EastBordNet : An international research network supported by CRESC
A loose network of researchers, scholars and activists across Europe (and beyond, as ‘Europe’ is a loose concept), who have an interest in borders, gender, sexuality and/or money, particularly as these relate to concepts of “East” and “Eastern” in Europe, whether in a post-socialist or orientalist sense.
The main aim is to explore transformations of ‘Eastern’ European borders, comparing knowledge across disciplines, time periods and regions.
Part of this involves focusing on shifts in how places and peoples are valued within and across borders, including shifts in the meaning and location of “Europe” itself.
In this, borders are not taken for granted; rather, the aim is to compare findings about the constant process through which borders appear, disappear, reappear and are reconfigured.
The themes of money, gender and sexuality - which always mark differences between people and places, but also involve exchanges and relations across differences – are themes some participants use to examine the expression of diverse values across and within borders.
The overall aim is to better understand how borders are made meaningful or rendered irrelevant, how they generate a sense of location, belonging, worth, distance or alienation. EastBordNet brings together a wide range of people: it particularly includes specialists working on the borderlands running from the north-east (Baltics and environs) to the south-east (Balkans and environs), but it also involves many others, including those working across the post-socialist regions of Europe (e.g. Poland and former East Germany), and those mainly interested in the conceptual and analytical means used to understand the themes of the network (borders, money, gender and sexuality).
Keyword relating to the interests of the network:
Eastern European borders; post-socialist transformation; value; money; gender; sexuality; identity and difference; cross-border exchange; border visibility; north-eastern, south-eastern Europe; mobility; border histories; border documents; concepts of East and Eastern; East-West distinctions; Balkans; Baltic states; place, location and belonging.
EastBordNet was founded in May 2006 at a workshop held in Manchester that was sponsored by CRESC, the British Academy and Social Anthropology at Manchester (see Workshop and Participants for more details).
This workshop came about as the result of a hunch: that if researchers working in the northeast regions of Europe (Baltics and surrounding regions) were brought together with researchers working in the southeast regions (Balkans and environs) to compare notes, some intriguing overlaps and differences would emerge,
particularly in the following areas:
- understandings of what makes borders meaningful;
- how the notion of ‘East’ and ‘Eastern’ has diversely contributed to the making and unmaking of borders in these regions;
- the way exchanges as well as separations work in diverse regions;
- and the shifts in how borders – and their crossing – have been conceptualised.
The May 2006 workshop raised so many issues and generated so much enthusiasm that it was decided to try and set up a more long-standing network in order to develop the ideas that emerged there further, to publish some of the results, and perhaps to develop future collaborative research projects.
In 2007, funding was sought from COST to run this project as a formal network; the bid was successful in 2008, and meetings and events began in January 2009. See the EastBordNet website for further details.