SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS
Emerging Transnational Governmentality
In South East Europe:
Intermediaries and translation in interstitial spaces
MULTI-LEVEL GOVERNANCE WORKSHOP 3
The Institute of Economics, Zagreb;
The South East European Research Centre of City College, Thessaloniki and the
University of Sheffield, UK;
Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Zagreb
Stubičke
toplice, near
Friday 28 – Sunday
30 April
This workshop aims to:
• continue exploration of Multi-Level Governance in SEE utilising multi-disciplinary perspectives;
• focus specifically on Intermediaries and Translation as emerging forms of transnational governmentality in SEE, through theory and case examples;
• develop an innovative set of reflexive methodologies to capture key, under- researched aspects of transnational governmentality in SEE;
• develop ongoing proposals for bids for research funding and funding to develop a research network;
• plan the next steps of the research network including possible publications and a conference in May 2006.
Background
A first inter-disciplinary research workshop on multi-level governance in South-Eastern Europe, organised by the Institute of Economics, Zagreb and SEERC, was held in Zagreb on 4 – 5 February 2005. A second workshop, funded by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung on 'South-Eastern Europe, Governmentalities and the Politics of Scale' was held in Stubicke toplice, near Zagreb on 11-12 November 2005. The focus of both workshops was on how to understand new forms of governmentalities emerging in South East Europe.
The second workshop concluded with a strong sense that South East Europe is an extremely rich space of 'in-betweenness', of emerging transnational governmentality, of international 'development' discourse, of EU influence, and of post-colonial geographies. Within this workshop, a group emerged committed to further work, networking and research proposal development on ‘Intermediaries and translation in interstitial spaces’ (IT IS).
This Workshop
The proposed third workshop, again funded by Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, takes further concerns and debates around transnational governmentality and in particular the role of policy consultants, experts, and 'brokers'. These agents represent an important signifying practice for new forms of governmentalities; they are located in translocal, interstitial spaces; and their work requires critical scrutiny in terms of their political, cultural, social, and discursive role.
Crucial issues of changing governance, the uncritical importation of models, processes of 'agencification', and the use of sub-contracting, all point to the need for critical analyses and research. The workshop will explore ways of understanding this policy and practice space, where policy consultants and experts are seen not in an apolitical and uncritical sense of their provision of 'technical' knowledge, but instead in the sense of being intermediaries and interlocutors. The workshop brings together researchers and activist/ practitioners interested in relationality, interstitiality and liminality, which is assumed to be reflexive of processes of new scalarities, spatialities, new forms of governmentalities, power and compliance, discursive practices, and knowledge systems.
The workshop is not seeking to find new certainties but, rather, through dialogue, is hoping to explore fluidities, transformations, new vocabularies, and unusual trajectories. The workshop focuses on theory, research and practice which seeks to investigate new and less obvious sites or fields of practices. The workshop allows for exchanges of views, of theories, of methods and of case studies, in a form conducive to future research networking. Whilst emphasising the need for research and knowledge about this relatively under-researched set of issues, the workshop will also explore issues relating to the democratic deficits of new policy spaces and the need for more democratic and accountable structures and processes.
The original document with the Meeting Agenda are available in PDF format.
