[Commlist] Exploration of Class, Distinction, and Habitus in Popular Culture of Central and Eastern Europe conference cfp

6th Conference of the Centre for Study of Popular Culture
Exploration of Class, Distinction, and Habitus in Popular Culture of 
Central and Eastern Europe

Conference organised by the Centre for the Study of Popular Culture, 
Charles University and the German Historical Institute in Warsaw, 27–29 
October 2023, Prague, Czech Republic

Class, distinction, and habitus have a contested position in the 
political and social sciences. No less controversial are the concepts in 
the humanities, even though the study of class in cultural studies seems 
to be long past its prime. Since the 1960s, Western youth and working 
class popular and urban cultures have received wide scholarly attention. 
Minority groups and people on the margins ridiculed and stigmatised by 
popular culture experienced a research boom several decades ago and a 
renewed interest owing to research into reality TV shows. 
Representations of white upper-class heterosexual male domination in 
popular culture has been interrogated with the finest critical tools in 
the last years. The research agenda of Central and Eastern European 
popular culture looks a bit different. Due to the allegedly different 
path to modernity, exploration of class, distinction, and habitus in 
popular culture offersinteresting stimuli even today. A closer look at 
the political and socioeconomic changes that the region has undergone 
shows that these phenomena were closely linked to the development of 
industrial capitalism and the rise of the bourgeois society in the 19th 
century on the one hand. On the other, class often dissolved into 
nationalist and even racist ideology. Unique group’s distinctions were 
melted into the cult of the common people. A specific habitus 
was suppressed by the all-encompassing folksiness. Mass movements in the 
interwar period placed the removal of the
enemy class and distinction at the centre of their politics. The 
socialist dictatorship after the Second World War declared that it had 
done away with class and group-specific distinctions; differing habitus 
was to be replaced by uniformity. However, in the post-Stalin period, 
even the
mildest proclamations concerning a classless society had to be revised. 
New social differentiations and subtle distinctions among people became 
more visible and found not infrequent reflection in literature, film, 
music, and visual arts. In late socialism, power elites gradually 
abandoned the banner of egalitarianism and the new class manifested in a 
showy manner its distinctions and habitus.

The conference asks what the (dis)continuities between late socialism 
and post-socialism in terms of class, distinction, and habitus in the 
popular culture were. It seeks to answer how class, distinction, and 
habitus have been represented in popular culture in the “long durée” 
perspective. In what ways have these representations been transformed? 
What were the causes and consequences of these transformations, if any? 
Did these representations
affect their recipients and in what manner? There are numerous issues 
that can be addressed along these lines. The following list should not 
by any means be understood as exhaustive:
- “Class” as an emic concept in national and post-national discourse
- re-drawing class in long-term transformations of Central and Eastern 
Europe
- class differentiation in popular cultures of Central and Eastern Europe
- habitus and taste as an analytical category in modern societies of 
Central and Eastern Europe
- distinctions made by gender, work, housing, leisure, culture 
consumption, aesthetic-tastes
-representations of upper, middle, working and under-class in 
literature, film, TV, press, visual arts

Papers exploring the mentioned topics are especially encouraged. Please 
send your abstract of no more than 350 words and a short biographical 
note by 31 May 2023 to (conference /at/ cspk.eu) <mailto:(conference /at/ cspk.eu)>
The conference will take place on 27–29 October 2023, in Prague, Czech 
Republic. In case of travel restrictions due to the pandemic, the 
conference will be held in a hybrid or online format.
The organizers intend to put together a themed monograph, in which 
selected papers will be published as fulllength chapters.

Travel and accommodation costs are covered by the organizers.

Contacts
URL: http://en.cspk.eu/ <http://en.cspk.eu/>
Email: (conference /at/ cspk.eu) <mailto:(conference /at/ cspk.eu)>
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