ABSTRACT
Based at the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University, it sought to explore ‘Sub-cultures as Integrative Forces in East-Central Europe. The main idea was a new approach to the notion of ‘sub-culture’ as a heuristic means of understanding and studying non-dominant ethnic groups which have often been neglected or misunderstood in twentieth-century East-Central European history. East-Central Europe, broadly understood, is a prime example of a region that had been traditionally defined by extraordinary ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity. The cataclysmic social and political upheavals in the region’s twentieth-century history fundamentally challenged this diversity. Use of the term ‘sub-cultures’ is intended to better understand more fluid and practical forms of identification, as opposed to of ‘identity’, as more conventionally seen, in reified and static terms – which better reflects the historically determined experiences of certain groups in East-Central Europe.
