Change & Resistance

Change and Resistance
An International Conference on Social Transformations and Education
Newsletter 4

Dear Collegues,

This is our 'final call' for registration and payment of the conference fee. We are currently working on the update of the conference programme, and we urgently need the confirmation of participation from those persons who have not paid the fee yet. Please e-mail us as soon as possible. Please be informed that due to the technical problems with communication via our e-mail server, which have caused many delays, we have resigned from the increased fee applicable after April 1st. If you have not paid yet, please use the standard fee (EUR 250 or 150, wth 20% discounts for students and doctoral students). Please refer to the hotel booking page for details concerning the choice of hotels and total payment calculation. We are looking forward to seeing you in Gdansk soon.

For the Conference Committee,
Tomasz Szkudlarek
University of Gdansk

Newsletter 3

Dear Collegues,

We are receiving information that some of you have not obtained letters of confirmation concerning the acceptance of conference papers. Probably the letters have been rejected by anti-spam filters. We apologize for the confusion and all problems this may have caused. Herewith, we inform that your paper has been accepted for presentation and we kindly ask you to proceed with registration, hotel reservation and payment procedures according to the instruction on the conference website.

Please be informed that due to the delay caused by technical problems the standard fee 250 € or 150 € will be accepted until the end of April 2007. After May the 1st the fee will be increased by 50 €. The deadline for hotel reservation in April 15th. After that day we will not be able to assist you in booking hotel rooms. The preliminary programme of the conference will be available from April the 1st .

We are looking forward to seeing you in Gdansk.

With kind regards
Tomasz Szkudlarek

Newsletter 2
Dear Colleagues,

We have completed the process of registration. Over 70 abstracts have been accepted for presentation. We have also received a number of passive participation registrations. The participants come from over 20 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Oceania, and Africa / Middle East. We are very happy about such a broad representation of the global community of social thinkers and practitioners!

Our current work focuses on logistics and organisational issues. The number of accepted papers suggests that apart from plenary meetings, we will set up four parallel thematic sessions. In the following weeks, you will receive further information.

Soon we will ask you to chose your accommodation. There will be a list of regular *** hotels, as well as less expensive ** hotels and hostels, and a form in which you will calculate your total conference fee and accommodation payment. The form (an Excel file) you will have to send as an e-mail attachment to our colleague who deals with organisational issues. Please do not transfer any money before you get individual confirmation on the availability of rooms in your chosen place, and on the correctness of your calculation!

In order to book properly, you will need to know exact dates of your arrival and departure from Gdansk. Please note that apart from regular airline connections, there are many cheap flights to Gdansk operated from a number of cities in Europe. These are sometimes difficult to find via regular booking services. To learn which operators fly to Gdansk from destinations in Europe, you may wish to visit the Gdansk airport web site at http://www.airport.gdansk.pl/service/en/strgl.php

In the beginning of March we will publish the list of accepted papers and their abstracts, as well as a general outline of the programme of the whole conference.

Please let us know if you need written confirmation of the acceptance of your proposal e.g. for the purpose of visa or grant applications. Do not forget to provide an accurate mailing address then.

Newsletter 1

Change and Resistance: An International Conference on Social Transformations and Education
will be held at the University of Gdansk, Poland, in 15-17 June 2007. The conference will create a forum for debates
on current processes of learning, adaptation and resistance taking place in rapidly changing societies.
We hope for a continuation of debates initiated in previous meetings devoted to social transformations
in post-communist countries in Hangzhou, China, 2004, and Wolverhampton, England, 2005.

The venue of the conference, the City of Gdansk, is a significant place in European history, and
in the recent history of social struggles in particular. It is here that "Solidarność" movement, which
vastly contributed to the end of oppressive political regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, was initiated.

The problem of current social changes in post-socialist states may be illustrated by the present condition
of the birthplace of "Solidarność" - the Gdansk Shipyard, whose workers won the battle for dignity
and freedom and lost their jobs in return. The Shipyard still exists and it builds vessels, but it employs
a fraction of its former manpower. Its huge premises have been sold to developers and are to be turned
into a Young Town district. Along with the on-going industrial production, and with planning of the layout
of the new town, the Shipyard is also a place of numerous activities of independent artists who use its
empty halls as exhibition or concert venues. Many of those activities make use of the haunting aura
of the place, where bronze plaques with the head of Lenin can still be found on red-brick walls shaking
in the thuds of rock music, marked with 1980 strikes graffitis; where posh cars park outside yacht docks
and security guards suspiciously watch artists carrying their installations. Skeptics say that when the bids
are over, and when building machines start their work on the streets of the new town, artists are as certain
to disappear from the area as workers are.

During the conference, we are planning a visit to the Gdansk Shipyard with its interactive museum
showing the history of political struggles of Polish workers and intellectuals. If conditions permit,
we may also have a session of the conference in one of the shipyard's halls.

The suggested issues to which the debates will be devoted are as follows:

- Gdansk and other places: local geographies of change
- New social structures, new social divisions
- What and how we learn: meanings of social transformations
- Post-communism as a global condition: The world with no alternatives?
- Populism
- The discourse of post-communism: Who speaks and why?
- The missing language? Marxism and social critique after the fall of Berlin Wall
- Living in post-socialist states: Hope, disillusion, post-communist nostalgia...
- Art and the aura of change
- Representations: insider's and outsider's perspectives on social change