Research seminar CPES

                                                                   Research seminar – CPES

22 november, 16.00 – 18.00, Calypso Botez

Anca Dohotariu: Family Framing in Romania after EU Accession. An Analysis of Silenced Problems within Strategic Policy Documents

Discussant: Ov. Cristian Norocel

Abstract: Family definitions and the diversity of understandings of the institution of family across time and place have been the object of various social science and multidisciplinary investigations. Although scholars have largely interrogated what the family is and how to analyse it, they have paid less attention to what is not said and what remains silenced about family and family-related problems. Starting from the assumption that silencing is a discourse-constitutive feature, this article investigates family frames and inherent silences within Romanian public policy documents. The empirical material consists of a specific collection of sources, namely national strategies for child protection, care for older people, employment, and equal opportunities, adopted after Romania’s accession to the European Union. The analysis interrogates how national strategies frame family issues and what remains silenced and obscured within this relevant collection of policy documents. It identifies various ways policymakers draw attention to certain points of view concerning family life to the detriment of other perspectives and angles of investigation. Additionally, it uncovers the unspoken and silently accepted correlation of the family with vulnerability, poverty, and invisibility, which can contribute to explaining the domestic tendency to marginalise the family as a political topic and to elaborate inconsistent public action related to it.

Anca Dohotariu holds a PhD in Sociology from EHESS Marseille and she is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest. Her publications and research interests are related to care, social welfare, family policies, family studies and gender. She has been WG1 leader within CA18119 “Who Cares in Europe?”. Together with Adriana Zaharijević and Joanna Wawrzyniak, she has recently coordinated a special issue of the East European Politics and Societies and Cultures, “Who Cares for Families? Narrative(s) of Return in Postsocialist Europe”. Her latest publication is Politicising and Gendering Care for Older People. Multidisciplinary Perspectives from Europe (edited by Anca Dohotariu, Ana Paula Gil and Ľubica Voľanská), Manchester University Press, forthcoming in August 2024.  

Ov Cristian Norocel (DrSocSci in Political Science, University of Helsinki, Finland) is Associate Professor (docent) in Gender Studies at Lund University, Sweden. Norocel applies an intersectional lens to issues of far-right political communication and anti-gender mobilisation. He examines these phenomena in a comparative perspective, both in Northern and in Eastern Europe. Norocel has published in such international peer-reviewed journals as Big Data & Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, Men & Masculinities, Problems of Post-Communism, Social Media + Society. His research profile: https://portal.research.lu.se/en/persons/ov-cristian-norocel

The seminar is organized within the research mobility project MCT-0014, financed by UEFISCDI (https://cpes.unibuc.ro/cpes/proiecte)

The seminar is open to CPES members and their guests.