28-29 October 2024
Institute of philosophy and social theory, University of Belgrade, Serbia
Honorary Guest Speaker: Ivan Krastev, Centre for the Liberal Strategies and Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna
The acceleration of modern history resulted in a more segmented periodization. As observed by R. Koselleck, our temporal divisions zoom in ever closer: from ages to centuries to decades. In the twentieth century, historians coined specific designations for its decades. For various reasons, however, the 1980s were not distinguished as a special period and did not find their place on the sociocultural timeline, neither in Soviet history nor globally. Nonetheless, the 1980s were marked by a series of significant events and processes that can be interpreted in the most contradictory ways. They mark, on the one hand, the end of an entire era of socialist projects worldwide and, on the other hand, they are the beginning of a new historical trajectory.
In the early 1980s, tensions in the global geopolitical confrontation between the two systems intensified (nuclear arms race, “Star Wars”). Social movements were gaining momentum, from anti-war and environmental agendas to human rights activism in both the Eastern Bloc and Western countries. Significant reforms were launched in both capitalist (neoliberalism) and socialist (perestroika) economies. This period also saw the substantial spread of Western mass culture due to new opportunities provided by television and personal tape recorders. Thus, external factors and internal processes produced fundamental changes in socialist countries, affecting their political, economic, and cultural practices.
We invite historians, culturologists, social scientists, philosophers, and other specialists to discuss these changes, their causes, forms, and their impact on subsequent historical events.
Thematic foci of the conference:
- Historiography of Late Socialism
- National similarities and differences in the dynamics of Late Socialism
- Late Socialism in the context of global processes
- Late Socialism and Late Capitalism: conflict, competition, convergence?
- Late Socialism in contemporary reflections: projects of the future and reevaluation of the past
- Cultural processes and cultural conflicts: systems, countries, generations
- Trends in education: new ideas and new practices
- The images of Socialist subject in contemporary culture
Deadline for the applications is 30 September 2024
Please send your short bio and 500 words abstract to:
vukan.markovic@ifdt.bg.ac.rs
Deadline for the applications is 30 September 2024
Please send your short bio and 500 words abstract to:
vukan.markovic@ifdt.bg.ac.rs