for participants from all other countries).
Publication of Papers
A selection of conference papers will be published (after peer review) in vols. 18 and 19 of
InASEA’s journal Ethnologia Balkanica.