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Eastern European Day

Ismail Kadare, 18 November 2010


On 18 November 2010, the Interfaculty Institute for Central and Eastern Europe organised the 11th Eastern European Day. The Institute invited the internationally acclaimed Albanian author Ismail Kadare, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2005. Mr. Kadare presented an inspiring lecture on the relationship between literature and power in totalitarian regimes. Among other things, he highlighted the inability of totalitarian regimes to eliminate artistic expression. The lecture, which was followed by an in-depth discussion between Mr. Kadare and the audience, was well attended.

Scientific Conference, 19 November 2010


On 19 November, the scientific portion of Eastern European Day took place: a closed onference on informal power and practices in Eastern Europe.. One goal of the conference was to design an even larger conference on the topic with cross-country comparisons.
 
Informality is a well-known phenomenon, but lies atthe periphery of academic writing. Given that informality is part of the discussion involving the distinction between formality and informality, an important question arises: What is an appropriate balance between formality and informality?. Obviously, informalitycannot be avoided in our everyday practices and rituals. But does it also exist in politics? Moreover, what kind of informal behaviour is acceptable in a given political culture with all its formal and informal rules? 
The more one moves to the South or East, the more informal structures gain in importance. The same can be said about the related notion of trust. In many cultures, personal networks of trust are more important than institutionalised ones. It may be that informal structures are mere survival strategies in many countries; however, when looking at them from the perspective of democracy and rule of law, one can also see that in many areas, particularly those involving public power, informality is just a device used to maintain power. The negative and the positive aspects of informality go hand in hand, and overlap often. Ina worst case scenario, informal power networks can undermine the entire institutional arrangement on which a state and its politics are based. If modernity implies being governed by codes and impersonality, then informality means being governed by personalised networks. The question is how to find the right balance between the two. In a corrupt society with a failing state, this may not ever be possible. In that regard, the conference focused primarilty on the function and forms of informality in general, and in Eastern Europe in particular, in the areas of politics, economics and society. 
 
The conference took an interdisciplinary approach and brought together some 15 scholars studying informal practices in countries, such as Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Albania, Kosovo, Greece, Romania and Czech Republic.
 

Programme of the Scientific Conference, 19 November 2010

fileicon Programme_OET2010.pdf (pdf, 45.0 KB)