Informality Research Days in Rīga

09 October 2018

Press Releases

The attitude towards informal practices in Latvia is complicated – they are both taken for granted and very often seen as condemnable. With an aim to study and spotlight various ways of “getting things done” both in Latvia and abroad, from 18 to 22 October lecturers of the Master’s study programme “Social Anthropology” at Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) will be organising Informality Research Days. During this event the variety of informal practices in the contemporary world and their interaction with formal institutions will be identified.

Within the framework of Informality Research Days, an international conference titled Tracing Informality in Southeast and Northeast Europe: Anthropological Perspectives will be held on 18 and 19 October. Based on social anthropological studies, the conference aims to trace the interplay between formal institutions and informal practices in Southeast and Northeast Europe and discuss the suitableness of categories of formality and informality. Both commonalities and differences in everyday aspects in both regions will be highlighted by thus raising the comparative understanding of social processes in these parts of Europe, including Latvia.

On 18 October, the introductory lecture of the conference will be conducted by lecturer from the University of Göttingen (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen) Carna Brkovic – one of the rising stars of European anthropology. In the lecture she will put forward an intriguing idea – instead of seeing Eastern Europe as catching up with the West, we could think of it as a region that points to possible global futures.

Whereas on 19 October an international group of researchers will gather to present their studies on the variety of daily informal practices in Southeast and Northeast Europe and compare processes in both regions.

The conference is organised with the support of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office, in cooperation with Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the Latvian Association of Anthropologists. The financial supporter of the conference is the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), from funds provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany. For the conference programme visit the conference website: https://www.rsu.lv/apzinot-neformalitati-da-un-za-eiropa

The conference is organised by the Social Anthropology Program of Riga Stradiņš University in collaboration with Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and the Latvian Association of Anthropologists, with the support of the Baltic-German University Liaison Office.

Alongside the conference, within the frame of Informality Research Days, a presentation of the recently published The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality will be held on 22 October. Researchers from Latvia were among the authors of articles, for example, on envelope wages. Its editor-in-chief, Professor Alena Ledeneva from University College London, who is seen as a leading expert in the field of informality in the world, will visit Rīga and speak about the encyclopaedia project. The presentation will be followed by a discussion. Everyone is welcome to participate.

For more information about the event visit the RSU website: https://www.rsu.lv/notikumi/globalas-neformalitates-enciklo….