International Conference: „Wartime Occupations in Europe (20th-21st centuries). Socio-historical perspectives“

The international conference „Wartime Occupations in Europe (20th-21st centuries). Socio-historical perspectives“ will take place at CERCEC-EHESS in Paris on the 7th and 8th of November 2024. This conference is part of activities conducted by the “War and Society in Central and Eastern Europe (20th-21st centuries)” Research Alliance (EURETES, EHESS – MESR) that brings together CERCEC-EHESS, Charles University in Prague and Lviv Center of Urban History. It is supported by the Osteuropa Network of the Max Weber Foundation, the German Historical Institute in Paris and the Marc Bloch Center (Berlin). 

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The Russian occupation of Ukrainian territory since 2014 has brought into stark focus 20th century experiences and legacies of occupation in Europe. They are central in national memory cultures while generating polemics and conflicts up to this day, which are not resolved, but often enflamed, by the large body of historical research that has explored all the nuances and “greyness” of these difficult pasts. Beyond discrete case studies, we lack a clear understanding of the specificities of modern occupations, of the ways that people experience them, how they transform social, economic, political relations.

What happens when a territory “is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army” during on-going international military conflict, when authority is split between the “legitimate power” and its exercise “in fact” by that power’s military enemy, as defined by the Hague and Geneva Conventions?

Much of the discourse and expectations surrounding this question continue to be shaped by the post-1945 diptych of “collaboration” and “resistance” as the two emblematic responses to foreign occupation and consequently the measure of all social behavior under occupation. Both terms became loaded not just with political, but with moral meaning, providing the bedrock of European post-war memory and mythmaking. Both come with expectations of legal retribution/recognition. This framework has become so entrenched in European memory and political culture as to seem natural, although it is reductive and historically situated. It also largely ignores the dynamic and fluid aspects of occupation, which is defined by much of the same uncertainty and risk as the war experience itself. It thus has limited value as either guide for empirical research or as conceptual framework to understand the complexity of social experiences of wartime occupation. Historical research has highlighted many of these aspects, turning to “attentism”, “grey areas”, forms of “passive resistance” and “cooperation”, without succeeding in providing an alternative conceptual framework for understanding this foundational experience of modern European societies.

The aim of this international conference is to explore ways to research and conceptualize the social experience of occupation beyond this post-1945 framework, through interdisciplinary discussion between historians, sociologists, and other social scientists working on contemporary European societies, within a comparative conversation including different occupations in all regions of Europe during different conflicts. We aim to shed light on the structural conditions, shifting dynamics, social actors, and orders, as well as lived experiences of wartime occupation as a social phenomenon.

We define wartime occupations as social situations, where a belligerent exercises authority over the territory and population of a country with which it is actively at war. These situations are also marked by the primacy of military actors and objectives, the presence of violence, a high degree of unsettledness, as well as the war-induced uncertainty over future outcomes.

The language of the conference will be English.

Location & Date:
CERCEC-EHESS, Paris, November 7-8, 2024

For further information click here

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