April 18-20, 2019, Saint-Petersburg

International conference

"The layered cake of neighbourness: the neighbourness so close, so distant, and so diverse"

Wiil take place at 37, Bolshoy Prospekt PS , Vedensky Hotel
On April 18-20, 2019, the Center for Independent Sociological Research with the support of the Koné Foundation (Finland) is holding an international conference dedicated to the phenomena of neighbourhood and neighbourness in their various manifestations and scales.
Registration for the conference
On the one hand, the theme of neighbourhood and neighbor relationships is rather traditional and evokes consistent interest. On the other hand, nowadays this phenomenon becomes more and more complicated and diverse – it acquires new forms (for example, co-living, digital format of communication, etc.), includes new agents and institutionalized intermediaries (insurance companies, rental agencies), and constantly transforms following new arrangements of housing and cohabitation, new life styles, and new technologies. Social research on neighbouring also becomes more attentive and nuanced, bringing to the fore the role of sounds and smells or non-humans (such as cars) in the production of neighbourness. At the conference we hope to reveal and discuss such transformations and address some of the new forms of "the old" theme.
We are in interested in discussing how the cultures and practices of neighbouring has been changing through time in the post-Soviet space; how neighbour relationships and the role of the Neighbour figure has been transforming.
Neighbourness as a phenomenon with an explicit spatial dimension can be observed at different scales. At the conference, we would like to step beyond the scale of 'close' co-habitation and discuss neighbourness in the neighbourhoods of various scales: in a village, in a metropolitan city, at a national level (border neighbourness).

The theme of neighbourness is initially interdisciplinary and attracts scholars of different research and disciplinary backgrounds. We invite ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians to take part in the conference.
These are some of the themes to be discussed at the conference:

  • Variety of approaches and conceptual frameworks in the studies on neighbourness: neighbourness as the redefining of public/private boundaries; solidarities and conflicts of neighbourness; social diversity and co-existence/co-habitation/co-presences in a neighbourhood;
  • "Help yourself", "Who if not us…": mobilized neighbourness as a form of civic society;
  • Contemporary transformation of the phenomenon and new forms of neighbourhoods: digital neighbourhoods, new practices of neighbouring (sharing, co-living), intermediaries in neighbour relationships;
  • Infrastructure and neighbour economy;
  • Neighbourness through time: the influence of historic memory on neighbour relationships;
  • Neighbourness in artistic metaphors and contemporary art.
Tentative programme
37, Bolshoy Prospekt PS , Vedensky Hotel
April 18th 2019
14.30 - 15.00 Registration. Mobile exhibition of the photo contest "The layered cake of neighbourness"

Hall (A. Block)
15.00 - 15.40 Opening of the conference, presentation of the project "The layered cake of neighbourness" (In English)

Hall (A. Block)
Section 1.1 Neighbouring through time (English)

Moderator - Elena Bogdanova

16.00 - 16.30 Elena Nikiforova (CISR, St. Petersburg) "Neighbouring through time": the development of the metaphor

16.30 - 17.00 Ekaterina Melnikova (Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, (Kunstkamera) "The Finnish Heritage on the Russian Side: 'Shame' and 'Guit' as Cultural Capital"
17.00 - 17.30 Tamar Rapoport (Hebrew University, Jerusalem) Peter Carrier (Georg Eckert Institute Braunschweig) Performing Neighbourliness with Stumbling Stones: the Symbolic Reversal of an Unneighbourly Genocidal Past

Coffee-break: 17.30-18.00

18.00 - 19.00 Lecture by Margarethe Kusenbach Going and Getting Along: Exploring Neighbourhood and Neighbouring through Mobile Methods (English)

Margarethe Kusenbach is Associate Professor and Associate Chair at the Department of Sociology, University of South Florida, Tampa.

April 19th 2019
April 20th 2019
With support of
* By decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation, the CISR is included in the register of non-profit organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent (7-FL "On non-profit organizations")