Call for Proposals

While the material turn has been well known in the social sciences for at least twenty years, the vitality of these approaches varies according to cultural areas and disciplines. From the study of technical systems to the exploration of the social life of things and the transformation of environments, different theoretical currents seek to understand what connects us to material things (raw materials, artifacts, instruments, infrastructures, living entities, etc.). These fields of thought lead us to consider objects not as inert things, but as agents with an influence on individuals, societies and environments. They also question distinctions that are often problematic, such as material/immaterial, real/virtual, concrete/abstract. Indeed, alongside the dematerialization brought about by digitalization, our worlds are being populated by new materialities that call for just as many uses and ways of doing things, forms of appropriation, exchange and circulation.

We propose to approach the notion of materiality(ies) from a Balkan perspective, with the aim of understanding how it enables us to take a new look at Balkan societies, both in their long history and in their contemporary configurations. We will seek to understand how materialities in their various senses (objects and materials, production and transformation processes, uses and circulation, representations and imaginaries, etc.) offer original potential for observing and understanding the social facts, cultural representations and political issues that run through these societies. We will be focusing on approaches from different disciplinary fields (human and social sciences, artistic disciplines, but also museology, natural sciences, etc.) in order to illustrate the theoretical and methodological contributions of the notion of materiality(ies) to open up new fields of knowledge about the Balkans. Finally, we aim at understanding how, from the perspective of the Balkans, can emerge crossed and transversal reflections on the notion of materiality itself.

This call for thematic proposals aims to identify panels addressing the question of materiality in the Balkans from different disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, historical and geographical angles. Each selected thematic proposal will be the subject of a 1h30 session comprising 3 to 4 papers. A call for individual papers will then be published for each panel: selected papers will be included in a panel and evaluated by the panel leaders and the conference organizing committee. In order to bring together as many participants as possible, and to foster the interdisciplinary dialogue within SHS and beyond promoted by AFEBalk, the theme of materiality(ies) may be articulated into several thematic axes.

Call for individual papers

The call is open until 1 April 2025

Proposals must be submitted using the "Submit my paper" tab

Proposals must include an abstract (300 words maximum), the name, institutional affiliation and a five-line biography of the author(s), and 5 key words.

Individual papers may be presented either on one of the thematic panels or on one of the conference topics.