INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE Capitalist Transformations in Eastern and Central Europe
Panels and Abstracts
| CAPITALIST TRANSFORMATIONS IN EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE 19 – 22 MAY 2025 (The time zone of the conference is GMT+2 Romania) | ||||
| Monday 19 MAY, 2025 | DAY 1 | |||
| Monday | Value and Worthlessness: The World and the Region Don Kalb(Bergen University) Welcoming Remarks: Anca Simionca,Dean of Faculty of Sociology and Social Work (Babeș-Bolyai University) | |||
| Monday 14 – 16 | Panel 1 – The politics of capitalist accumulation 1B. Rethinking the polycrisis in Central and Eastern Europe: labour and social reproduction in Poland 1C. Two political failures of a Caesarist project: Ukraine and Belarus compared 1D. The Devil’s Bargain and the Semi-Periphery’s Emulation of Western Socioeconomic Transformations | Panel 2 – Bricks, Bridges and Bureaucracy: Eastern Europe’s DIY Statecraft 2B. Market-Making and/or State-Making at the Eastern Periphery of the EU: The Rediscovery of Developmental Statism in Hungary and Poland István Benczes(Institute of World Economics, HUN-REN and Corvinus University of Budapest), Joanna Orzechowska-Waclawska(Jagellonian University, Kraków), Judit Ricz(Institute of World Economics, HUN-REN and Corvinus University of Budapest) 2C. Sowing Startups, Reaping Unicorns: The Digital Industrial Policy of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe 2D. Zoning to the Bottom: Special Economic Zones and the Local Costs of the Electric Vehicle Investment Boom in Hungary and Serbia | Panel 3 – Whose Theory? Which Marxism? 3B. Variegated state capitalisms: East Germany and Yugoslavia in comparative perspective 3C Formal and Real Socialization: The History and Use of the Distinction in 1980s Poland Moderator: Adrian Grama (Independent Researcher) | Panel 4 – Constructing institutions and identities of capitalist modernity in ECE 4B. Labor Money 4D. Capitalism Versus “Oblomovism” in 19th Century Russia and Today’s Western World |
| Monday 16-18 | Panel 5 – Migration regimes and labor struggles 5A. ‘The trade union suddenly had a face.’ Capitalist transformations and the labor struggles of Romanian workers in the German meat industry 5B. Exploitation of Vietnamese Labor in Romania: Participant Observations and Case Study Research 5C. Transforming migration regime in Poland and its implications for workers organizing 5D. I came as a legal, and Romania made me illegal. The production of precarity and irregularity within the Romanian migration regime. Ioana Simina Popescu(University of Vienna) Moderator: Oana Mateescu (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) | Panel 6 – Roundtable discussion: China, the global economy and the impact on Eastern and Central Europe
Mathias Larsen (Brown University) Cornel Ban (Copenhagen Business School) TBA | Panel 7 – Genealogies of anticapitalist struggle: Anarchism in East-Central Europe
7A. Anarchism in East-Central Europe: Do different temporalities mean different experiences? 7B. Anticapitalist struggles and anarchist-syndicalist workers movement in Romania in the 20th Century | Panel 8 – Rethinking Socialist Investment, Ownership and Income 8A. Socialist entrepreneurs? Albanian private business owners in late-socialist Yugoslavia Rory Archer(University of Graz/University of Vienna) Enikő Vincze (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) 8C. Social Remittances and the Political Economy of Privilege in Late Socialist Romania Alexandra Bardan(University of Bucharest) Moderator: Attila Melegh (Institute of Sociology, Corvinus University of Budapest) |
| Monday 18-20 | Panel 9 – The politics of infrastructures and development 9A. Grassroots Relations to Infrastructures and Environmental Issues in Serbia: Towards a Green Commons?Ognjen Kojanić(University of Belgrade) 9B. Crypto Currencies and Development Mode in Flux: unfolding Bitcoin mining in Georgia Ia Eradze (Georgian Institute for Public Affairs) 9C. Projects and Opposition Evelina Gambino(University of Cambridge) 9D. Romania’s Political Landscape: Populism, nationalism and the Influence of TikTok in the presidential elections in 2024 Mihai-Ioan Surdu (University of Bucharest) | Panel 10 – Pre-Capitalist Pathways: Reassessing the Late Socialist Economy 10A. Socialist Mixed Economies and the Quantity of Life in Global Comparison 10B. State Socialist Decoupling. Efforts for decoupling economic expansion from environmental harms in Czechoslovakia and the consequences of their failure for post-89 transformation 10C. Polish shipyards and the 1973 oil crisis: a study of development strategies in the context of global economic change Moderator: Attila Melegh (Institute of Sociology, Corvinus University of Budapest) | Panel 11 – Imperialism, colonialism, and passages from empire to nation 11A. Interconnected Complicity. Europe’s East in Coloniality and Inter-imperiality 11B. A Liberated Capitalism? Ivan Hadjiiski and Bulgaria’s Independence from the Ottoman Empire 11C. Socialist Movements and State Crafting in Successor States of the Russian Empire 11D. Divergences in Rural Development Between Romania and Bulgaria: An Overview of the Processes in the Interwar Period Moderator: Gareth Dale(Brunel University) | Panel 12 – Leftist collectives and right-wing appropriations in contemporary capitalism 12A. Challenging the Right-Wing Hegemony in Eastern and Central Europe 12B. From Revolutionary Praxis to Reactionary Rhetoric: The Appropriation of Leftist Discourse by the Far Right 12D. From Radical Roots to Reactionary Ends: Liberal Identity Politics and the Neoliberal –Far-right Convergence 12E. Academia from creating human capital to creating collectives |
| Tuesday 20 MAY, 2025 | DAY 2 | |||
| Tuesday 12-14 | Panel 13 – Manufacturing blues and re-industrialization | Panel 14 – Green Expectations: Decarbonising ECE Manufacturing and the Rise of China as a Green Superpower 14A. Geoeconomic Competition, FDI and Core-Periphery Unevenness within European Battery Transition Pathways
David Gergely Karas (CEU, Austria) | Panel 15 – Movements against varieties of capital accumulation 15A. Developing alternative practices in abandoned military barracks in Eastern Europe. The cases of urban squats in Ljubljana and Prague 15B.We Need to Socialise Reproductive Work, Now More Than Ever: Connecting Past, Present and Future into the Frame of Social Reproduction Feminism Theories and Practices Laura Sandu-Dumitriu (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania) 15C.Expropriation and exploitation of Roma as a mode of capital accumulation in Eastern Europe Angéla Kóczé(CEU, Vienna, Austria, and Hungary) 15D.Is fighting for access to water infrastructure the new environmental justice struggle? The case of Bulgaria Rositsa Kratunkova (Södertörn University, Stockholm) | Panel 16–Business histories between nations and empires 16A. From A Tsar to Some Leather Queens: On the Long-Term Perverse Permutations of ‘Finnish’ Cotton Moderator: Gareth Dale(Brunel University) |
| Tuesday 14-16 | Panel 17 – The precarity of digital, platform and logistics labor 17A. Virtual Sex Work under Postsocialist Neoliberalism: Labor in Camming in Russia Moderator: Oana Mateescu (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) | Panel 18 – Breaking the Chains (and Maybe the Bank): The Perilous Politics of European Financial Dependency 18A. From Neoliberal Reform to Illiberal Populism: Historical Contingency and Path-Dependent Parallels in Post-Communist Europe and Latin America 18B. Firms and Economic Development in the Semi-Periphery 18C. Financialisation, West European Banking Groups, and Capitalist Transformation in East-Central Europe: The Case Study of Croatia 18D. Precarious Competitiveness: The Draghi Report and Its Implications for the European Semi-Periphery – A Case Study on Romania | Panel 19 – Social reproduction: class, care, welfare 19A. Transformations of Care: Family, Migration, and the Emerging Landscape of Elderly Support in Romania | Panel 20 – Plural Margins: Race and Disability under State Socialism Ana Szel(I.L. Caragiale” National University of Theatre and Film in Bucharest/Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca) 20C. Romani bodies, racialised behaviour and (non)socialist morality |
| Tuesday 16-18 | Panel 21 – Racialised labor and surplus populations 21A. The political economy of Roma surplusing in ECE | Panel 22 – From Classroom to Workplace: Unpacking Eastern Europe’s Political Economy and Gender Dynamics 22A. Teaching Global Political Economy of Eastern Europe 22B. Gender Dynamics in Employment: A Comparative Analysis Across Romania and Its Neighbors Over Time 22C. Feminist Political Economy and the Pedagogy of Political Economy | Panel 23 – Capitalism: moralities and fantasies
| Panel 24 – Socialist Regimes of Care-work
Maren Hachmeister (Postdoctoral researcher at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies at TU Dresden) Oana Pop(Babeș-Bolyai University) Moderator: Adrian Grama (Independent Researcher) |
| Tuesday 18-20 | Silicon Valley Imperialism: Techno Fantasies and Frictions in Postsocialist Times Erin McElroy (University of Washington) | |||
| Wednesday 21 MAY, 2025 | DAY 3 | |||
| Wednesday 12-14 | Why and how is social policy important for new authoritarian leaders? Dorottya Szikra (Central European University, Vienna) | |||
| Wednesday 14-16 | Panel 25 – Chinese investments and new industrial policies in ECE 25A. Changing forms and transformative aspects of Chinese investments in Hungary | Panel 26 – Social reproduction in neoliberal times: welfare states, health and the family in Eastern Europe
26B. Health and Citizenship in Post-Socialist Romania 26C. Family: The Trojan Horse for Financialization in East-Central Europe? | Panel 27 – Trajectories of Class (Re)formation and Capital (Re)location 27A. Zambian Engineering and Construction Company (ZECCO): The Rise and Fall of a Non-Aligned Corporation 27B. The steady stream? De-industrialization and re-industrialization in the petro-chemical industry in Yugoslavia and Italy 27C. Workers’ Life Strategies under Communism in Hungary 27D. Workers of the World, Solidify! Understanding the Polish “Solidarity” Movement through the Lens of Japanese Labor Union History | Panel 28 – Industrial development and dependency in East-Central Europe
28B. Estate-based Order and Capitalist Development in the Central Industrial Region of Imperial Russia in the Late 19th Century 28C. Capitalist development as historical inevitability in Romania: Dobrogeanu Gherea’s Neoiobăgia Gabriela Tănăsescu(Romanian Academy) 28D. Romania’s Path to Capitalism and the Missing Leninist Link: Solomon Timov’s Anti-Neoiobăgia Stefan Gužvica(Higher School of Economics, Saint Petersburg) |
| Wednesday 16-18 | Panel 29 – Housing and peripheral financialization 29A. Housing as Payment: Financialization in Construction at the European Periphery 29B. Household financialization in Slovakia: key tendencies and features Moderator: Hadas Weiss (CRIA, Portugal) | Panel 30 – FDI-Led Growth and Frontier Semi-Core Dynamics in Comparative Perspective 30A. From the Socialist Second World to the Second World of Global Capitalism? 30B. (Neo-)Dependency in Global Comparative Perspective: Continuity and Change in East-Central Europe’s Dependent Capitalisms 30C. Capitalist Strategies in the Periphery of Europe: Case Studies from Central and Eastern Europe 30C. The FDI-Led Growth Model Politics and the EU State Aid Regime in Czechia and Slovakia | Panel 31 – The Social Origins of Socialist Expertise 31A. Reform Economists and Domestic Research Institutions: The Contested Origins of Neoliberalism in Socialist Hungary 31B. Domination, autonomy and diverse economy in Hungarian social thought from late- to post-socialism
| Panel 32 – “The Left” – from critical knowledge to activism 32A. The Revival of the Left in the Balkans: Counter-Hegemonic Activism and Ideas that Fueled It
|
| Wednesday 18-20 | Panel 33 – Energy transitions and contested green politics 33A. Geopolitics, energy colonialism and renewable energy: A comparative analysis between Southern African and Balkan critical mineral-rich countries 33B. The East German electricity grid. Communal, socialist and neoliberal infrastructural politics 33C. The Contested Politics of the Green Transition: Lusatia, Germany’s Laboratory of Decarbonisation 33D. Green grabbing for green growth: the capitalist logic of energy transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina Majda Ibrakovic(Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) Moderators and conveners: Agnes Gagyi (University of Gothenburg), Linda Szabó (Periféria Policy and Research Center), Markus Sattler (Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde), Lela Rekhviashvili (Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde) | Panel 34 – Big Tech, Industry 4.0, and the Rewriting of the Peripheral Puzzle in ECE 34A. Shifting East? U.S. Big Tech and AI-Driven Transformations in Eastern Europe Shifting East? 34B. Diluting Digital Sovereignty: Czechia’s Quiet Selective Adaptation to EU Digital Politics 34C. Innovation and Transnational Collaboration: Exploring the Dynamics of Co-Authorship Networks in Patents | Panel 35 – Culture and technology in anti-capitalist activism 35A. AI-driven tools as tools for anti-capitalist media activism – Potentialities and Limits Tamara Todoruț(Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania) | Panel 36 – The political economy of anti-capitalist critique and activism 36A. Post-Soviet vicious circle: the crisis of hegemony and the crisis of revolution 36B. Through Wallerstein’s glasses. Anti-systemic movements in times of bifurcation |
| Thursday 22 MAY, 2025 | DAY 4 | |||
| Thursday 10-12 | Panel 37 – Environmental grey zones: violence, waste and injustice 37A. The Grey Zone of the Green Transition Environmental Injustice as Insidious Toxicity 37B. Wasted Workforce and the Environmentalism of Post-Industrial Cities
Ioana Savin (”Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu), Irina Velicu (University of Coimbra), Hestia Delibas (University of Coimbra), Valer Simion Cosma (“Lucian Blaga” University Library in Sibiu), Romana Puiulet (RISE Project) Agnes Gagyi (University of Gothenburg), Linda Szabó (Periféria Policy and Research Center), Markus Sattler (Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde), Lela Rekhviashvili (Leibniz-Institut für Länderkunde) | Panel 38 – Financial Regulation, Firm Strategies, and Transforming Dependency in ECE 38A. (Un)Expected Challenges to European Financial Regulation from the Eastern Periphery: Non-Resident Banking and Crypto Markets in Latvia and Estonia 38C. What About the Eurozone? Rethinking Slovenia’s Exceptionalism 38D. Transformations of Neoliberalism and Dependency in Europe | Panel 39 – How can we organise against the structural silencing of anti-capitalism? 39A. The inexistent struggle: depoliticization, hierarchization and fragmentation of elderly care in Ukraine Lungu Bogdan-Andrei (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania) | Panel 40 – The pathways of capitalist accumulation 40A. Capitalist transformations and accumulation through real estate development in Romania Enikő Vincze(Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca) Ioana Florea(Södertörn University, Stockholm) 40B. The unwilling accumulation: collectivities of renovation in “greening” Latvia Kārlis Lakševics(University of Latvia) 40C. Debt and Politics in the Czech periphery Jitka Králová UCL (SSEES) UK 40D. Labor relations in Romania: An Analysis of Discourse and State Politics Oana Onița(Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca) |
| Thursday 12-14 | Panel 41 – Urban labor: relocations and dislocations
T41D. The Other Side of Development. Daily Work Commuting in Cluj-Napoca Metropolitan Area Moderator: Oana Mateescu (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania) | Panel 42 – Prospects of politicisation across movements in capitalism Firdes Firat(BTU Cottbus) Marina Mironica (Goethe University Frankfurt a. Main, Germany) 42C. Autonomy without autopoiesis: Analysing the structure of Romanian spaces of anticapitalist resistance through Luhmann’s theory of system Cezar Mihalcea (Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania) 42D. Obsessions with form — the neglect of substance: issues of the Romanian Left Ana-Antonia Dumitriu (University of Bucharest, Romania) Moderator: Enikő Vincze (Babeș-Bolyai University) | Panel 43 –Women and feminism in early twentieth-century labour movements 43A. Communist Women’s Resistance to Capitalism and Fight for Women Workers’ Rights in Eastern Europe and Beyond during the 1920s Daria Dyakonova(Sapienza University Rome and International Institute, Geneva) 43B. Debating the “Woman Question” in the 1930s: Some Aspects of Communist Feminist Angela Vode’s Political Thought Isidora Grubački(Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana) 43C. Justice in the Ruins of Empire? Bukovina Logging Workers Lawsuits 1907 –1948 Laura Plochberger(RECET, University of Vienna) 43D. Beyond Trade Unions: Labour Activism Among Women Workers of the Újpest Jute Factory in the 1900s Sára Bagdi(ELTE member of Public Sociology Group “Helyzet”) | Panel 44 –Anti-capitalist lineages in theorising and political activism 44B. Toward Cinema of the Post-Yugoslav New Left: Filmmakers’ Commitment to Political Organizing Aleksandra Fila (University of Vienna, Austria): |
| Thursday 14-16 | 45. Focused Panel and Roundtable: The Left in Mainstream Politics in ECE | 46. Focused Panel and Roundtable: Leftist Media and Journalism | 47. Focused Panel and Roundtable: Eastern Europe, the Great Interwar Depression and what came after | 48. Focused Panel and Roundtable: Lessons from previous crisis of capitalism in the region |
| Thursday 16-18 | Panel 49 –Stripping Democracy’s Assets: Navigating Dependency in Authoritarian ECE states 49A. The Authoritarian Derisking State (Hungary) 49B. Unsustainable Democracies: Authoritarian Populism in Newly Democratizing Dependent Economies at Europe’s Periphery 49C. Laszlo Bruszt(Central European University) | Panel 50 – Artistic Transitions: The Cultural Life of Socialist Infrastructure 50A. From State to Market? Mixed Economies and the Transformation of Cultural Infrastructures in Hungary 50B. From People’s Art Back to Bourgeois Art
| Panel 51 – Negotiating and resisting capital on the ground: labour courts, co-ops, and labour struggles 51A. A Double-Edged Sword: Socialism and Strikes in Romania before World War One Anca Mândru(University of Birmingham) 51B. “The biggest flaw of the cooperative is that you are both masters and servants in one person”: The Paradoxes of Catholic Anti-Capitalism in Slovenia Before World War II Lev Centrih(University of Primorska) 51C. Arbitration, Mediation, and Mitigation of Labour Conflicts: Labour Courts and Workers Rights in Bulgaria, 1920s–1940s Ivelina Masheva(Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Sofia) / ZARAH project, CEU) | Panel 52 – Shifting rural landscapes: land grabbing, agro-capitalism and gentrification
52D. Gentrification of rural space in the metropolitan area of Cluj-Napoca, Romania |
| Thursday 18-20 | Capitalism in Chaos: Reassessing the Economic Consequences of Peace (1867-1928) Máté Rigó (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) | |||
