Rurality, Modernity and (De)Coloniality:

Unmaking the Legacies of Empire from Below

Call for Papers

Telciu Summer Conferences 5th edition

26-27 August 2016, Telciu-Bistria, Bistria-Nsud County, Romania

Deadline for submissions: 30 April 2016.

The 5th Annual Telciu Summer Conference focuses on the intertwined topics
of rurality, modernity, and (de)coloniality. The concepts of modernity and
rurality remain theoretically and analytically contested. Nevertheless, our
premise is that that they are mutually constitutive on both the conceptual
and on the concrete socio-economic levels. Rather than opposite ends of a
continuum ranging from tradition (associated with rurality, the periphery,
and the past) to globalization (associated with modernity, the present, and
core power), both the rural and the modern are inherent to and heirs of
imperial, colonial and post imperial/postcolonial matrices of power and of
the particular configurations of national spaces derived from them. On a
conceptual level, therefore, our understandings of these concepts are shaped
by power/knowledge mechanisms that also structure fundamental
hierarchies of class, gender, race/ethnicity, and nation and create artificial
binaries. On the other hand, as variegated and concrete historical
phenomena, both rurality in modernity and rurality as the precursor of
modernity have been configured by global asymmetries of power and uneven
processes of socio-economic development. Against this background, we
encourage submissions that engage with these topics both theoretically and
in terms of specific historical experiences, across disciplines and on any
scale, from the local to the global. Seeking balance between specific case
studies and comparative/transnational approaches, we invite contributions
engaging with, but not limited to, the following thematic foci:

Reconceptualizing Peasantries, Reassessing Modernities

Rurality and Transnational Flows
Capitalism, Socialism, and Cooperativism in the Rural World
Modernities, Temporalities, and Ruralities
Vernacular Religion and Peasant Culture
Agriculture and Socio-Economic Modernization
Folk-Populisms, Nationalisms, and Imperialisms
The Countryside and Imperial/Post-Imperial Systems of Rule
Projects of Internal Colonialism and Peasant Resistance
Thinking from the Rural Periphery
Reagrarianization and the "End of History"

To apply for the conference, please send a title and an abstract of your paper
(max 300 words) in English to telciuconferences@gmail.com until 30th of
April 2016. We will inform you about our decision by 15th of May 2016.
Accommodation for the speakers will be offered by the organizing
committee. Unfortunately we cannot cover the costs for transport.
Organizing Committee:
Valer Simion Cosma, University of Pcs, Pcs (Hungary)
Manuela Boatc, Albert-Ludwigs-Universitt, Freiburg (Germany)
Ion Matei Costinescu, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, (Romania)
Source: https://telciusummerconferences.wordpress.com/.