Oscar Hemer - Conviviality at the Crossroads The Poetics and Politics of Everyday Encounters

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This book is a product of the research networkConviviality at the Crossroadsat Malm University, Sweden. It grew out of a casual collaboration between Malm University and Bard College Berlin in response to the large refugee migration from Syria to Europe in the early autumn of 2015. Sweden and Germany were at the time exceptions to the European rule and welcomed refugees. A first seminar in Berlin in November 2015, hosted by Kerry Bystrom and Bard College, was followed by a symposium (Transit Europe) in Malm in September 2016. In less than a year, the situation had dramatically changed; both Sweden and Germany had adopted restrictive migration policies, with border controls disrupting the formerly seamless passage between Denmark and Sweden. In 2016, the EU had moreover been rocked to its foundations by the British Brexit vote and, one year after our first seminar, Donald Trump won the US Presidential election.

At that time Malm University prepared for becoming a full research university and made an internal call for new trans-disciplinary research networks.Conviviality at the Crossroadswas one of the selected networks formalised in January 2017. Another research group was created around the notion of illiberalism and the resurging threats against (liberal) democracy. Addressing similar questions, this time from slightly different perspectives, the two networks decided to collaborate around a joint symposium on Conviviality and Illiberalism in September 2017, eventually joining forces in the application for a research programme,Rethinking Democracy(REDEM), with conviviality as one of its four thematic strands. As a result, the research platform REDEM was established at the Faculty of Culture and Society in 2019, and this volume is the first major publication under its aegis.

We are very pleased to publish this book through Open Access, thanks to the generous support provided by different bodies within Malm University, facilitated by Helena Stjernberg and Carolina Jonsson Malm. We wish to especially thank Rebecka Lettevall, the Dean of the Faculty of Culture and Society, for her support.

Lastly, we thank Mary Al-Sayed and Madison Allums at Palgrave Macmillan for an efficient, smooth and pleasant collaboration, from first contact through book production.