Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Europäische Ethnologie

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | Institut für Europäische Ethnologie | Alt_Neuigkeiten | Reframing post- and decolonial knowledge production over the epistemic East / West divide - Critical perspectives from the Global East

Reframing post- and decolonial knowledge production over the epistemic East / West divide - Critical perspectives from the Global East

The event was conceptualized and organized by Magda Buchczyk, Katrin Kremmler, Soph Petzelberger and Ronda Ramm. Labor Migration / Labor Kritische Europäisierungsforschung 22.01.2021, 10:00 - 13:00 on Zoom


Link to the project page

In the current pandemic condition, we witness rapid reconfigurations as well as enduring and deepening inequalities with regard to the interrelations of human bodies, migration and marginalization. A glaring example of this came to the fore in German media discussions of exempting Eastern European workers from Corona travel restrictions in order to ensure cheap seasonal labor in the agricultural sector. Here as elsewhere, it became obvious that divisions between East and West still matter and continue to figure in various ways throughout Europe. 

In this session, we will explore an emerging field of critical inquiry into these East-West divisions through a focus on decolonial perspectives on knowledge production from areas that are differently called post-socialist, post-soviet or the Global East. Bringing together contributions of three scholars and activists whose academic work unfolds from within those areas, we hope to approach the inequalities between the West and the East in our academic settings and beyond. We are interested in how Eastern Europe emerges as an epistemic space entangled in structural inequalities and aim to follow the relational knots of power and knowledge at work in various instantiations of East-West divisions.

For the Zoom link, please write a mail to: ramronda@hu-berlin.de

Speakers:

Dr Alexandra Urdea is currently working in the Behavioural Science Team for the Dept for Work and Pension of the UK government. Alex has completed a PhD in anthropology at Goldsmiths. This research examined how folk objects are mobilized in national ideologies, transmissions of personal and family memory, museological discourses, and artistic acts. Alex's postdoctoral research at the University of Sussex focused on Romanian migration in London which will be the focus of today's short input on the relations between mobilities, labour and ethnic and racial identities 

Victoria Kravtsova, MA in International Relations: "Between the posts, into the void: making sense of feminism and decolonialization in Bishkek and Almaty", Vica has been co-organizing the Feminist Translocalities / Feminist Utopias platform https://feminisms.co/en. She holds a permanent position as project manager at Dekrabisten e.V. in Berlin and is currently working on her PhD application. Her main topics of research and activism are feminism and decolonization in the post-Soviet space.

Eszter Kováts, MA: "Symptomatic blind spots - Inequalities between Eastern and Western Europe in German academia". Eszter Kováts holds a BA in Sociology, an MA in French and German Studies and in Political Science. She is a PhD student in Political Science at ELTE University, Budapest. Until recently she was a guest researcher at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She was working in the Hungarian Office of the German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) from 2009 till the end of 2019. From 2012 till 2019 she was responsible for the Foundation's gender program for East-Central Europe.

If you are interested to read introductory literature  before our session, you might have a look into the following two readings or the Feminist Utopias online platform. 

Kojanić, Ognjen (2020). Theory from the Peripheries: What Can the Anthropology of Postsocialism Offer to European Anthropology?. Anthropological Journal of European Cultures, 29(2), 49-66. Access here: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/ajec/29/2/ajec290204.xml

Tlostanova, Madina (2015): Can the post-Soviet think? On coloniality of knowledge, external imperial and double colonial difference. In: Intersections 1 (2). Access here: https://intersections.tk.mta.hu/index.php/intersections/article/view/38

Feminist Utopias platform: https://feminisms.co/en