MPI-MMG@Conferences

- by invitation only - Official and institutional responses to linguistic diversity play a significant part in establishing (andmaintaining) close links between linguistic repertoires, social hierarchies, prestige and stigma. Whilethere is no reason to assume that the sociolinguistic landscapes of globalised societies are less unequalthan before, it is clear that we need suitable ways of seeing and conceptualizing the (perhapsincreasingly complex) relationships between social hierarchization, identification, linguistic practices andmetadiscursive regimes. This workshop will contribute to developing such conceptualizations throughan intensive discussion of existing conceptualizations of social inequalities across disciplines and theirintersection with language. The aim is to understand the intersections of social stratifica-tion and culturaland linguistic categorization in an age of (linguistic) superdiversity and to contribute to the developmentof an analytical framework for these intersections. [more]

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Presentation of film, talk & discussion [more]

organized by the Max Planck Research Group "Empires of Memory" [more]

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The empires that once defined the political geography of Europe are no more. One cannot meet a Prussian, Romanov, Habsburg, or Ottoman today; these dusty categories of affiliation have ceded to myriad national identities. Yet it would be mistaken to assume that Europe’s bygone empires have become mere relics of history. Imperial pasts continue to inspire nostalgia, identification, pride, anxiety, skepticism, and disdain in the present. The afterlives of empires as objects of memory exceed historical knowledge, precisely because these afterlives shape and recast the present and the future. Simultaneously, present- and future-oriented imperatives accentuate imperial pasts in selective ways, yielding new configurations of post-imperial amnesia as well as memory. Our conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars working on post-imperial legacies in relation to a variety of specific cities, including Vienna, Istanbul, Budapest, Sarajevo, Trieste, Thessaloniki, Zagreb, and Belgrade. Our contributors pursue the politics and cultures of memory in relation to two general, interrelated questions: What are the effects of imperial legacies on contemporary cities? and, How do present-day urban processes reshape the forms of post-imperial memory and forgetting? [more]

For the second time in the history of the French fifth Republic, the Front National is on the second turn of the presidential election. For the first time, both main parties – the Socialist Party with Benoit Hamon and the Republicans with François Fillon – have been beaten. During a long campaign full of twists and turns (both winners of the primaries were underdogs, fake job scandals, etc.), a new leftist force has emerged, embodied by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and a centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, who never got elected before, won it all. [more]

Over the past decade, Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, has witnessed a spectacular transformation in its urban environment. A project known as “Skopje 2014,” spearheaded by former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski, endowed the center of city with a plethora of neoclassical and neo-Baroque monuments, including a victory arch reminiscent of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, a massive statue of Philip II of Macedon, and an even larger version of Alexander the Great, perched on an outsize plinth at the center of the city’s main square. [more]

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Co-sponsored by the Department of Religious Diversity and the Max Planck Research Group “Empires of Memory“ [more]

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Like any city of its size and longevity (but, then, is there any other city of both its size and longevity?), Istanbul can only be described by way of a series of contrasts that both demand and defy reconciliation: both palimpsest of historical strata and kaleidoscope of the contemporary; both text to be interpreted and object that frustrates interpretation; both brand commodity and site of silenced memories; both consumerist utopia and dystopian urban noir; both target of political-economic projects and uneven topography of powers past and present; both mundane lifeworld and myth; both the reflective nostalgia of lugubrious hüzün and the restorative nostalgia of Neo-Ottoman pomp; both May 1st and May 27th; both Gezi and Çamlıca. [more]

Conference at the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Department of Ethics, Law and Politics • Recent years have provided us with new images of a world in which persons can interact almost seamlessly regardless of distance. Various private and public institutions draw on changing means of communication and transport that seem to transcend particular spaces and times. Concepts such as liquid democracy suggest the revolutionary potential of digital media for our thinking about politics. At the same time, we are also witnessing an unbroken and even growing focus on securing territorial borders. [more]

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We welcome you to the Symposium on Irfan Ahmad’s bookReligion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace (University of North Carolina Press, 2017 and Oxford University Press, Delhi) [more]

Workshop organized in cooperation with the “Local refugee politics” working groupof the Netzwerk Flüchtlingsforschung. [more]

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Workshop co-organized by Matthias Koenig (University of Göttingen & MPI MMG) and Kiyoteru Tsutsui (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor). ▪ This workshop forms part of a collaborative project that examines how legitimatingprinciples of nation-states have changed since the emergence of nation-states in the late eighteenthcentury by analyzing written constitutions. [more]