Chocolate and Surveillance: Modern Convergences

by Robert Imre, Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University, Finland I love sportszelet. Always have. The slightly dry chocolate, with just a hint of rum flavour, and the off-normal rectangular size of 25 grams, always appealed to me, especially as a child. Being different to the chocolates that were around where I grew up in a suburb of Toronto, Canada, made it even more appealing; something unique. My earliest memory of the green label was eating the chocolates after some…

Religious socialization of a new generation in Georgia and Croatia

In Central and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1989-1991 marked a watershed. Political monopoly and planned economy were exchanged with political pluralism and capitalist economies. At the same time, from total suppression, or tight control and monitoring, a religious ‘marketplace’ appeared with the rewriting of constitutions and reinstating religious freedom, in which various traditional Churches wanted to strengthen their positions and influence. Religious organizations attained a larger role in public life. There was also a substantial increase in religious…

From another planet: Childhood experiences of foreignness in communist Romania

Written by Mihaela Enache Mihaela has worked in the education field for more than three decades, as a teacher in the early childhood and primary sectors, as well as a lecturer and a professional learning facilitator. At present, she is a PhD candidate at the University of Auckland. Having immigrated to New Zealand in 2001, she found a passion in culture and diversity studies, teacher identity and volunteer work in the community. She is actively involved with the Romanian community…

Un/Doing Collective Biography

In September and October 2019, our memory workshops ran across 4 sites - Berlin, Riga, Helsinki and Mexico City. We were excited to meet participants in person after getting to know everyone a little bit through online workshops and our online workspace on Slack. Alongside generating memory stories through sharing, discussion and writing, we also incorporated site-specific arts-based experiments and visits to exhibitions and theater. We decided to use collective biography (Davies and Gannon, 2006) as a methodology to produce…