[Forum] Round-Table-Gespräch "Scaling and (Re)counting Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe" am GTG&GWMT Jahrestagung

[Jan Surman]

Liebe Mitglieder der GWMT,

die Plattform "History of Science in Central, Eastern and Southeastern
Europe (HPS.CESEE)" lädt zu Round-Table-Gespräch "Scaling and (Re)counting
Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe", das im Rahmen der GTG&GWMT
Jahrestagung "Skalen, Normen, Grenzwerte im (digitalen) Wandel" stattfinden
wird (Details unten). Das Round-Table-Gespräch findet am 16. September um
18:00 online (zoom) statt. Anmeldung über Eventbrite hier (
http://tiny.cc/hpsceseeScales) oder unter hps.cesee at gmail.com.

wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme,

Jan Surman (für hps.cesee)

-----------------------

Scaling and (Re)counting Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Round
Table with Olessia Kirtchik (Higher School of Economics, Moscow), Borbála
Zsuzsanna Török (Univ. Duisburg-Essen), Juraj Medzihorsky (London School of
Economics), Vedran Duančić (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb).
Moderation Lukas Becht (University of Vienna)

Thu, 16 September 2021, 18:00 CET / 19:00 MSK / 12:00 EST. Registration:
http://tiny.cc/hpsceseeScales

Organized by the initiative for History of Science in Central, Eastern and
Southeastern Europe (HPS.CESEE) as a part of "Scales, Norms, Limit Values
in Times of (Digital) Change" Joint annual meeting of the Society for the
History of Technology (GTG) and the Society for the History of Science,
Medicine and Technology (GWMT).

Scales, norms, indexes and indicators play a crucial role in creating
commensurability; however, they also produce incommensurabilities, make
them visible, and can influence the comparata in reverse. This roundtable
explores these dynamics at the example of the transformation of Central,
Eastern, and Southeastern Europe (CESEE) during the 1990s and will ask for
its deeper discursive roots. Not only since 1989 did the commensurability
of economic and other data facilitate international exchange relations
(trade, for example, but not only), or change certain particularities at
the micro level in the respective countries in very different ways. The
discussion will explore the technical, institutional and political
consequences of developing and adapting practices of counting in CESEE, in
order to consider if and how these practices changed the region in
conceptual and denominational terms.

>From measures of social and economic “backwardness” and “advancement” to
the various indicators of “progress” in the post-1989 social and political
transformations, seemingly “neutral” and “objective” practices of scaling
and indexing have a history which is closely linked to the constructions of
regional particularities, disparities, identities. In turn, ideas of
“backwardness” or “advancement” were employed by the former Socialist
states in a similar manner in relations to their “Socialist brother states”
in the Global South. On the other hand, 19th century positivists
programmatically used the same buzzwords to argue for their reforms.

The roundtable aims at a critical historical examination of the particular
role played by these knowledge practices with regard to CESEE. At the same
time, it allows for a selfreflection of how historical and social science
disciplines research and speak about the region. It will include both
historical perspectives on ideas and practices of measuring and counting
that originated in CESEE, and on their functionalities in constructing
entities of research and knowledge production.


It raises questions such as:

- Which scales, norms and indicators make Central and Eastern Europe
“countable”?- Where do they originate from historically? How and by whom
are they used? How do they collect their data?

- How did scales shape the perception of Central and Eastern Europe, and by
whom?- How did they encourage comparisons and how did they function within
them?- How did they shape perceptions of “development”, “modernity”,
“backwardness"?- How did they temporalize social realities by measuring,
reinforcing changes?- How did they impact contributions to transnational
scales and indicators?- How have scientific disciplines studying Eastern
Europe made use of scales and indicators?


HPS.CESEE is an online platform about the history of science in Central,
Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Our aim is to facilitate the exchange of
information among HPS scholars in the region stretching from Prague to Perm
and from Tallinn to Tirana. HPS.CESEE is a community project, which started
in 2018: Please visit and send us your news in order to have them reach a
larger audience! https://hpscesee.blogspot.com/


Organized by Lukas Becht (Vienna), Friedrich Cain (Vienna), Vedran Duančić
(Zagreb), Adela Hincu (Bucharest), Daša Ličen (Ljubljana), Katalin Stráner
(Manchester) and Jan Surman(Prague)
-------------- nächster Teil --------------
Ein Dateianhang mit HTML-Daten wurde abgetrennt...
URL: <http://lists.gwmt.de/pipermail/forum/attachments/20210909/1f0ec78b/attachment.htm>