Centre for Intercultural Studies

Workshop on cross-border cooperation
Klagenfurt University, 7-9 December 2000

The Agenda

In the last two decades political and social changes in Europe have led to new definitions of collective identities and to the drawing of new borders. As a result new minority majority relationships have emerged - sometimes accompanied by ethnic conflicts. The process of European integration, the abolition of EU internal borders, the strengthening of external borders and the planned extension of the EU to Eastern European countries will bring about new changes. The challenge is to develop new relationships between one's own identity and the other which are not based on exclusion and will result in a culture of peaceful coexistence and cooperation.

In border regions formal and informal social networks have developed which transcend existing borders. These are due to various factors such as family ties, small scale economic cross-border exchanges, traditionally structured land ownership, one-day tourism, the trans-border dimension of media (especially radio and TV), cultural cooperation on a local level, twinning of towns and villages etc. As political boundaries rarely coincide with language boundaries, minorities and their associations and structures often play an important role in such networks.

On the other hand there is an increasing number of internationally, bi- or multilaterallyfostered programmes for cross-border cooperation.

Aims of the interdisciplinary workshop on cross-border cooperation:

• discuss the role of social networks in the shaping of trans-border landscapes andcross-border cooperation
• discuss the role of minorities in cross-border cooperation
• analyse the possibilities of social networks in the framework of international and bi-or multilateral programmes
• analyse and evaluate existing examples of good practice of grass root projects incross-border cooperation
• develop ideas and recommendations how such networks can be included into largerscale programmes and fostered by such programmes
• examine the role of informal social networks in cross-border institution building andthe role of local elites and their networks for cross-border cooperation
• analyse the importance of local media

Theoretical basis: regulation theory, structuration theory (esp. structures and local agents), cultural studies and discourse analysis (identity constructions).