Internationale Konferenz
Volunteering and Civic Engagement in Co-Transformation. Perspectives from Eastern and Western Europe, 1970-2000

Project Volunteering in Local Communities between Late Socialism and Liberal Capitalism: The History of Volunteer Fire Departments in Germany and East Central Europe, 1980-2000: Prof. Dr. Thomas Lindenberger (HAIT, Dresden), Dr. Ana Kladnik (HAIT, Dresden), Steffi Unger M.A. (HAIT, Dresden), Prof. Dr. Philipp Ther (University of Vienna) and Mojmír Stránský, M.A. (University of Vienna) in cooperation with Dr. Nicole Kramer (Goethe University Frankfurt) and PD Dr. Christine Krüger (Justus Liebig University Gießen).

Historical research on participation, civic associations and their volunteer activities has recently developed into a lively discussed field of investigation. After the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe, studies of transformation research usually come forward with the diagnosis of consistently lower levels of volunteering when compared with Western societies. However, some scholars have shown that communist authorities did not abolish organised volunteerism altogether, but, on the contrary, used it as one among other institutional bases on which to construct a socialist society and to bind less committed sections of the population to the system. With regard to Western democracies, on the other hand, scholarly interest in volunteering has resurged considerably in view of its 'structural transformation' observed since the late 1980s: new types of organisations (NGOs, self-help groups), new forms of activism and, more recently, the virtualisation of participation through electronic networking, have generated a new type of engaged citizen (or ‘volunteer’), allegedly motivated by individualist needs of self-realisation and post-materialist values rather than merely by traditional values of solidarity and the longing for community. Initially perceived as a general crisis of civic engagement and associational life by political and economic elites alike, this observation triggered a broad interest by governments in reassessing the role and transformation of volunteering under the conditions of deregulated markets, globalised economies and shrinking welfare budgets.

This conference aims at bringing together scholars working on voluntary action history in different regimes and at shedding light on the transformative phase of voluntary action in a comparative and transnational perspective.

Supported by German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG)

The workshop is open to the public and admission free.