[URBANTH-L] CFP: The Global Character of Minority Questions in the New Europe (EASA, Bristol)

[Angela Jancius]

From: Z.O. Biner <zob20 at cam.ac.uk>

Dear Colleagues,

Below please find a call for papers for a workshop on " The global
character of minority questions in the new Europe" at the 9th EASA Biennial
Conference - Europe and the World: Bristol, UK - September 2006 (Monday
September 18th - Thursday September 21st, 2006) For further information on
the conference please refer to the following website:
http://www.nomadit.co.uk/easa/easa06/index.htm

Convenors:
Özlem Biner (University of Cambridge),  zob20 at cam.ac.uk
Antigoni Papanikolaou (University of Sussex), A.Papanikolaou at sussex.ac.uk


The Workshop content

Public discourse on minority questions, articulated by minority
organisations, NGOs, journalists and concerned citizens, tends to be framed
in terms of the state-minority relation. Similarly, state-centric
approaches of political philosophy have set the terms of public and
scholarly debate, posing minority questions under rubrics of nation,
multiculturalism and constitutionalism. Yet the worldwide efflorescence of
grass-roots struggles as well as efforts at international level to define,
and articulate global standards pertaining to, collectivities located with,
or across, state borders, such as indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities,
demonstrate that minority questions are 'global': produced within a nexus
of relations and processes that span the local to the supranational and
that anthropologists are only beginning to conceptualise and map.

This panel will consider the nexus between minorities, states and
supranational networks and institutions (including diasporas, international
and regional institutions, NGOs) in relation to minority identities and
claims. We propose to focus on these phenomena in the context of the 'new
Europe': an entity transformed through processes of European Union, and
expanded through the accession of former socialist east European polities,
a region at the forefront of formalising minority rights. We invite
contributors to explore the formation of identifications, the naming of
identities, the articulations of claims for rights, recognition and
political power and their trajectories across institutions, as they are
produced by and negotiated within this global nexus. We seek to understand
not only the perspectives and experiences of minority members and activists
but also those of the multiple actors-diasporic compatriots, NGO workers,
bureaucrats, 'internationals', academic 'experts', state agents-operating
at various nodal points on minority questions.


Procedure to submit a paper: Paper proposal and registration for the
conference will be web-based. The relevant procedure is as follows: If a
member would like to offer a paper to any workshop, then they should please
fill out the online proposal form, and select from the drop-down list the
workshop in which they are interested. Upon submission the proposal form is
sent automatically to the respective workshop convenors. Workshop convenors
then have a duty to reply as expeditiously as they can to any applicants,
but in any case within two weeks. Papers should last for 20-25 minutes, and
discussion for 5-10 minutes follow.

Deadlines: 1 st May: Last day for paper proposers to submit their
abstracts. 15 th May: Last day for workshop convenors to email the
conference organisers as to which papers are accepted.

We would be grateful if you could please forward the call to other
colleagues and lists. Many apologies for cross-posting.

Many thanks and kind regards,
Ozlem Biner
Antigoni Papanikolaou