BOMOCULT Conference 2024: Resilience in Times of Uncertainty

The idea of social resilience has become a buzzword circulating across academic, political, activist, social media and other circles. The popularity of this concept can be understood as a response to challenges and “wicked problems” that in these uncertain times seem to dominate everyday life. Within this context, social resilience is narrated as a resource that promotes adaptability and an ability to cope with adversity. In the social sciences and humanities we find numerous cases where resilience is revealed, such as borderlands, border communities and situations where the arts and artistic creation stimulate social-emotional growth and help overcome traumatic experiences. 

Interest in resilience has been spurred by socio-political impacts of anxieties and insecurities. These are captured, for example, in narrations of “geographies of discontent” in which a sense of deprivation related to economic issues, questions of community identity and a lack of wellbeing feeds into anxieties that threaten social cohesion. Moreover, the Covid pandemic, political crises related to migration, and wider security concerns generated by the Russia-Ukraine War have heightened the salience of thinking in terms of resilience.

At the same time, resilience is not a straightforward concept that offers ready solutions to societal challenges. Resilience requires that we work with our uncertainties and recognise the changing nature of the world. Thinking in terms of social resilience potentially situates us as navigators and attenuators of difference either real, imagined or manufactured. From the viewpoint of Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters, we can relate resilience to flexible understandings of borders and greater recognition of the interconnections that exist across social, cultural, political difference and geographical distance. Indeed, when we reflect on social, cultural and political borders, rather than just taking them for granted, we are forced to think in complex and creative ways. 

This year’s BoMoCult conference will build on the ideas and address questions related to conceptualisations, critical interrogations and practical applications of social resilience. 

The conference will be an on-site event at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu campus. Welcome!

Program

Thursday, 10 October, room F100, Futura Building

12.15–12.20 Conference Opening

12.20–13.15 Keynote: Borderlands as laboratories: testing our understanding of resistance and resilience. Karin Dean, School of Humanities, Tallinn University 

Chair: James W. Scott, University of Eastern Finland (UEF)

13.15–15.15 Panel 1: Resilient Border Ecologies, Chair: tbc

Lukas Novotny, Jan Evangelista Purkyne University: "Cross-border Resilience and Wildfire Risk Management: The case of Czech-Saxony Swizerland"

Dominique van de Klundert, University of Rijeka and UEF: “Dark Sky Islands as a Planetary Network Resilience”

Alicja Fajfer, UEF: “Narrating Disaster: Searching for Closure across the Iron Curtain”

Teemu Oivo, UEF and Olga Dovbysh, University of Helsinki: “Russian Grassroots Environmental Communication on Contested Territories”.

15.15–15.45 Coffee

15.45–17.15 Panel 2: Resilient Lives, Chair: tbc

Lena Englund, UEF: “Writing Resilience and Redemption in Contemporary Autobiography”

Anu Pauliina Morikawa, UEF: “Existential Support in the University Community”

Nader Abazari (UEF), Jonna Ojalammi (UEF), Jessie Dezutter (KU Leuven), and Suvi-Maria Saarelainen (UEF): ”The Silent Struggle: Crisi of Meaning among Older Adults”.

17.30–19.00 BOMOCULT Networking Event (pre-registration necessary)
Agora Café, Agora Building, Yliopistokatu 4


Friday, 11 October

Room F101, Futura Building
10.00–12.00 Panel 3: Migration and Resilience, Chair: tbc

Tania Bazzani and Claudia Maria Hoffmann, European University Viadrina: “Resilience as Panacea? A Critical Assessment of EU Policies”

Teele Jänes, UEF: ”Resilience with the System – Perspectives of Migration Officials and Stakeholders in the Baltic Asylum Landscape”

Mert Cangönül, Koç University and University of Amsterdam: “Navigating Border Confrontations through Schengen Visa Application Companies: Processes and Consequences”

Alexandra Simon-López, UEF: “Poetic Resilience in Dorothea Grünzweig's Poetry Collection Plötzlich alles da (2020)”

12.00–13.00 Lunch Break

Room F100, Futura Building
13.00–14.30 Panel 4: Contested Territories, Chair: tbc

James W. Scott, UEF: “Transcarpathia – Borderland Resilience in Times of Conflict"

Larisa Leisiö, UEF: ”A Linguistic Anthropological Approach to ‘Border’”

Dirk van Rens, UEF: ”’When He Comes, He Will Be Like an Englishman’: Space, Spy Fiction, and Englishness in Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight”

14.30–15.00 Coffee

15.00–15.15 Closing words: tbc

More information and possible program updates will be available at https://sites.uef.fi/bomocult-conference/

Please confirm your participation on 2 October 2024 at the latest.

In case of any questions, do not hesitate to contact uef-bomocult@uef.fi.