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The article addresses the issue of the so-called refugee crisis in Europe from the perspective of ignorance studies and seeks to establish the mechanisms whereby ignorance is created through categorizations. We depart from the proposal of Proctor and view ignorance as either “native state,” “lost realm,” or “strategic ploy.” In all three, ignorance is an unalienable part of social action. The case of Polish academic research on refugees before and after 2015 is explored in order to establish who ignores what, when, and why, when categorizing, and to analyze the relationship between ignorance and social action. In the Polish refugee field, the crisis of 2015 was the moment when the refugee issue stepped out of the shadows and attracted the attention of the public and policymakers. The analysis of the category “refugee” in Polish scholarship before 2015 demonstrates that the category was based on culturalization and idealization; thus, the socio-political and pragmatic aspects of the group’s characteristics and actions were systematically ignored, and the ignorance worked as a “lost realm.” After 2015, a new body of scholarship emerges in which the category “refugee” acquires negative connotations with security threat or fakeness. In the new scholarship, ignorance is a strategic framing that sets the category of “refugee” outside the humanitarian issues. We claim that the new categorizations follow the logic of culturalization and moralization typical of the previous period. Strategic ignorance inherent in the categorizations that dichotomize “good” and “bad” refugees, or “refugees” and “migrants,” unlocks the potential for political action.

Adriana Mica

This paper reviews and parallels the thesis of disembedding–re-embedding of ideas, objects and practices in the translation paradigm (à la Scandinavian institutionalism) with the discussion of reinvention in the diffusion of innovations theory (as put forward by Everett M. Rogers). The main inquiry to be answered is the extent to which these two propositions might be taken as theoretical allomorphs of a generic treatment of the dialectics of circulation of ideas. The analysis of the two assumptions makes use of Djelic’s (2008) classification of three main framing types within sociological studies of diffusion: diffusion as epidemiology, diffusion as encounter with embeddedness, and diffusion as mediation and construction. The main input of the article is that it shows that the re-invention hypothesis links the diffusion of innovations theory with the diffusion as encounter with embeddedness model, while the disembedding–re-embedding of ideas perspective associates the translation paradigm with the diffusion as mediation and construction model. The paper further discusses the dynamics as well as the theoretical implications of these theoretical affinities for the Scandinavian translation stream. Adriana Mica

The study analyses the dynamics of public debate surrounding the issue of maidan [stray] dog population control strategies in Moldavia and Romania. The comparison takes as its point of reference two episodes of moral panic and discusses the applicability of the theoretical models of moral panic, risk and hazard society. Following the work of Bruno Latour, Mary Douglas, Phil Macnaghten and John Urry, the study distinguishes between the conceptualization of strays dogs (as hybrids) in terms of nature, and their conceptualization in terms of culture. It argues that the stabilization in terms of nature is more suitable to be addressed by the theoretical models of risk and hazard society, whilst the stabilization in terms of culture pertains to the theoretical model of moral panic instead. Adriana Mica

In this paper the evolution of specific types of scandals within the field of transitional justice in Romania is shown. Furthermore, the study makes an inquiry into the reactions of different actors, socio-professional categories and organizations to the implementation of the disclosure law in Romania and to the flourishing of several legislative proposals on lustration and decommunization in the years following the 1989 anti-communist revolution. The actors under scrutiny are main political parties and the Romanian Orthodox Church respectively. The cases under review indicate that scandal is a quite versatile institution, and that the outcome of the disclosure scandals might as well be the advancement of disclosure and lustration measures, as well as also the hampering of such initiatives. Adriana Mica