PTE BTK Vendége | Dr. Harutyun Vermisian

INVITATION

The Doctoral Program in Ethnography – Cultural Anthropology of the Interdisciplinary Doctoral School of the University of Pécs

cordially invites everyone to a lecture by

Dr. Harutyun Vermisian

(Department of Theory and History of Sociology, Yerevan State University)

entitled

Resilience Before Sustainability: Rethinking Post-Industrial Transformation through Armenian Small Towns

Date and time: October 15, 2026, 2:00 p.m.

Venue: Room M319, 2 Rókus Street, Pécs
 

The lecture examines the mechanisms of sustaining urban life in post-industrial small towns in Armenia despite infrastructural decay, institutional limitations and uncertainty regarding their development perspectives. With the help of qualitative materials collected in Charentsavan, Stepanavan and Sisian, it questions the mainstream planning hypothesis according to which resilience is seen as just a preliminary condition of sustainable transformation. Instead, the lecture examines what kinds of labor, social relations and responsibilities were necessary in order to sustain town’s operation before sustainability initiatives appeared.

The main idea of the lecture is that urban endurance is often imposed on local communities, individual households, municipalities and other local institutions which are responsible but do not always have enough resources, powers and ability to make decisions. The lecture examines how disruption becomes routine, how continuity is sustained and how resilience maintains local potential but simultaneously drains it away. "Resilience before sustainability" means not only a chronological but also an analytical pause: it raises the question whether sustainability initiatives actually replenish local continuity practices or continue to depend on those actors who have been compensating for insufficiencies of structures all the time.

The program was supported by the Contemporary Challenges Research Centre and the PTE Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Guest Programme.
 

Cover image source: https://www.armenia-spirit.com/destinations/sisian/