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Binding and Breaking. Creating Communities of Friendship and Patronage / Gemeinschaften - Freundschaft und Patronage zwischen Bindungen und Brüchen.
4-6 October 2012
A 3-day-conference hosted by the Research Group GRK 1288 of the University of Freiburg, "Friends, Patrons, Clients"
Venue: Haus zur Lieben Hand, Freiburg i. Br., Germany
The conference is open to all interested participants. There is no conference fee, but participants should pre-register at http://www.grk-freundschaft.uni-freiburg.de/Tagung1/Anmeldung by the end of September.
A full programme and further details can be found on the conference website: http://www.grk-freundschaft.uni-freiburg.de/Tagung1/Tagung?set_language=en
Subject areas: History, Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Ethnology
What are the constitutive elements of different forms of social relationships? What practices of inclusion and exclusion come into play in the formation and preservation of groups and how are they maintained and negotiated symbolically? How are bonds of trust and loyalty established and sustained? How do communities deal with discord and conflict? How is discontinuity dealt with?
The second conference organized by the research group ‘Friends, Patrons, Clients’ aims to shift the focus from the perspective of dyadic relationships to communities and groups. The conference is subdivided into four panels, focusing on emotions, conflict, trust and loyalties. We welcome contributions from both the Humanities and the Social Sciences and case studies throughout different cultures, times and geographical spaces.
Within the context of research on friendship and patronage, this conference does not only focus on practices and semantics of belonging but also takes a closer look at how communities and individual bonds are constantly re-negotiated and disrupted. Current research widely agrees that trust, loyalty and mutual/shared emotions are the common ground/basis of symmetrical and asymmetrical social relations. We want to discuss how communities come into being, what sustains them and gives them coherence, how they negotiate identities and in how they deal with conflicts and challenges to their underlying structures and modes of self-representation.
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