As part of the DFG-funded project "Autonomy, Market and Ideology in the Belarusian Literary Field of the First Third of the 20th Century and the Turn of the Millennium", the aim of the dissertation project is to heuristically confront Pierre Bourdieu's field-theoretical model with the post-Soviet 'reconstitution phase' of Belarusian literature in order to develop approaches for a flexibilisation of his concept of autonomy. The impetus for such a project is provided by the observation of a discrepancy between the preconditions and indicators of literary autonomy (e.g. expressions of L'Art pour l'Art, reverse economic order), which Bourdieu assumes are largely absent in the contemporary Belarusian literary field, and processes identifiable here that point to specific forms of autonomisation (establishment of 'alternative' institutions of material and symbolic production, existence of two writers' associations, etc.), but which are not provided for in Bourdieu's concept of autonomy.

Usually, the literary field is ascribed a (relatively) dominated position within the structures of social space, in relation to the field of power. Against the background of the above findings, the central thesis of the doctoral project is derived from this: the contemporary Belarusian literary field exhibits specific forms of autonomisation that are related to the particular macrostructure of social space.

Central to the research approach is the starting point that the Belarusian literary field has been reconstituting itself since the early 1990s (the beginning of state independence) within a political and economic macrostructure that differs significantly from the French model case (weak shaping of the field of power through a market-economy-driven pursuit of money and profit, on the other hand accentuation of political-ideological parameters, personalisation of institutional power structures and the forces structuring the social space by the president). Also relevant for the specific profiling of the indicators of literary autonomisation is the aspect that Belarusian literature, after its emergence from Soviet literature, bears traits of 'smallness' (accentuation of national-cultural parameters on the aesthetic-poetological level sensu Casanova).

This leads to the following central working hypotheses:

1. The specific interweaving of economic, political and institutional structures with the literary industry largely cancels out the competitive mechanisms of the literary market.
2. The processes of autonomisation in the contemporary Belarusian literary field are related less to a predominance of the economic parameter (inverted economy) than to a political-ideological parameter.
3. The developments of aesthetic-poetological and institutional autonomy overlap.

In order to test the working hypotheses, the (heuristically used) field model is supplemented by approaches for analysing 'small' literatures. This will be flanked by approaches from New Institutionalism and literary axiology. Empirical studies based on quantitative and qualitative surveys and text analyses are also planned.

The correlation of the findings on the profiling of autonomy on the aesthetic-poetological and institutional level should help to reveal processes that cannot yet be understood as indicators of autonomy in Bourdieu's model, but which, in the logic of the contemporary Belarusian literary field, speak in favour of the formation of autonomy.