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People of the Mountain
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Ivan VejvodaKapka Kassabova
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
For millennia, the people of the Mesta Valley have lived in an intimate relationship with their environment. Kapka Kassabova's enquiry is into the nature of this relationship as it survives today, after a succession of mass traumas in the 20th century have made their mark. They include political persecution during Communism, economic upheaval in the wake of the collapse of the planned economy, environmental degradation during and after Communism, migration, endemic state corruption, climate change, and a generational shift from a traditional, agricultural way of life towards a globalised, digitalised, uprooted way of life. His focus is on the Pomak (indigenous Muslim) and mixed villages here. An interesting phenomenon can be observed: permanent emigration is rare. These communities are held together by invisible factors that cannot be accounted for by pure economics.
The villages of the Mesta Valley are remarkable for several things: their exceptionally rich biosphere where some of Europe’s cleanest foods, animals, and medicinal herbs thrive; their rich tradition of cultural syncretism; their existential endurance in the face of trauma, and the fact that they export the greatest amount of cheap seasonal labour to Western Europe – the fruit pickers, planters, and builders on whom the wealthier European economies depend.
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
For millennia, the people of the Mesta Valley have lived in an intimate relationship with their environment. Kapka Kassabova's enquiry is into the nature of this relationship as it survives today, after a succession of mass traumas in the 20th century have made their mark. They include political persecution during Communism, economic upheaval in the wake of the collapse of the planned economy, environmental degradation during and after Communism, migration, endemic state corruption, climate change, and a generational shift from a traditional, agricultural way of life towards a globalised, digitalised, uprooted way of life. His focus is on the Pomak (indigenous Muslim) and mixed villages here. An interesting phenomenon can be observed: permanent emigration is rare. These communities are held together by invisible factors that cannot be accounted for by pure economics.
The villages of the Mesta Valley are remarkable for several things: their exceptionally rich biosphere where some of Europe’s cleanest foods, animals, and medicinal herbs thrive; their rich tradition of cultural syncretism; their existential endurance in the face of trauma, and the fact that they export the greatest amount of cheap seasonal labour to Western Europe – the fruit pickers, planters, and builders on whom the wealthier European economies depend.
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Enver Hoxha: Biography of a Balkan Tyrant
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Nikolai AntoniadisRobert AustinMisha Glenny
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Bringing Beauty into Life: How Soviet Workers Discovered Aesthetics after Stalin
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Clemena AntonovaSerguei OushakineFranz Graf
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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The Coloniality of Migration
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Ayşe ÇağlarPrem Kumar Rajaram
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Grounding a ‘Geopolitical Europe’
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Ayşe ÇağlarLuiza BialasiewiczMisha Glenny
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Europe’s Futures Symposium 2020
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Alida VracicBernd MarinGrigorij MesežnikovIsabelle IoannidesIvan VejvodaLeszek JazdzewskiNiccolo MilaneseNicole KoenigPéter Krekó
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Narrative Making in the European Capital
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Ivan VejvodaJulia De Clerck-Sachsse
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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The Sociological Truth of Fiction
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Jan VanaKapka KassabovaLudger Hagedorn
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Facing Post-Truth in Central-Eastern Europe
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Arvydas GrišinasLudger Hagedorn
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
The main challenge that post-truth poses, as the concept itself suggests, is the alleged end of centrality of the idea of truth in politics. Central and Eastern Europe finds itself in a political culture where claims, ideas and utterances must no longer necessarily be grounded in proven empirical facts, in order to be held true by the broader public. This situation, however, is by no means new or unheard of. In this regard, it resembles Soviet social reality, where officially held narratives also had scant empirical grounding. Furthermore, while it were Central-Eastern European dissidents who problematized these issues and set out to successfully counter them, resulting in the events of 1989, the same dissident heritage is also used nowadays to promote agendas of populist illiberal regimes in the region. The talk explored the prospects and challenges to utilizing the dissident heritage to tackling these contemporary issues.
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
The main challenge that post-truth poses, as the concept itself suggests, is the alleged end of centrality of the idea of truth in politics. Central and Eastern Europe finds itself in a political culture where claims, ideas and utterances must no longer necessarily be grounded in proven empirical facts, in order to be held true by the broader public. This situation, however, is by no means new or unheard of. In this regard, it resembles Soviet social reality, where officially held narratives also had scant empirical grounding. Furthermore, while it were Central-Eastern European dissidents who problematized these issues and set out to successfully counter them, resulting in the events of 1989, the same dissident heritage is also used nowadays to promote agendas of populist illiberal regimes in the region. The talk explored the prospects and challenges to utilizing the dissident heritage to tackling these contemporary issues.
Read more
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Soviet Subalterns on Stage
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Seminars and Colloquia
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Mariia ShynkarenkoMariia Kardash
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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Series: Seminars and Colloquia
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