Consciousness: International Eszmélet Conference 2005

Challenging Entangled Hegemonies
in Central and Eastern Europe and Elsewhere

Budapest, 14 – 16 October 2005

The first years of the new millennium witness deep and ever deepening geopolitical, socio-economic, and cultural tensions and divisions among, and within, the states of Central and Eastern Europe. The ”eastern enlargement” of the European Union is (re)drawing old and new dividing lines across Eastern Europe. Tensions between the United States and the EU continue to be displayed in the region, with Russian and Post-Soviet regional power politics, and NATO strategies for the new millennium as additional factors. Elites are also divided along old and new lines in many countries. Democracy, human rights, and gender concerns are caught between their functioning as part of imperialist missions, and as foci of struggles for genuine progressive change. A variety of economic and social policies operating within, and at times in tension with, liberal and open economy doctrines of various kinds construct and reconstruct lines of social and political confrontation and division. Anti-Western, anti-capitalist, nationalist, and racist sentiments are looming large among certain parts of the region’s populations, and intermingle or diversify in a whole variety of ways in various constellations.
All these and other dynamics, as they entangle in different localities within Central and Eastern Europe, contribute to the unfolding of a complex puzzle of political, socio-economic, and cultural hegemonies. What forms and strategies of resistance, and collective social self-protection, can be potentially effective in struggling within and against this complex puzzle of the capitalist world at the beginning of the 21 century?
We extend a cordial invitation to friends of our journal, the International Advisory Board, our former authors, and all other interested individuals who would like to contribute to the analysis of this puzzle, and to exploring the possibilities of left politics here and now to participate in our journal’s 2005 International Conference devoted to those issues. Papers and statements should focus either on Central and Eastern Europe from a global-local perspective, or analyse current versions or aspects of unequal global-local geopolitical, socio-economic, or cultural processes elsewhere.
Please reply to  krausz.tamas@mail.datanet.hu

The journal Eszmélet (Consciousness) will present a newly published special edition 2005 of the journal in English during the conference.

The Eszmélet Conference 2005 will be held in conjunction with the Preparatory Assembly of the CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM (CEESF):
EXPLOITED WORLDS. DECEIVED EASTERN EUROPE AND ITS FELLOW SUFFERERS.
There will be a joint opening on Friday, 14 October, and evening events jointly organized, but separate programs of both conferences throughout Saturday and Sunday.