Challenges of Modernity. Spatial Integration and Communication in 20th Century Central and Eastern Europe

The Annual Conference 2012 of the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena CHALLENGES OF MODERNITY: Spatial Integration and Communication in 20th Century Central and Eastern Europe takes place in Prague on June 15th/ 16th, 2012 in cooperation with the Charles University Prague.

The aim of the conference is to analyze the relationship between modernization, communication and integration. We want to discuss different aspects of these phenomena in four chronologically structured sections (before 1914, 1918–1939, 1945–1989 and after 1989). The subject of our analysis is Central and Eastern Europe including the western part of Russia.

The conference will focus on important changes and key developments in everyday life of four generations. These changes will be discussed in both imperial and national contexts and within the rural-urban dichotomy while, at the same time, questioning the validity of these categories.

Different concepts of “modernity” and “modernization”, the time-space compression caused by technological advances, the relationship between urban and rural areas and the specific forms of state-socialist urbanization will be central themes of the conference.
On the concluding panel historians will discuss with other social scientists the post 1989 social and economic integration and disintegration with particular emphasis on their historical roots.
The conference in Prague is the first Annual Conference of the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, held in alternating cities in East Central and Southeastern Europe.

Friday// June 15th// 2012

14:00 //Welcome

14:10 // Panel I: Concepts of Modernity
Chair: Ferenc Laczó (Jena)

14:10// Andrew C. Janos (Berkeley): Social Change and History: A Journey from Pre- to Postmodernity

14:30// Michal Pullmann (Prague): State Socialism as a Specific Modernity? Stabilizing and Self-Destructive Tendencies

14:50 // Joachim v. Puttkamer (Jena): Mastery of Space and the Crises of Modernity in Eastern Europe

15:10// Discussion

16:00// Coffee/tea break

16:30// Panel II: Integration of Empires? Transport and Communication before World War I

Chair: Włodzimierz Borodziej (Warsaw/ Jena)

16:30// Anna Veronika Wendland (Marburg/ Giessen): East Central European Modernity and the Urban Experience

16:50// Ivan Jakubec (Prague): The Building of Railway Network and Network of River Channels in Habsburg Monarchy: Integration or Disintegration

17:10// Iosif Marin Balog (Cluj): Regionalism, Economic Integration and/ or Modernization? The Role of Infrastructure for Transport and Communications in the Case of Transylvania 1850-1914

17:30// Discussion

Saturday// June 16th// 2012

10:00// Panel III: Widening Gaps? Rural and Urban Spaces in the Interwar Period

Chair: Joachim von Puttkamer (Jena)

10:00// Gábor Gyáni (Budapest): Image and Reality of a Splitting Country: The Case of Hungary

10:20// Markus Krzoska (Giessen): Discourses of Modernization in the Second Polish Republic and the Attempts to form a New Regional Development Planning

10:40// Stanislav Holubec (Jena): The Attempted and Failed Discursive Integration of Subcarpathian Rus to Czechoslovakia

11:00// Discussion

12:00// Lunch Break

13:30// Panel IV: Urbanizing the Village – Ruralizing the Cities? Spatial Development under Socialism

Chair: Bogdan Murgescu (Bucharest)

13:30// Błażej Brzostek (Warsaw): The Ruralizing of Bucharest and Warsaw in the First Postwar Decade

13:50// Dagmara Jajeśniak-Quast (Leipzig): Nowa Huta, Eisenhüttenstadt and Kunčice in the First Decade of the State Socialism. Between Proletarianization and Ruralization of the New Cities.

14:10// Sándor Horváth (Budapest): Urban Villagers and Patterns of Migration in Hungarian 'Socialist Cities' (Budapest and Sztálinváros)

14:30// Discussion

15:30// Coffee/tea break

16:00// Panel V: Disintegration and Integration: Eastern Europe after 1989

Chair: Béla Tomka (Szeged/ Jena)

16:00// Martin Myant (Paisley): Has Neo-liberalism triumphed in Eastern Europe?

16:20// Jacek Kochanowicz (Warsaw): A Moving Target or a Lost Illusion? East Central Europe in the Pursuit of the West

16:40// Béla Greskovits (Budapest): Legacies, Perceptions, and the Diversity of Postsocialist Capitalism

17:00// Discussion and Conclusion