Call for Papers and Panels for the ‘POLITICS OF THE PAST: MEMORY AND HERITAGE IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS’ section of the European International Studies Association-Central and East European International Studies Association Pan-European Conference (EISA-CEEISA PEC18), Prague, 12-15 September 2018
Section conveners:
Maria Mälksoo (Brussels School of International Studies, University of Kent, m.malksoo@kent.ac.uk )
Karl Gustafsson (The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Karl.Gustafsson@ui.se)
The political and social significance of how societies remember the past has received increased scholarly attention recently, paving the way for the nascent field of memory studies. Research in International Relations (IR) suggests that the ways in which states and collectives engage with their past, particularly wars and disputes, influence interstate relations in the present and hold indications about how they might act in the future. Contemporary conflicts are occasionally shaped by a rich brew of historical references and framings. Issues related to collective memory, remembrance and heritage are addressed in IR, International Law, Peace and Conflict studies, political theory, memory studies, and Comparative Politics. The proliferation of concepts, such as memory politics, heritage, transitional justice, reconciliation, memory laws, and the many analytical frameworks through which the politics of the past is approached, including foreign policy analysis, securitization, ontological security, conflict resolution, militant democracy and so on, suggests that despite having a common focus, these literatures have thus far communicated only to a very limited extent.
This section seeks to deepen the dialogue between these distinct literatures to advance research on how the ways in which the past is remembered and approached influences international politics in the present. In doing so, it invites submissions from different disciplines concerned with theoretical, methodological and empirical aspects of the section theme across such issue areas as:
• politics of the past in contemporary conflicts and post-conflict settings;
• legalisation of memory;
• ontological security-seeking;
• practices of commemoration;
• contestations over physical memory sites in global politics.
Submissions Portal: goo.gl/Zn7wr6 Submission Deadline: 01/02/2018