COST Action IS0803 Workgroups 2010
WG1: Borders
Borders, Materiality, Signification
Second Work Group 1 meeting
Berlin (Germany)
8-9 April 2010
Convenors:
Rozita Dimova
rozita@zedat.fu-berlin.de
+49-30-6677-9745
Christian Voss
christian.voss@staff.hu-berlin.de
+ 49-30-2093-5185
Working papers from WG1 (Borders) are now available here.
The Summary Report on this meeting is now available here.
Description:
How do borders become visible? What defines their materiality and how do borders cope with multiple significationsattached to them during and after radical regime changes?
The second meeting of the WG1 will continue to assess conceptual questions related to borders now by focusing on issues of materiality and multiple significations. The organizers will use the specificity of this meeting's location -- the city of Berlin -- to launch the discussion by addressing the cold war legacy and the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, as well as the multiple sediments left by intersecting borders across different temporal and spatial axes in and beyond this city (e.g. East/West). In this vein, we invite proposals that will examine material manifestations of borders in different contexts, production of meanings in areas where borders exist, as well as changes of borders' meanings as they shift or become redefined by particular social factors and processes.
February 2010; Former Berlin Wall, near Bornholmer Strasse, Berlin. Were people first crossed the border in 1989.
Photo:Michaela Schaüble.
Participant: Rozita Dimova
Institute for Eastern European Studies
Free University Berlin
Germany
Email: rozita@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Participant: Antke Engel
Institute for Queer Theory
Germany
Email: engel@queer-institut.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Discussant
Participant: Luigi Vittorio Ferraris
University of the Valle D'Aosta
Italy
Email: luigivf@tin.it
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
The West of East and the North of South.
Multi-dimensional connections and divides in the border regions of Istria and Sout-Tyrol.
The paper addresses the multidimensional meanings of the borders in the frontier regions of Istria (Croatia) and Sud-Tyrol (Italy). It looks at the borders cutting through the regional territories from a local, national and supernational perspective. The aim of the contribution is to investigate the ambivalent set of meanings connected with the borders - both connecting and dividing – while considering (1) the ways borders have been changing as the time passes and (2) the status of ethnicities living in the regions. The cases of Istria/Istra at the North-West periphery of former Yugoslavia (now Croatia and Slovenia) and South-Tyrol/Alto-Adige at the North-West periphery of Italy, represent two fascinating cases. The perception of the border as a “wrong one” by the traditionally dominant ethnic group (Italians in Istria and Germans in South-Tyrol) has been domesticated with a mix of cultural autonomy, political self- determination and economic benefits. Nothwithstanding, ethnic tensions and resentments have not disappeared and sometimes increased; as a result, nowadays, the borders convey original meanings and material features.
Participant: Carola Häntsch
Department for Philosophy
University of Greifswald
Germany
Email: haentsch@uni-greifswald.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
"Das eine war nicht völlig schwarz, das andere ist nicht völlig weiß". The struggle for the power of interpretation (Deutungshoheit) of German history since 1989
In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the reunification of Germany there were large-scaled discussions going on about the interpretation and evaluation of this historical event in Germany. The perspectives differ from total rejection of everything connected with the former dictatorship GDR up to several forms of “Ostalgie”, a transfiguration of the former GDR as social idyll. From the point of view of “West Germans” the “ostalgic transfiguration” is often understood as a luck of enthusiasm for democracy and freedom. In this context it is very often forgotten that only the former GDR citizens have the “real” possibility to compare two systems of society. Because of this their voices should be heard as long as they are still available. The political, cultural and intellectual transformations in the former GDR represent in an exemplary manner the replacement and overlay of Eastern identities by the standards of the European “West”. Especially the complete replacement of the intellectual elite in the former East Germany is a single case in the Baltic region. In my paper I am going to analyze and to examplify the different perspectives on the basis of a concrete discussion, following the question: how could "real borders" become "borders in our heads" ("Mauern in unseren Köpfen")?
Participant: Renata Jambresic-Kirin
Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research
Croatia
Email: renata@ief.hr
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Discussant: the material, symbolic and social markers of the new state border between (south-east) Croatia and (north) Bosnia-Herzegovina established after the dissolution of Yugoslavia, i.e. after the Dayton Agreement in 1995. Although this undisputed border follows the "natural" dividing line along the rivers of the Sava and the Una, a more important factor at this particular border urging people to appropriate and get accustomed to the new border regime in the post-Yugoslav complex political mosaic (marked by postwar ethnic segregation and grouping) is the lingering memory of the historical military frontier between the Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Empire. This historical sediment or "everlasting" borderlines of the area has been misused in elite discourses of "nested Balkanism" which mark the first neighbour as less developed, less cultured, less "European" Other. On the other side, ethnographic approach reveals many practices and everyday tactics of frontier citizens frequently crossing the border in order to cope with economic crisis, unemployment and social inequalities. The most usual way of making a profit from peripheral, border location is a small-scale trade based on unequal tax rates and law regulations on intellectual property protection in Croatia, Republic of Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Participant: Stef Jansen
Social Anthropology
The University of Manchester
United Kingdom
Email: stef.jansen@manchester.ac.uk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Practical geography and sovereignty at a very material immaterial border
This presentation will focus on the materiality of a border that does not have any of the visible built shape of a border between polities (such as a barrier, a fence, a checkpoint, a customs office, uniformed border officers, etc) but nevertheless structures the lives of those living around it in deeply material ways. Yet this is not a case of a 'Mauer im Kopf', where the material functioning of a former border persists through social poetics despite it having undergone substantial dematerialisation. Instead, the so-called Boundary Line between the two entities of Bosnia-Herzegovina is a recently established border that only briefly drew its efficacy from visible, 'built' dimensions – first as a frontline through the anti-building of destruction and abandonment, and then as an armistice line through built checkpoints policed by soldiers under a UN mandate. Now 'unbuilt', it nevertheless continues as the material axis of practical geography and of a struggle for sovereignty. Taking into account these shifts in bordercraft, I propose to explore how the (in)visible and (im)material modalities of this border are differentially embedded in everyday practices of (non-) crossing and in competing projects of state-formation.
Participant: Ivana Jurisic
Political and Social Science
Universitaet Berlin
Germany
Email: ivana.jurisic@fu-berlin.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Borders for immigrants in the German society
In my paper I would like to focus on the exclusion of immigrants in the German society. The Berlin wall did fall down, both Berlin and Germany were reunited, but there is still a border between the majority or host society and the immigrants. There are many limitations for immigrants to become an integral part of the society and this makes them excluded to a high extent from the "mainstream" society. I would focus on the invisible borders, such as legal, economic and cultural issues, that the German state puts up towards the immigrants. The main accent of the German integration politics is put on learning the language, so that the immigrants can communicate better and easier with others. However, is this a sufficient tool for an outsider to become accepted by the majority, does it mean when one speaks the language, he makes an integral part of the host society? I would also ask how open the German society is towards immigrants, and if it will eventually acknowledge the immigrants as the equal members of the society. Freie
Participant: Sanja Kajinic
Gender Studies
Central European University
Hungary
Email: sanreve@yahoo.com
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Photographing the border at the Nicosia 'green line'
Since the division of Cyprus in 1974, but even more since the opening of the checkpoints between the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot sides of the island in 2003, the border between north and south parts of the capital Nicosia is being materialized daily through multiple crossings: political, material, experiential. The 'green line' of Nicosia has had numerous guises, among them as a 'river, a bridge, and a dead-zone', as an 'in-between space' contested as much underground as on the street level (Papadakis 2009). The second part of the EastBordNet photography project concerns the in/visibility of this line, and the methodological and epistemological issues involved in a project of photographing in a 'no-photography' borderland. For the WG1 in Berlin, I would like to present some visual material that I hope to gather this December in Nicosia (as a part of the research team accompanying the official photographer Lena Malm), together with reflections on the process of researching the materiality of borders using visual methodology.
References: Papadakis, Yiannis. Nicosia after 1960: a River, a Bridge, and a Dead Zone. EastBordNet Working Paper, 2009.
Participant: Jeanne Kormina
Sociology
Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg
Russia
Email: kormina@eu.spb.ru
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Resacularization of the post-Soviet Russia: shaking the borders and building the bridges.
The paper discusses the processes of resacularization taking place in the post-soviet Russian society. Crossing (and building) of at least two kinds of imagined borders is involved into this process: first border is between the Soviet and post-soviet and the second border is between sacred and secular. Not unexpectedly, the post-soviet orthodox believers who combine soviet and post-soviet experiences in their minds and bodies regularly smuggle Soviet and secular from the past into their current religious everyday life. The case of appearance of Iosif Stalin in hagiography (and in icon painted in 2008) of recently canonized female saint Matrona which has become an issue for vivid public discussion in
different parts of the Russian society will be in the focus of the paper. In the paper I will discuss the concept of 'smuggling', applying it to the religious domain.
Participant: Eleni Myrivili
Cultural Technology and Communications
Aegean University
Greece
Email: e.myrivili@ct.aegean.gr
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Borders like Ghosts
How does the border manifest itself when it is a liquid border? For Foucault and Bataille, the limit/border assumes its fullness of being, its “density,” its “materiality,” at the moment of its negation, the moment of its transgression. At the Prespa border region, three limits, those of Albania, Greece and Macedonia, cut and partition the waters of a large mountain lake with their formless power. They are invisible and ghostly, only to become spectacularly tangible in violence that ensues their transgression. In the 80’s electrical barbed wires came all the way down to the lake. In the 90s the national guards shot warning shots before aiming directly at the border violators. In November 2009, the Prime ministers of the three countries met in the Prespa region and talked about the transnational environmental park of Prespa, green local economy, and set the year 2014 (a hundred years after the beginning of WWI) as the target year for a new beginning, a new era that will see the Western Balkans part of the EU. What kind of subjects are formed around these borders, around these strange presences of power and violence? How did the people of these borders experience them then and what kind of experiences form their subject positions now?
Participant: Dmitry Mikhailovich Nechiporuk
Department of Sociology
Higher School of Economics
Russia
Email: dnechiporuk@hse.spb.ru
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
The Baltic Sea as a Common space? The State and Environmental Borders within the Baltic Area
Since the mid 1970s the Baltic States took part in the process concerning protection of the Baltic Sea. As early as 1974 they adopted the first common frame agreement on the protection of the Baltic Sea. It was the crucial point for the cooperation in the Baltic area and HELCOM started its activity. On the other hand, the Cold War strictly defined not only the borders in Europe but the limits of cooperation between the Soviet block and Western countries. From this point of view, the interaction was regarded as a declaration to carry out the following measures of the Baltic Sea societal improvements. After the collapse of the USSR the situation in the region dramatically changed. HELCOM reestablished the
membership of the new independent states – the four former Soviet republics (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Russia) and adopted the new Baltic Sea Action Plan. Being concern about the problem of eutrophication HELCOM has marked environmental borders both within and between the Baltic States. In my paper I analyze how they are correlated to political borders and what way the ecological problems of the Baltic Sea has been changed perception of the borders among inhabitants of the Baltic States.
Participant: Elena Nikiforova
International Migration Group
FAFO - Institute for Applied International Studies
Norway
Email: elena.nikiforova@fafo.no
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Rebordering - and recycling? - borderlands' memory: identity quest and tourism development in Narva on the Estonian-Russian border
My contribution will address the cultural politics of memory in the border town of Narva, located on the Estonian side of the Estonian-Russian border and populated mostly by Russian - speakers. I argue that being territorially a border town, Narva also represents a locale where the boundaries between at least three memoryscapes, those of 'Estonia', 'Russia', and 'Europe' and the notions of 'Estonianness', 'Russianness', and 'Europeanness' more generally, are being constantly negotiated, reconfigured and reappropriated. This debate has a strong territorial ancorage as it focuses on manifold Narva monuments and commemorative sites, 'old', recently erected, and planned, and their changing and often contested meanings. Besides identity quest, the Narva memory debate and its territorialized output has an outspoken pragmatic dimension as the reconfiguring and 'upgrading' of Narva commemorative landscape is thought to make the town more attractive for tourists. This paper is based on an extensive fieldwork in Narva and will involve a demonstration of Narva imagery found in 'real' and virtual space.
Participant: Ljupco Risteski
Ethnology and Anthropology
Ss. Cyril and Methodius University
Repubvlic of Macedonia
Email: risteski@ukim.edu.mk
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Macedonian North Border - Politics and Reflections on Everyday Life
After brake down of Yugoslavian state and the proclamation of Macedonian state independence in 1991, in the process of succession state's three borderlines with Bulgaria, Greece and Albania remained as they previously were internationally recognized. The only open issue was the north border with that time Federal Yugoslavia as a result of the fact that it was previously only fictive, inter republic borderline which was not yet recognized, first by the both countries and than by the international community. That process of borderline demarcation lasted for more than 20 years and it was connected with so much politics, first because from the other side of the border lots of changes have already been happened. The rest part of ex Yugoslavian federation, that time called Federal Yugoslavia, changed its own status and name into Serbia and Montenegro. At the same time, more important, crucial changes happened with and in Kosovo which complicated the situation with whom as a legal and internationally recognized subject Macedonia will negotiate borderline. In that sense, I would like to discuss political circumstances of the process of demarcation and its reflections on the everyday life of the people living and working in the space, which previously was one state.
Participant: Michaela Schäuble
Institute for Social Anthropology
Germany
Email: michaela.schaeuble@ethnologie.uni-halle.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Discussant
Participant: Sevasti Trubeta
Department of Sociology
University of the Aegean
Greece
Email: sev.trubeta@gmx.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Reception Centers for Unaccompanied Minor Refugees: "Stopovers" instead “Dead zones”
(Based on my presentation at the COST-workshop held in May 2009 in Manchester). The proposed paper deals with the “Reception Centers for Unaccompanied Minors” and explores in particular the case of the Centre of Agiassos on the Greek island Lesbos. My main argument is that this kind of institutions brings to light the impasse of the current humanitarian regimes and the miscarriage of the established system of recognition for refugees. The biological age becomes the criterion for granting them the protection for minors laid down by international conventions. Simultaneously, however, these under-aged border-crossers linger in a situation of no-status; they are “tolerated” until they reach adulthood. During this period they are not allowed to participate in the local society due to their lack of documents. On this basis, the paper will present the case of the Reception Center for Unaccompanied Minors in Agiassos (Lesbos), in a symbolic geographic location that is earmarked with multiple boundaries and insecure situations. On the basis of this case study, the paper will discuss existing possibilities and applied practices by local agents to turn this place from a “dead zone” into a stopover on route to a possible affiliation of the minor refugees into local society. My goal is to elaborate/finalise an article on the basis of this paper and my previous presentation (May 2009).
Participant: Christian Voss
Institute for Slavic Studies
Philosophische Fakultät II, Humboldt-Universität Berlin
Germany
Email: christian.voss@staff.hu-berlin.de
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
Convenor of WG1 2010
Participant: Hani Zubida
Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
Israel
Email: hzubida@idc.ac.il
Proposal for the meeting or other role at the meeting:
In or Out?
Social Borders and Israeli Migrant Workers.
The mutually exclusive nature of 'Israeliness' was, and remains, the contextual setting for many academic research efforts. For decades, the social and national understanding of Israeli held, mainly because it served the Jewish-Arab divide. Recently, the status quo has been challenged, mainly due to the influx of migrant workers into Israel. Their arrival poses a new reality: they are not Jews and most of them are not Arabs or Muslims either. Although some have found in Israel a home, they largely live at the periphery of Israeli society. Nonetheless, some migrant children identify as Israelis. The Israeli nation-state poses a unique and intriguing setting: while its doors are open widely to Jews; the exclusive nature of 'Jewishness' makes it almost impossible for others to penetrate. We propose to explore how migrant workers’ presence is redefining the borders of Israeli society. We will examine how these immigrants perceive their own and their parents’ or children’s identities, prospects for incorporation and permanence as well as inter-generational construction and shift of identities, perception of social borders and entry points and intersection between Israeliness and Jewishness. We will build our empirical analysis using intense interviews with these hard to reach migrants.