News
Technosciences of Post/Socialism
Budapest, Hungary – 3-5 September 2015
Call For Papers
Despite the widespread popularity of Science and Technology Studies (STS), the field has remained remarkably silent about the plethora of experiences offered by the former socialist bloc connected to technoscience. While the grand experiment of constructing 'socialism' heavily relied on the ambitious promises of technoscience, this aspect is absent from the discussions of postsocialism and ‘transition’.
On the other hand, various approaches in the social sciences (e.g. political economic, post-colonialist) focusing on Eastern Europe have often treated knowledge production and technology in relatively underconceptualised and often quite instrumental terms. Connecting these approaches to STS with the aim to contribute to our understandings of technoscience, materialities and knowledge production under post/socialism remains an important theoretical challenge. In addition, empirical studies from the Eastern European region may extend the conceptual framework of STS towards alternative conceptualisations of the ‘macro’, the ‘global’, the ‘political’ or the ‘economy’.
Romanian Journal of European Affairs
A Romanian publication to focus on the European Union debate
The European Institute of Romania would like to invite contributors interested in European affairs to submit articles for evaluation and publication in the Romanian Journal of European Affairs, a journal indexed in various international databases (ProQuest, EBSCO, SCOPUS, Index Copernicus, DOAJ, HeinOnline, Cabell’s Directory etc.).

Romanian Journal of European Affairs (RJEA) is a quarterly publication that covers a wide range oftopics, from top issues in EU (economic and monetary affairs, energy, migration, security, neighbourhood policy etc.) to the impact of the European integration process on the member states, as well as the EU’s relations with other global actors.
Sad new from the Polanyi Institute of Political Economy:
In memoriam Abraham Rotstein, 1929-2015
Karl Polanyi Institute Asia (KPIA)
Almost in the same time with the annual conference of Karl Polanyi Research Center for Global Social Studies in Budapest, on 24th of April was the opening ceremony of the Karl Polanyi Institute for Asia in Seoul, where Kari Polanyi-Levit unveiled the Institute with Mr. Park Won-Soon, the mayor of the city of Seoul (photo).
Letter from Kari Polanyi-Levit
to the Karl Polanyi Center for Global Social Studies.

‘Nothing is imposed in this policy!’
The construction and constriction of the European Neighbourhood
Ondřej Horký-Hlucháň
(Institute of International Relations, Prague horky@iir.cz)
Petr Kratochvíl
(Institute of International Relations, Prague kratochvil@iir.cz)
Abstract
The article argues that the postcolonial, postdevelopment, Balkanist and East-West slope theories, which reflect the asymmetric relations between ‘Europe’ and its former colonies or other regions on the ‘periphery’ of the continent, can give a more accurate insight into the mechanism of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) than mainstream approaches. The article formulates a new conceptualisation of the European Neighbourhood and claims that the EU constructs its neighbourhood as an ambiguous and transitional other on the way to becoming EU-like, while masking the asymmetric and dominant structure of the ENP discourse under the liberal-democratic and equality-centred content. Critical discourse analysis of official documents and speeches confirms the ambiguity, transitiveness and concealed dominance of the policy and questions the not-so-benign normative character of the European Union. Moreover, it suggests that neighbourhood of Europe is not a fixed place, but it is a continuously re-created entity, whose existence helps the core Europe to control the regions in its proximity and make them comply with its normative as well as geographic expansion. Despite the differences of the EU’s policies towards its Eastern and Southern neighbours and their strategies of resistance, ENP’s characteristics are strikingly similar to those of the colonial and neocolonial policies half a century after the decolonization peak.
The Return of Karl Polanyi
Margaret Somers and Fred Block
An article in Dissent Magazine
In the first half century of Dissent’s history, Karl Polanyi almost never made an appearance in the magazine’s pages. On one level this is surprising, because Polanyi was a presence in socialist circles in New York City from 1947 through the mid-1950s, the period of Dissent’s gestation. On another level it is unsurprising, in that Polanyi was a heterodox thinker—even among fellow socialists. With some significant exceptions, it has taken decades to recognize the extraordinary theoretical contributions to socialist thought that he made in his masterpiece, The Great Transformation: The Social and Political Origins of Our Time, first published in 1944..

Unskilled Mass Migrants or Agents in the Own Lives? Global Labor Migrations, 1815-1914
By Dirk Hoerder
Monday, March 2, 2015 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm
At CEU (Nador u. 9, Monument Building), Gellner Room
More details available here

El Caracazo
Presentation of the movie "El Caracazo", original with Hungarian subtitles
27.02.2015
18:00 at the Embassy of Venezuela
(H-1063 Budapest VI, Szegfü utca 6)
Program and details available here

The European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD)
invites applications for school year 2015-2016.

The Institute of Sociology at Corvinus University of Budapest offers new graduate courses
(Course description available only in Hungarian)
- Számítógépes társadalom- és hálózatkutatás
- Corvinus – Babes Bolyai kettős diploma

Care chain: care regimes, migration and gender equality in an enlarged Europe
26 January 2015, Central European University (CEU), Gellner Room
Session 1: Care regimes in Europe, institutional arrangements of care
Session 2: Care workers and migration
Session 3: Gender equality and care
Detailed program available here

Postgraduate summer course “Performing Romani Identities” at Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary, June 29-July 10, 2015

Global History Student Conference
24-25 April 2015 - Free University Berlin
Call for papers available here
(deadline 1 March 2014)
More information on the webpage of Global History Student Conference


After Ljubjana in 2013, Zagreb in March, Sofia in May and Leipzig in September 2014, we invite you to regional Degrowth workshop onDegrowth in postsocialist countries on the 24-25 January 2015. To register: info@nemnovekedes.net