Doc. Dr. Matko Krce-Ivančić presented his paper entitled The Anxiety of Joyful Unemployment at the international scientific conference Affective Regimes of Normality and Discomfort, held from 28 to 30 September 2026 at the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research (IEF) in Zagreb. The conference was organised as part of the project Normality and Discomfort: Folkloristic and Interdisciplinary Approaches (NORMANEL), by the IEF, the Academy of Dramatic Art of the University of Zagreb, and the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Udine.
According to the conference organisers, “The conference Affective Regimes of Normality and Discomfort starts from the premise that discomfort is not an exception, but a normalized condition of contemporary societies, shaping political rhetoric and everyday survival strategies in the context of the erosion of sociality, trust, and cultural norms. It seeks to shed light on how cognitive, narrative, and affective processes participate in shaping imaginaries of normality, as well as alternative, more just, and more resilient visions of shared life.”
More information about the conference, including the programme and book of abstracts, is available on the https://www.ief.hr/novosti/afektivni-rezimi-normalnosti-i-nelagode/
In his presentation, The Anxiety of Joyful Unemployment, using the example of unemployed people, Doc. Dr. Matko Krce-Ivančić examined the understanding and limitations of understanding the category of the “economically inactive” as a race, raising a number of questions related to the imperative of participation in tourism, as well as the tourist as an active subject of contemporary society.
The paper was developed as part of the research project AKULTUR (CroRIS ID: 9576), funded by the European Union under the NextGenerationEU programme. More information about the project is available on the https://www.croris.hr/projekti/projekt/9576