Keynote: When the old is dying and the new cannot be born. Multiple crisis and transformation in Central and Southeastern Europe

    Current talk of ‘crisis’ suggests that we are living through an era, in which crisis has become permanent and exceptional politics the new norm (Agamben 2005). In that setting, prospects for individual and social development seem to narrow down to becoming more ‘resilient’ through adaptation. This keynote argues that this reading of permanent crisis and exceptionalism, while plausibly structuring our current perceptions, is not particularly helpful to grasp what is going on in Central, Southern and Southeastern Europe. I suggest that we need more specified notions of crisis and transformation. I will lay out some conceptual stepping stones for the conference’s further elaborations, sketching a genealogy of crisis thought and distinguishing between transformation as directed system change (Kollmorgen 2010) and ‘Great transformations’ in Polanyi’s sense (Polanyi 1944). Drawing on selected crisis periods in Spain and Poland for illustration, I will show how a Polanyian reading, combined with Gramsci’s idea of organic crisis, can illuminate the current conundrum between crisis, transformation and populism.

    Windrad-Gondel im Hof des Neue Energien Forum Feldheim

    Seminarserie: Wie geht nachhaltige Transformation?

    Seit einigen Jahren richtet die Europäische Union ihre Investitions- und Kohäsionspolitik verstärkt an Nachhaltigkeitszielen aus. Auch die Bundesregierung und die Brandenburgische Landesregierung forcieren Klimaneutralität. Wie aber gestaltet sich nachhaltige Transformation lokal und welche Relevanz haben diese Nachhaltigkeitspolitiken aus einer bottom-up Perspektive? Das thematisiert die Seminarserie ‚Wie geht klimaneutrale Transformation? Europäische Nachhaltigkeitspolitik und lokale Change-Maker in Brandenburg‘, die Amelie Kutter konzipiert hat und an der Viadrina durchführt.

    Forschungsnetzwerk: Peripheralitäten

    Das aus dem Marie-Curie-Projekt ‚Reconfigurations‘ hervorgegangene Netzwerk ‚Peripheralities‘ verbindet Forschende, die sich mich Peripherien, Peripherisierung und Peripheralität transdisziplinär auseinandersetzen. Sie führen konzeptionelle und analytische Perspektiven auf…

    Projekt: Der Blog Krise & Diskurs

    Der Blog Krise & Diskurs ist eine Plattform für Zeitgenoss*innen und Diskursforschende, die aktuelle Krisendiskurse entwirren wollen. Ziel ist es, aufzudecken, wie wiederkehrender Sprachgebrauch und Diskursformationen dazu beitragen, Hierarchien in der Gesellschaft zu verfestigen oder aber neue Möglichkeiten kollektiven Handels zu erschließen. Forschende, Studierende, und aufmerksame Zeitgenoss*innen nutzen diese Plattform, um frische Einsichten aus laufenden Forschungsprojekten oder Reflektionen zu aktuellen Entwicklungen in kurzer Form und greifbarer Sprache zu veröffentlichen. Einige thematische Ausgaben sind in Vorbereitung, Aufrufe zu neuen Beiträgen folgen in Kürze.

    Kutter, A. (2020) Construction of the Eurozone crisis: re- and depoliticising European economic integration

    The Eurozone crisis is among recent developments that upset the European Union (EU) most profoundly and sparked unprecedented contestation. This article adopts a discursive notion of politicisation and the frame of Discursive Political Studies to investigate whether that moment of contestation re-politicised EU economic governance in substantive terms. It argues that, while emerging counter-narratives of crisis projected alternative scenarios of economic integration and established a practice of constructive EU critique, they were co-opted by the dominant mass-mediated story of a public debt crisis.

    ECPR 2020 General Conference: Advancing field analysis in European integration studies

    Contributions in this panel consider how field analysis can be advanced as a research programme in European integration studies. Panellists include Didier Bigo (Sciences Po Paris), Niilo Kauppi (University of Helsinki), discussant), Amelie Kutter (European University Viadrina, chair), Tomas Martilla (Vienna University of Economics and Business), Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg (University of Potsdam, co-chair).

    Peripheriality: authors‘ workshop

    The past decades have brought an increase in spatially connoted disparities and inequalities both within and between European societies, intertwined with changes within the European Union (EU) and the global constellation. The workshop ‘Peripheriality: constructing socio-spatial hierarchies within and beyond Europe’ invites contributions that focus on the construction of centrality and peripheriality or of central and peripheral Selves in discourses and (material) practices.

    Vortrag: Krise und Politisierung. Das Beispiel der Corona-Pandemie

    Vortrag von Amelie Kutter auf dem JURE-Workshop ‚Policitisations of pandemic recovery‘, 16 June, 2023, University of Helsinki. Unlike during earlier crises, the distributive effects of crisis and crisis management have not been subject of political constestation during the pandemic. What has primarily been contested is the legitimacy of national biopolitics, that is, the way by which public authorities seek to control for the health of a population in a given territory. The paper argues that the emphasis on self-determination vis-à-vis state authorities and the backgrounding of distributive effects of crisis management is related to the way the pandemic was constructed as a crisis in the first place and the specific type of political subjectivity – the responsible and resilient subject – that containment and recovery measures interpellated. This argument is drawn from discursive political studies, and a discourse conception of politicisation more specifically, which highlights the construction of political agency, opponency and voice previously unaccounted for in political competition (Kutter 2020).

    Polity-Construction or How the European Union is (De-)Legitimised: A Discursive Political Sociology Perspective

    The paper, presented at the 28th Council for European Studies conference in Lisbon/ISCE on 29 July, 2022, introduces a ‘discursive political sociology perspective’ that combines the theory of meaning-constitution developed in linguistically informed discourse studies with Bour-dieusian political sociology and the political theory of polity-building. It shifts attention from outcome (legitimacy) to process (legitimation) and from identification with existing EU institutions to discourse practices that only establish the means of communicating and cognizing EU politics in its potential and postnational character.

    Krisen und Krisennarrative in Südwesteuropa. Workshop für Teilnehmende des Regionaltreffens der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

    In den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten haben die Gesellschaften Frankreichs, Italiens, Portugals und Spaniens umfassende Krisen durchlaufen. Die Corona-Pandemie markiert einen Wendepunkt im Krisenmanagement auf nationaler und europäischer Ebene: anstelle von Sparprogrammen legen Regierungen und die Europäische Union Investitionsprogramme auf, die auf soziale Absicherung, Wirtschaftssubventionen und Infrastrukturmodernisierung abzielen. Der Workshop ‚Krisen und Krisennarrative in Südwesteuropa‘ erkundet Gründe für diesen Politikwechsel. Er legt besonderes Augenmerk auf die Rolle von Krisennarrativen bei der Formulierung von Politiken des Krisenmanagements.