CfP: Exporting Socialism, Making Business? Erkner, 21-22 Jun 2018

Call for Papers: Exporting Socialism, Making Business? Erkner, 21-22 Jun 2018

Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS)

After WW II, architecture was used and misused as an ideological signifier for competing systems and for new national identities. Diverse actors and networks took part in architectural exchange within the blocks and beyond the Iron Curtain. Different aid projects posed an attempt to overcome political and economic divides, but at the same time they were often considered as foreign imposition or neo-colonial practice. Tensions between commercial interests and solidarity arose.
Against this background and referring to the growing scholarly interest for the multi-layered and multi-centered exchanges between the Global South and socialist as well as capitalist countries, we would like to investigate this issue in relation to architecture and constructing industry from an interdisciplinary perspective of architectural, urban and economic history as well as postcolonial studies and heritage preservation.
The conference Exporting Socialism, Making Business? Intercultural Transfer, Circulation and Appropriations of Architecture in the Cold War Period focuses around five aspects: Designing, Circulating, Appropriating, Feed-back Mechanisms, and Framing.
The full call for papers can be accessed here.
Paper proposals (abstract of max. 450 words + short CV) should be addressed to both Dr. Andreas Butter (Andreas.Butter@leibniz-irs.de) and Dr. Monika Motylinska (Monika.Motylinska@leibniz-irs.de) until 20 December 2017.

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