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A female "Lieu de memoire": A knowledge base on state gender politics in Austria goes online
The aim of the project is to provide archival material on women's politics in Austria adapted to online-media exigencies. Unpublished holdings covering the last three decades of women's politics are made digitally accessible, a commented selection is put online. The most crucial issues are abortion conflict, debate and information on the wage gap, family law reform, domestic violence and equal sharing of care work among others. They will be presented and made intelligible more clearly than in traditional social science presentation with authentic documents, pictures, posters, and pamphlets. Historical narratives will provide additional information and context.
Visitors of the knowledge base will be able to download various items in order to use them for own activities: as teachers, students or just for their own education. Thus, we hope to establish and support a new transfer of knowledge and material between archives and people interested in the past.
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Family Law and Gender Policies: Comparative Historical Perspectives on the Codification of Private Lives
The project deals with the development of family law in Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and their respective predecessor states during the period from 1945 to 2000 in a comparative perspective. The study focuses on the interactions between public discourse and the establishment of legal norms, whereby the following aspects are crucial: we are interested in the political actors involved in the public discussion and the legislative process. We focus both on the various actors' mode of organization and on their strategies for structuring policies. Furthermore, we are interested in the extent to which political interest groups are able to influence political deliberations and law making. At the same time, the significance of political framework conditions for the possibility of participation in public debate and in the structuring of the development of law will be elucidated. The comparison of states with different political systems and forms of society forestalls the danger of universalizing the research results. The project analyses the concepts of family and society advocated by special interest groups and reflected in codified family norms in a historical longitudinal study.
In our research we will start from legal initiatives. The material produced in the framework of the family law discourse will be examined using historical discourse analysis; interviews with important protagonists will be conducted.
The comparative reconstruction of the development of family law in the European states in question is a novelty in historical research. The period of investigation ranging into the year 2000 enables multidimensional inquiries that go beyond an East-West dichotomy, providing an important contribution to transnational European historical research.
Project management: Maria Mesner
Staff: Sonja Niederacher, Heidi Niederkofler, Andrea Salingova, Veronika Wöhrer
Programme of the workshop on November 23-24, 2007 
pdf 49 kb
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The Policies of Reproduction at the Turn of the 21st Century. The Cases of Finland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Austria, and the US Maria Mesner, Gudrun Wolfgruber (Eds.) Studienverlag 2006, ISBN-10: 3-7065-4088-6, ISBN-13: 978-3-7065-4088-9 |
German version: Kinder kriegen – Kinder haben. Analysen im Spannungsfeld zwischen staatlichen Politiken und privaten Lebensentwürfen Gudrun Wolfgruber, Margit Niederhuber, Heidi Niederkofler, Maria Mesner (Eds.) Studienverlag 2006, ISBN 3-7065-4073-8 |
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The volume provides a comprehensive and sophisticated consideration of „reproduction“, an issue which is debated very controversally and emotionally in many societies. Therefore, this book is a path-breaking contribution to the booming field of Gender Studies. The volume is organized into 14 contributions on reproductive policies in Austria, Finland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and the US. Analyses of political strategies around child-care as well as population growth are combined for each case study in order to arrive at a more profound understanding and innovative perspectives on the complex relations between policies geared towards families, gender relations and population on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.
The collection of very diverse situations and societies is complemented by an umbrella of two essays focusing the relation between gender and nation as well as the role of (post)modern reproductive medicine.
Authors: Adriana Baban, Virginia Ferreira, Johanna Gehmacher, Linda Gordon, Teija Hautanen, Yelena Kulagina, Maria Mesner, Ritva Nätkin, Ann Shola Orloff, Livia Popescu, Silvia Portugal, Michele Rivkin-Fish, Aurelia Weikert und Maria Andrea Wolf.
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Translation: Paul Pasteur, Etre syndiqué(e) à l'ombre de la croix potencée. Corporatisme, syndicalisme, résistance en Autriche, 1934-1938, Rouen 2002.
Paul Pasteur is a professor of history at the University of Rouen and co-editor of the journal Austriaca. In his book Pasteur examines Austrian trade unions during the Austrofascist period.
After having been illegalized by the authoritarian corporatist regime Socialdemocratic, Communist as well as Nationalsocialist labor organizations were forced to go into hiding. In hard competition to each other they established company organizations, in order to win over the employees, while the Austrofascists required all workers to join the Christian corporatist organizations. Paul Pasteur describes these strongly differing groups with particular focus on their fields of conflict. Whereas most studies limit their attention to one ideological group, Pasteur includes all kinds of weltanschauungen. To date there is no similar historical analysis covering Austrian trade unions in such a broad perspective.
Sonja Niederacher is translating the book into German. This project is funded by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank.
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Economic Policies in Austria 1970–2000: Strategies, Results, Media Coverage
The project analyzes national political options, goals, and strategies which coined economic policies at state level in Austria from 1970 to 2000 in an international context. It looks at the professional backgrounds and motivating models of the political and economic elites who were involved in policy formulation and implementation, especially in labor market and financial policy. An additional research focus concerns the main areas of media coverage and its impact on policy-makers. Thereby the research team will address questions concerning the relationship between mass media and policy-makers on the basis of empirical research results.
Furthermore the project team will digitalize crucial records related to the research topic in order to make them accessible easier to the scientific community as well as to a broader public. In addition, by interviews with policy-makers of the period more information, knowledge and narratives will be recorded and put into the archives for future research.
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Vienna: Site of Remembrance 1945–1955–2005
The Bruno Kreisky Archives Foundation is in the possession of more than 2000 boxes of fairly unknown material on the role and significance of Vienna as catalytic agent in the political, social and economic processes during the early years of the so-called second republic of Austria. The project “Vienna: Site of Remembrance” will make these historical documents available/ accessible on-line for a wider audience, especially to scientific research, media, journalists and the public. In presenting primary sources within a context that describes as well as explains, new aspects of the more recent history of Vienna as a city and a region can be communicated to a non-scientific audience for the first time. The presentation will offer high-profile texts and pictures and will allow the reader to gain access not only to the historical background bur also to the story ‘behind' the document. Tips to further or similar sources, complimentary visual sources as well as further reading will complete the information. Thereby we want to enable a non-academic audience in particular a simple and accurate access to recent scientific historical research and results. Additionally, a number of tools will be offered to the reader for the construction and deconstruction of cultural remembrance and memories which have only been available to researchers and journalists, both active agents in the process of constructing sites of remembrance and collective memory.
Project management: Univ. Doz. Dr. Maria Mesner
Staff: Remigio Gazzari, Mag.a Li Gerhalter, DI Christiane Koch, Mag.a Sonja Niederacher
www.erinnerungsort.at
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Sweden–Austria: Two models in historical and contemporary comparison
in cooperation with the University of Skövde, Sweden
The goal of this project was to analyze the bilateral relations between Austria and Sweden. One theme that was compared is the initial, separate development of the “welfare state” since the 1940s and 1950s. Another theme of this research project was the international comparison of the different economic and political approaches. Selected themes (such as economic relations, social policy, European integration, neutrality and security policy, cooperation with information technology, such as national rules and development initiatives with respect to the “digital revolution,” the effects of globalization) were illuminated and directly compared from the Austrian and Swedish viewpoints. Very different political courses and economic developments were seen especially in the current neutrality policy as well as policy relating to the European integration process.
The report will be completed in 2008.
Project management: Univ. Prof. DDr. Oliver Rathkolb
Staff: Univ. Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Karlhofer, Dr. Peter Kreisky, Mag. Markus Marterbauer
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