Deadline: February 29, 2020
GWZO Annual Conference 2020
Decentred and Asymmetrical? Eastern Europe in a Comparative Perspective
6–8 July 2020
Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO), Leipzig
Comparison is one of the most frequently used approaches in the humanities and social sciences. Several disciplines comprise established fields dedicated to comparative research, ranging from comparative history, politics to literature. In recent decades, however, comparative research has also been subjected to continuous methodological debates. While comparative frameworks had been promoted by some researchers as a means to overcome methodological nationalism and exceptionalism, others have criticised comparative approaches for homogenising research subjects and defining artificial boundaries of container entities. In response to such criticism, many recent approaches have sought to integrate comparative methods with research on transfer, exchange and entanglement. This discussion also shed light on the role of circulation and changing points of reference, as actors and objects moved within and across different spaces. Differences in perspectives and the relevance of change, mobility and border-crossings came to the forefront of scholarly enquiries, which again inspired the formation of new subdisciplines (most notably, the discussion on world literature emerging from comparative literature). At the same time, reservations towards illegitimate comparison, presented by the figurative apples and oranges, have been considerably weakened as researchers start paying more attention to social, economic, cultural and other asymmetries, thus raising the question of how comparative research may consider apparent inequalities.
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