[Oberlist] UK* cfp/conf: Socialist and Post-Socialist Mobilities

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---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: [balkans] CfP: RGS-IBG 2010: Socialist and Post-Socialist Mobilities
From:    "Balkan Academic News" <balkans la gmx.net>
Date:    Mon, December 21, 2009 16:56
To:      balkans la yahoogroups.com
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*Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers Annual
Conference, London 2010*

*Call for Papers*

**

*Socialist and Post-Socialist Mobilities*



/Sponsored by the Post-Socialist Geographies Research Group/

//

/Convenors: Kathy Burrell (De Montfort University) and Kathrin
Hörschelmann (University of Durham)///



Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in 'mobilities' (Urry,
2000) -- that is the physical travel of people, the movement of objects,
imaginative travel, virtual travel and communicative travel -- arising
from the assertion that for too long social scientists have focused on
peoples' experiences in static situations (home, work) while neglecting
the fact that movement and travel are just as significant to people's
lives. Whether this constitutes a new 'mobilities paradigm' or not, it
is undeniable that this focus on mobilities has spawned a wave of
fascinating research projects which have placed human mobility at the
heart of geographical, social, corporeal and material experiences, from
the history of the M1 motorway (Merriman, 2004) to the experience of
being a passenger on public transport (Bissell, 2010), to the journeys
of Indian saris (Norris, 2008). While many of these discussions have
invigorated the discipline of transport geography especially, these
debates about 'mobilities' have the potential to provide a very useful
analytical tool for socialist and post-socialist geographies.

The different socialist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
had a fundamental impact on the mobilities of ordinary people. On the
one hand they worked hard to control the international mobility of
people, attempting to censor images and communcations from non-aligned
countries and making it almost impossible to emigrate or travel abroad,
while at the same time keeping much freer lines of mobility and
communication open within the socialist bloc. These different regimes
also shaped, purposefully or inadvertently, people's everyday
mobilities. Running a household in a shortage economy, for example,
necessitated specific routes to and from work to take in certain shops
and positioned people in slow moving queues for hours on end (Merkel,
1998; Veenis, 1999), effectively rendering them immobile. State
sponsored holiday policies ensured that many families travelled
extensively within their countries, but the presence of troops, militias
and the secret police also had negative impacts upon people's ability to
move freely around their neighbourhoods. For some people the state of
the public transport systems dominated their daily routines. In addition
to all these physical mobilities, imaginative mobilities were very
important to daily life in the socialist bloc too, not least the
presence of the 'Imagined West' (Yurchak, 2006), brought to people
through western goods and popular culture. Mobilities theories clearly
offer a distinctly geographical prism through which to reassess the
spatialities of everyday life in the socialist bloc.

The relevance of mobility to the post-socialist experience is equally
fundamental. Most obviously, the collapse of socialism heralded a
liberalisation of international mobilities - an upsurge in migration,
new advertising and international business ventures, and an increasing
globalisation of popular culture being the most obvious examples
(Pilkington et al. 2002; Hörschelmann and Schäfer, 2005 & 2007). 1989,
2004 and 2007 are evidently watershed markers for international
migration in the post-socialist world, reinforced by the growth in
budget airlines linking eastern and western Europe (Burrell, 2008).
However, just as the large-scale markers of mobility seemed to be
relaxing, everyday mobilities have not necessarily followed suit. New
experiences of poverty and unemployment have shrunk the spatial routines
of many (Stenning, 2005; Hörschelmann and van Hoven, 2003), the loss of
subsidised travel and holiday trips impacting heavily on the ability of
ordinary people to move around their countries and locales.

This session seeks to investigate the impact of the different socialist
regimes, and their demise, on the experiences of mobility of ordinary
citizens. It asks to what extent mobilities theories can add to
understandings of these regimes and their collapse, offering a new
spatial vantage point from which to consider the everyday experiences of
socialism and post-socialism.

Papers are invited which explore this theme. Possible topics may
include, but are not limited to:

·         Internal and international migration during and after socialism

·         Internal and international travel, tourism and holidays during
and after socialism

·         Public and private transport during and after socialism

·         Everyday mobilities in a shortage economy

·         Everyday post-socialist mobilities

·         Fear, surveillance and mobility

·         Imaginative mobilities during and after socialism

·         Communicative mobilities during and after socialism

·         Mobility, gender and age

·         Intersecting scales and global mobilities



Please send all enquires and completed abstracts to Kathy Burrell
(kburrell la dmu.ac.uk <mailto:kburrell la dmu.ac.uk>) and Kathrin
Hörschelmann (kathrin.horschelmann la durham.ac.uk
<mailto:kathrin.horschelmann la durham.ac.uk>) by Friday 6^th February
2010. When submitting your abstract please ensure you include the
following information: name; institutional affiliation and contact
email; title of proposed paper; abstract (no more than 250 words) and
any technical requirements.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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