Department of Sociology Seminar 23.4. 2025, 15:30 - 16:30, B228

Dear colleagues,

I am happy to invite you to the department's next seminar. Our dear hosts from Södertörn University, Zhanna Kravchenko and Noomi Weinryb, will present on 23.4. 2025 from 15:30 to 16:30 their research on Civil Society’s Legitimacy Interplay in An Unstable Institutional Context: A Historical Study of Transnational Funding to the Soviet Union/Russia

Date: 23.4.2025

Time: 15:30 to 16:30

Room: B228, Jinonice

Below you will find annotation, bios, leaflet, and a link to their paper.

Looking forward to seeing you soon

Jitka Wirthová

Annotation

This seminar aims to explore civil society’s legitimacy interplay in an unstable institutional context, by tracing a Swedish transnational funder supporting human rights in the Soviet Union/Russia over thirty years. Examining radically changing institutional conditions, the paper introduces the concept of civil society’s legitimacy interplay; encompassing dispositional legitimation of grantees through rights and relationships, and legitimacy conferred by a funder through evaluations resulting in financial support. The study contributes to research on civil society legitimacy in three ways by: 1) showing how dispositional legitimation of rights and relationships may vary as institutional conditions change 2) discovering a sequencing of legitimacy interplay over time, which may be interpreted as a lack of synchronization between grantees’ dispositional legitimation efforts and a funder’s conferral of evaluative legitimacy through financial support 3) advocating pro-active leniency in funders’ evaluative legitimacy conferral to secure civil society engagement in the long run in unstable institutional contexts.

Short bios:

Zhanna Kravchenko is Associate Professor of Sociology at Södertörn University, Sweden. She has previously studied various aspects of inequalities and social policies, transition to adulthood and educational reforms in Russia and Sweden, often from a comparative perspective. Her recent work explores current trends and development in civil society in Russia, with a focus on resource accumulation, distribution, and accountability.

Noomi Weinryb is Associate Professor in Business Studies at Södertörn University, Sweden. With a background in organisational institutionalism, her research is centred on issues of organisations and organising, looking at civil society in a broad sense. This includes research especially related to philanthropy, accountability, and legislative challenges to civil society in increasingly illiberal contexts.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v0yzGh-aPpSHt1mp4WiqeeJmkSf52Wqn/view?usp=sharing