Call for Papers

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.6.2.0115
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Date: 01 December 2014
• Pages: 115-116

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CALL FOR PAPERS

Exploring change in Cuba:

invention, innovation, renewal, renovation and new integrations.

Towards an understanding of the process in Europe

Academic conference organized for 11 and 12 June, 2015, in Paris, France

Organization: Blandine Destremau (CNRS, EHESS IRIS);

Nils Graber (EHESS, Cermes 3); and Jérôme Leleu (EHESS, CEMI)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF WORK

Cuba is going through an intense period of change, driven by reforms to lift the country out

of the economic crisis that began in the 1990s. This process of change accelerated with the

arrival to the presidency of Raúl Castro in 2008. In the same period, Cuba’s international

integration has increased, through the role it plays in international organizations, the

multiplication of bilateral agreements with countries in South America but also with Russia

and China, and the re-negotiation of relations with the European Union within a context of

questioning the ‘Common Position’.

Social science research on Cuba carried out in France and in Europe, is multiplying,

although remains scattered. Our ambition is to propose a multidisciplinary forum for

exchange and ref‌lection, including young and senior researchers from France and Europe,

about the ways in which the changes in Cuba can be analysed. Through this meeting, we

will try to generate a dialogue between quantitative and qualitative approaches, micro and

macro, ‘committed’ research and that integrated into the academic setting, in a thoughtful

approach to the changes in Cuba based upon f‌ield work. We will also welcome work from

historical perspectives, and other branches of the social sciences, which are interrogating the

current dynamics in Cuba.

Our thoughtful approach will adopt two orientations:

At the methodological level, this conference will question the practice of research in the

social sciences. How does the researcher access data, and how does his/her own experience

affect their analysis? How is macro and micro research articulated, transparently or hidden?

What of case studies, personal testimonies and stories of the small and ordinary? Is there

a signif‌icant gap between ordinary practices and policy decisions and how to approach to

epistemological and methodological level?

In the analytical and conceptual f‌ield, we will try to ref‌lect on the interpretations of what, it

is said that changes in the light of the key words of the debate in Cuba: Is it only ‘invention’,

a term in Cuba in the daily practices aimed more generally at solving very specif‌ic problems?

Can we talk about ‘innovation, social, political, economic, ecological, etc., referring to a

creative adaptation of structural frameworks, which have kept changing and adjusting

since their introduction in the 1960s? Later, we will consider these initiatives, in themselves

and their effects. Are they effecting a ‘renewal’ – or ‘update’ to use an off‌icial term – of

the Cuban socialist system? How are research and development positions built? Are they

constructed on epistemological and methodological grounds or upon conviction? To whom

they are intended?

This conference will have three levels of analysis:

1) The experiences of the actors in the context of current changes: inventions, innovations?

What people do, what initiatives – daring, investment, solidarity, participation, cooperation,

culture – to take advantage of open spaces for institutional change? What are the means

to achieving that? How do the actors found during f‌ield work set out their experiences,

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