Call for Papers: Peasants into Citizens. The political and national activation and social modernization of rural areas in Central Europe

RHN 42/2018 | Call

Organiser: Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences

12-13 September 2018, Villa Lanna. Representative residence of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, Czech Republic

Deadline for submissions: 15 June 2018

 

Call for Papers:
Peasants into Citizens.
The political and national activation and social modernization of rural areas in Central Europe (1861–1914)

 

The aim of the workshop is to analyze in comparative perspective how the modernization processes connected with the principles of the civil society or national ideology developed in the rural areas of Central Europe (basically on the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), and to what extent these processes became established during the period of 1861–1914.

Suggested topics: 1) The structures of communication and organization which enabled the civil (modernizing) and national discourse to become established in rural areas, as well as how this discourse was perceived or modified in the context of these peripheral regions. 2) The overall interaction between the modernizing impulses (primarily imported from elsewhere) and the possibilities and needs of the peripheral rural environment; the response of the rural communities to the modernizing impulses. 3) The ways the national discourse intertwined with the old ethnic/religious/social/regional forms of collective identity in the rural milieu. 4) The forms of the relationships: centre – periphery; state authorities – municipal/regional authorities; town – countryside. The state as a modernizer; the role of the intelligentsia as an agent of social change in rural areas (teachers, officials, lawyers, doctors, priests). 5) The sources of political activation: elections, the press, community life, political agitation, national conflict, anti-Semitism, anticlericalism, defending the interests of classes or estates.

Proposals of 300 words or less with a short CV of the presenter should be submitted in a word document by June 15, 2018 to: repa@brno.avcr.cz. Individual papers should be max. 25 minutes long. Accommodation for the active participants of the workshop will be paid by the organizers and will be provided in the venue of the workshop, Villa Lanna (www.vila-lanna.cz). The language of communication at the workshop will be English or possibly German; we are expecting about fifteen presentations. Funds are available for publishing the papers in book form (also in English or German) in 2019.

 

Contact:
Milan Řepa
Veveri 97, Brno 602 00, Czech Republic
repa@brno.avcr.cz

 

Source: H-Soz-Kult