Volunteering and Civic Engagement in Co-Transformation. Perspectives from Eastern and Western Europe, 1970-2000

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Volunteering and Civic Engagement in Co-Transformation. Perspectives from Eastern and Western Europe, 1970-2000

Veranstalter
Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at the TU Dresden Project Volunteering in Local Communities between Late Socialism and Liberal Capitalism: The History of Volunteer Fire Departments in Germany and East Central Europe, 1980-2000: Prof. Dr. Thomas Lindenberger (HAIT, Dresden), Dr. Ana Kladnik (HAIT, Dresden), Steffi Unger M.A. (HAIT, Dresden), Prof. Dr. Philipp Ther (University of Vienna) and Mojmír Stránský, M.A. (University of Vienna) in cooperation with Dr. Nicole Kramer (Goethe University Frankfurt) and PD Dr. Christine Krüger (Justus Liebig University Gießen)
Veranstaltungsort
IFW, Leibniz-Institut für Festkörper- und Werkstoffforschung Dresden Helmholtzstraße 20, room: B3 E. 26
Ort
Dresden
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
09.01.2020 - 10.01.2020
Website
Von
Ana Kladnik

Historical research on participation, civic associations and their volunteer activities has recently developed into a lively discussed field of investigation. Until now, the research on voluntary action has been more or less divided in two different strands of investigation. On the one hand, in the context of communist regimes after 1945, it is conventionally considered that volunteerism as such ceased to exist and that the activities of traditional charities and associations were fully replaced by state- and party-controlled mass organisations. After the downfall of communism, studies of transformation research usually come forward with the diagnosis of consistently lower levels of volunteering when compared with Western societies. However, some scholars have shown that communist authorities did not abolish organised volunteerism altogether, but, on the contrary, used it as one among other institutional bases on which to construct a socialist society and to bind less committed sections of the population to the system. With regard to Western democracies, on the other hand, scholarly interest in volunteering has resurged considerably in view of its 'structural transformation' observed since the late 1980s: new types of organisations (NGOs, self-help groups), new forms of activism and, more recently, the virtualisation of participation through electronic networking, have generated a new type of engaged citizen (or ‘volunteer’), allegedly motivated by individualist needs of self-realisation and post-materialist values rather than merely by traditional values of solidarity and the longing for community. Initially perceived as a general crisis of civic engagement and associational life by political and economic elites alike, this observation triggered a broad interest by governments in reassessing the role and transformation of volunteering under the conditions of deregulated markets, globalised economies and shrinking welfare budgets. This conference aims at bringing together scholars working on voluntary action history in different regimes and at shedding light on the transformative phase of voluntary action in a comparative and transnational perspective.

Programm

THURSDAY, 9 JANUARY 2020
8:30 – 8:45 Welcome and Opening
Thomas Lindenberger (Dresden), Philipp Ther (Vienna) and Ana Kladnik (Dresden)

8:45 – 10:30 Panel 1: Transformations in Volunteering and Civil Society
Chair: Philipp Ther (Vienna)
1. Thomas Land (Berlin), The Origins of the Civil Society. The ‘Discovery’ of Collective Self-Organization as Means for the Solution of the Crisis in the 1970s and 1980s in West-Germany
2. Karel Müller (Prague), Czech Civil Society 30 Years Down the Road
3. Norbert Götz (Stockholm), The Voluntary Sector in Sweden from Corporatism to Corporationism?
Comments: Sven Reichardt (Konstanz)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 – 12:45 Panel 2: Volunteers and Volunteering between East and West
Chair: Nicole Kramer (Frankfurt)
1. Christie Miedema (Amsterdam), The Amnesty Activist: Western-Grown Rules Versus Eastern European Realities
2. Helena Ratté (Oxford), Women’s Organizations Impact on Civic Culture in Former Yugoslavia from Wartime to the Era of EU Conditionality
3. Steffi Unger (Dresden), In All Beginnings Dwells a Magic Force: First Encounters and the Care of Voluntary Fire Fighting Twinnings between East and West Germany during the Time of Transition
Comments: Agnes Arndt (Berlin)

12:45 – 14:15 Lunch

14:15 – 15:45 Panel 3: Voluntary Action on the Local Level
Chair: Mojmír Stránský (Vienna)
1. Kathrin Meißner (Erkner), ‘Staged’ Civic Engagement: The Interrelations between Civic Engagement and Public Communication in Urban Planning during the 1980s in East and West Berlin
2. Ana Kladnik (Dresden), Volunteering in Local Communities between Socialist Self-Management and Post-Socialist Transformation in Slovenia
Comments: Christine Krüger (Gießen)

15:45 – 16:15 Coffee break

16:15 – 17:45 Panel 4: Green Volunteering in Socialist States: The Case of Environmentalism
Chair: Ana Kladnik (Dresden)
1. Tatiana Perga (Kiev), Voluntary Environmental Movement in the Ukrainian SSR: Strength and Weakness
2. Tatjana Šarić (Zagreb), Volunteering or Socially Useful Work: an Example of Actions to Protect the Human Environment in the Socialist Croatia in the 1970s and 1980s
Comments: Melanie Arndt (Regensburg)

17:45 – 18:15 Coffee break

18:15 – 19:30 Keynote
Pavol Frič (Prague), Civil Engagement in the Season of Populism: Volunteering in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
Chair: Thomas Lindenberger (Dresden)

20:00 Dinner

FRIDAY, 10 JANUARY 2020
9:00 – 10:45 Panel 5: Autonomy or Indoctrination? Children and Youth as Volunteers
Chair: Christine Krüger (Gießen)
1. Viktoriya Sukovata (Kharkiv), Children’s Volunteering organizations in Soviet Union:
Heroic Narratives and Practices
2. Mojmír Stránský (Vienna), Involving the Youth: The Volunteer Fire Department and its Education System in the State Socialist CSSR
3. Julia Nietsch (Paris), First-Time Volunteering Experiences in Kosovo in the 1990s: Founding the “Post-Pessimists” Youth Group in a Time of Crisis
Comments: Friederike Kind-Kovács (Dresden)

10:45 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15 – 13:00 Panel 6: Women’s Rights and the Gendered Nature of Voluntary Work
Chair: Steffi Unger (Dresden)
1. Maren Hachmeister (Ratingen), Volunteering in Socialist Red Cross Societies
2. Merita Poni (Tirana), Women Volunteer Associations’ Role in Women Political Representation in Post-Socialist Albania
3. Caitriona Beaumont (London), Female Networks, Voluntary Action and Identity in Late Twentieth Century England: The Mothers’ Union and Female Activism 1960 to 1980
Comments: Nicole Kramer (Frankfurt)

13:00 – 13:30 Closing Remarks
Thomas Lindenberger, Philipp Ther, Christine Krüger, Nicole Kramer, Ana Kladnik, Steffi Unger and Mojmír Stránský

Kontakt

Ana Kladnik

HAIT, Helmholtzstraße 6, D-01069 Dresden

ana.kladnik@mailbox.tu-dresden.de