Knowledge Production Panel : "Measure for Measure": Knowledge, Culture, and the Third Wave Marketization

CULTURE & KNOWLEDGE PANEL: "Measure for Measure": Knowledge, Culture, and the Third Wave Marketization

Keynote Speaker: Professor Jean-Louis Fabiani, Central European University and École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Abstracts:

Europe of Knowledge built with the Ruins of the Socialist Past:
The Emergence of ‘New’ Coercive Mimetic Isomorphism in the Bulgarian Institutions of Higher Education
Dr. Katrin Hadjililova

Formally East European countries (namely, Bulgaria and Romania) are members of EU since January 2007, which is a partial result of the state capacity of these countries not simply to regulate, but also to adopt specific regulations emanating from supra-national agencies such as the EU or WTO (Bruszt and Stark 2003). Then what counts in these countries: these specific regulations or the local social needs? Viewed through the ‘lenses’ of the new institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Scott 2001) these processes of institutional change in Eastern Europe might be characterized as ‘new’ coercive mimetic isomorphism. The political elites of East European countries are constraint to adopt regulatory standards, which represent mimesis of the norms and the politics of the EU; however, this mimesis is ‘forced’ by governmental politics rather than by the local institutions2. And if adopting regulatory standards is the path toward European integration, then what follows from these rules and norms regarding East European realities? In order to answer these questions I will focus on the Bulgarian institutions of higher education. More precisely, this paper represents a neoinstitutional social investigation of the pathways of europeanization of the Bulgarian universities after the Bologna Declaration, signed in 1999. The Bologna Declaration represents a purposeful policy choice, which presupposes a ‘velvet revolution’ of europeanization of the institutions of higher education in Europe, based on the ideology of the new hegemony of Europe of knowledge (Neave 2002). On the 19th of June 1999 twenty nine countries (including Bulgaria) have joined the process and simultaneously engage in more or less intense reforms of the national fields of higher education in accordance with the demands of the European knowledge-based economy. If this institutional change implies to create a ‘European Higher Education Area’ so that the students from Eastern Europe will be compatible on the European labor market to their Western counterparts by making study structures more comparable; to enhance citizens mobility and Europe’s overall development (Bologna Declaration 1999), then there is a stake to investigate the Bulgarian pathway to this institutional process in order to ‘fill’ the existing empirical gap.

The present interdisciplinary research utilizes historical and qualitative methods. Based on case study (Stake 1995) of four Bulgarian universities, the main hypotheses of the present research paper are:
Project hypothesis 1: The introduction of European dimensions in Bulgarian Institutions of Higher Education represents coercive mimetic isomorphism.
Project hypothesis 2: When an institution of higher education adopts European dimensions in higher education it will undertake activities of ‘re-interpretation’ in accordance with its own historical identity and organizational culture.
Project hypothesis 3. In seeking to adopt European dimensions in higher education, an institution of higher education will undergo changes in values, norms and behavior that will set it apart from other institutions of higher education engaged in similar processes.
Project hypothesis 4. The formal leadership in an institution of higher education will play a key role in adopting European dimensions in higher education.

One of the many faces of the process of europeanization (Featherstone and Radaelli 2003) is the implied by the Bologna Declaration (1999) new Europe of Knowledge. My findings suggest that the politically willed europeanization of the Bulgarian institutions of higher education takes expression in the emergence of ‘new’ coercive mimetic isomorphism in the Bulgarian universities. The institutionalization of European Higher Education Area ‘shakes’ and  ‘blurs’ the boundaries of the Bulgarian field of higher education and is anticipating the future hegemony of Europe of knowledge; however, certain actors from the Bulgarian universities constrain the process and are ‘echoing’ the socialist past. The ruins of socialism account for the unfinished democratization of the Bulgarian institutions of higher education; however, perhaps the legacies of the cultural heritage take expression not only in terms of constraints of social action, but also act as enabling social innovation, giving rise to structural diversity.


The role of popular culture in creating common identity: Soap opera, folk music and youth in the countries of the former Yugoslavia
Dr. Biljana Žikić

Popular culture played significant role in strengthening unity and brotherhood of the different nations in the former Yugoslavia. At the eve of the Yugoslav conflict, every Yugoslav Republic started to invest in its own state and (popular) culture. In Serbia the new music style was born – “turbo folk”. As many researchers has already stated this music was “soundtrack” of Milošević’s nationalistic Serbia, promoting violence, crime, sexism, and xenophobia. Nevertheless, what is rare mentioned is that “turbo-folk” music was the first to “break the walls” between people of different ethnic groups after the war. Although it is not supported by the state media and other state institutions, this music is today extremely popular among youth in all post-Yugoslav countries. The other cultural phenomenon which has overcome symbolic and material borders in the region is TV soap opera. While Croatians adore Serbian folk divas, Serbs are crazy about Croatian soap operas. Moreover, some of the actors in Croatian soap operas are from Serbia and perform in Serbian language. How come that sub-cultural forms, characterized as “low” culture and kitsch came to be bearers of new togetherness among people, particularly young people of the region. Is it because of the characheristics of the genres or is it because of young people’s resistance to the dominant practices of state institutions and dominant narrations of their parents? I will try to answer the questions by analyzing empirical data through the interviews which will be conducted in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. My ideal informant would be fan of popular culture (particularly turbo- folk music and/or Balkan soap-operas) and would be born at the end of eighties. Theoretical frame draws on cultural and media studies whereas methodology is based on content analysis and critical discourse analysis.


"Measure for Measure": Knowledge, Culture, and the Third Wave Marketization
Elisa Da Vià
Cornell University

My paper examines how the practice of using, selecting, and exchanging farm-saved seeds has become a focal site of political struggle and grassroots organizing in the rural areas of Europe, spearheaded by the institution of seed networks within different regions of Spain, Italy, and France since the late 1990s.  More specifically, I focus on the mobilization of seed networks as a new form of resistance to agribusiness control aimed at fostering small producers’ engagement in non-industrial, agro-ecological farming methods by means of de-commodified relations of production.  In this respect, I draw on Gramsci’s (1971) analysis of the mutual interdependence of symbolic struggles and material transformation to underscore the role played by seed networks as “collective knowledge innovators” engaged in the attempt to dislodge dominant representations of development, productivity, and sustainability by means of shared experiences of “cognitive praxis”–in the form of participatory plant breeding, collaborative research, and farmer-to-farmer exchange.  Correspondingly, exploring the relationship between grassroots initiatives of knowledge production and exchange and processes of repeasantization, my paper seeks to problematize the reductionism of market-based approaches to rural development that inform the structure of European agricultural policies and multifunctionality schemes—underwriting the division of labor between corporate farmers and small-scale niche producers, as well as the separation between spaces of production and spaces of conservation (through consumption).  In critiquing de-politicized accounts of territorial valorization, ecological entrepreneurship, and reflexive consumption, I intend to underscore the importance of questions of power and politics as well as the centrality of peasant agency in processes of agrarian change.


A new peasant culture: from rurality to rusticity in a Romanian village
Corina Cimpoieru
SNSPA, Bucharest

My research presents the marketization of tradition focusing on the way in which the nea-nostalgie for the nowadays  traditional objects is constructed through practices of commodification, dissemination and consumption both in the urban and rural spaces.. It deals with the so-called democratization of tradition in which objects from the past (objects trouvés) are reinvented and made accessible, fast and en gros, even if there are marketicized  as unique. Drawing on an anthropological and historical  research, the study presents the changes that took place in the Romanian countryside after ’89, with a particular focus on the way that rurality was recycled into rusticity. The present project is motivated by the recent cultural phenomenon of the so-called rusticization, present both in the urban and rural space. How did this rusticity emerge, who engendered it and in what forms it exhibits itself and is assimilated by the Romanian contemporary society are the main questions that the project tries to address. Rurality is no longer a reality that can hold on itself. Due to the great socio-economic transformations that Romania has gone through before ‘89 – with the collectivization and industrialization process – and in the postcommunist transition – confronting the legacies of the past and at the same time coping and adapting to the European legislation – we can no longer invoke the idyllic representation of the Romanian village, as the true holder of the tradition and agricultural life. We now deal both with a deconstruction of rurality and at the same time with the revelation of its new significance based on an ecologic and cultural dimension. Romania is slowly, but surely, entering the post-rural era (Murdock and Prat), in which the rural space is becoming a cultural capital (Bourdieu), a commodity packed and sold under the name of rusticity not only to the urban public, but also in the village. Taking up a bottom-up approach,  the project puts forward the ethnographic  study of the Pucheni village, where rural life began to change before ’89, with the close-by industrial centers, and accelerated after the fall of communism, as a result of the industrial collapse and as well with the new conditions of European legislation, which restricted considerably the peasants activities. Paradoxically, the accent now seems to fall from the ethic (ethics of work) to esthetic (rustic décor defined as something beautiful and traditional). The presentation will be accompanied by the projection of fragments from the anthropological documentary - “Rustik Pucheni”- made from the villagers’ recorded narrations about the cultural changes in their village life after “89.