PROJECTS
Special Issue of the Journal of Baltic Studies:
Soviet Colonialism in the Baltic States
Editor Epp Annus
The collected volume "Twentieth Century Movements of Thought"
Editor-in-chief Epp Annus
The volume gives an in-depth review of the most important thinkers and currents
of thought in the twentieth century, with an aim to determine the role of philosophy in the
shaping of cultural space. "Twentieth Century Movements of Thought" was published in summer 2009.
Participatory Culture in Cyberspace: Literature and its Borders
2008–2011 (ETF7679)
Principal investigator Piret Viires
The point of departure for this project is the tight connection between postmodernist
cultural situation and the technological development. The goal of the project is to analyze
the new forms of literature and culture that emerge thanks to the development of information
technology. The objects of the research are various cultural texts created in the digital
environment, and especially literary texts, so-called ‘cyberliterature’. The central
theoretical approach for the research would be “participatory culture” The main goal of the
project is to analyze cultural texts in cyberspace which expand the traditional borders of
culture and literature. Estonian materials as well as international sources will be researched;
participatory culture and its accompanying phenomena will be also described theoretically.
The problem of authorship is central to the research, as well as various interpretations of
the ‘virtual’. On a broader level, the postmodernist cultural situation will be characterized
as well as its relations to the technological development, simulations, the virtual, and the
society of the spectacle. As such, the project centres on Estonia, but the research will be
related with practices abroad. On the one hand, this guarantees a common comparative ground to
the project; on the other hand, it will be a chance to supplement the international scientific
discussion with something of our own. The research subject of the project is positioned in the
interstice between humanitarian sciences and technological development. Developments in New
Media and information technology have radically transformed and undermined the traditional
ways and building blocks of society. “Participatory culture” is not only a cultural term, it
can as well be applied to the analysis of wider social tendencies and phenomena which have
appeared or transformed because of changes in information technology. The theoretical analysis
of the cultural change that accompanies developments in information technology should evidently
be among the main principles of an innovative society that looks to the future. The present
project offers a possibility to concentrate on a specific chapter in the complex of recent
cultural changes and therefore sees its output in meaningfully describing the new shapes our
culture has taken due to the developments in information technology.
Finished projects and Estonian Science Foundation grants