Link pro on-line účast skrze Zoom
Abstrakt
Rifts in ecological processes are increasing the rate of viral transmission from bats to other species. Agricultural enterprises are denuding forested landscapes worldwide, presenting new challenges for insect eating bats as they seek food at night. Intense stress from multiple sources is disrupting the delicately balanced metabolism and immune system of bats. Sick bats are literally falling from the sky and shedding viruses. Enfeebled and flapping around on the ground, bats are becoming easy prey for cats and other predators. Drawing on extended ethnographic field research in Southeast Asia using multispecies methods this talk will engage with a number of questions: Where are coronaviruses actively circulating among people and animals? Is the focus on Wuhan as the epicenter of 2020 pandemic fundamentally misplaced? Did metabolic problems generated by sugar facilitate the emergence of COVID-19?
Bio
Eben Kirksey is a cultural anthropologist who is perhaps best known for his work in multispecies ethnography—a field that situates contemporary scholarship on animals, microbes, plants, and fungi within deeply rooted traditions of environmental anthropology, continental philosophy, and the sociology of science. Questions related to science and social justice animate his most recent book, The Mutant Project (2020), which offers an insiders account of the laboratory in China that created the world’s first children whose genes were edited with CRISPR-Cas9. Eben was a British Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford, before he went on to earn his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has taught at some of the most selective and innovative higher education institutions like Princeton University and Deep Springs College. He helped found one of the world’s first Environmental Humanities programs at UNSW Sydney in Australia.
Zajímají Vás současná témata sociokulturní antropologie? Chcete se zúčastnit debaty se zkušenými i začínajícími akademiky v tomto oboru? Přidejte se k nám 20. 2. 2025 od 13:15 na Dni antropologie, který pod záštitou České asociace pro sociální antropologii pořádá Katedra sociologie, andragogiky a kulturní antropologie FF UPOL. Přihlášky zasílejte na e-mail martin.latal02(at)upol.
[leták ve formátu PDF ke stažení]
Link pro on-line účast skrze Zoom
Abstrakt
This talk will be a presentation of the recently published book Relative Strangers (University of Toronto Press, 2024). Examining how memory, intergenerational transmission, and kinship work together, Relative Strangers sheds light on Romani life in Palestine. Arpan Roy presents an ethnographic portrait of Dom Romani communities living between Palestine and Jordan, zooming in on everyday life in working-class neighborhoods, and under conditions of perpetual war and instability. The book focuses on how Doms are able to sustain ethnic difference through kinship, even when public performances of difference are no longer emphasized – a kind of alterity that is neither visible by obvious markers like race or religious difference, nor detected by the antennas of the state. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Amman, Roy makes a case for such alterity for Romani people and other groups in the region. Analysing intimate ethnographic scenes through anthropological theories of kinship, psychoanalysis, social theory from the Global South, and more, the book reveals how alterity in the Middle East does not adhere to rigid identitarian categories. Ultimately, Relative Strangers demonstrates the inadequacy of transposing models of pluralism centred on European and American experiences of minoritization onto other contexts.
Bio
Arpan Roy is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. He is the co-editor of Naseej: Live-Weavings of Palestine (Pluto Press, 2025). He holds a PhD in Anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. His current research is on Christian missionary work in the Arab world.
presents
LADISLAV HOLY LECTURE 2025
by
Judith Bovensiepen
Austrian Academy of Sciences
Opening the land: Animist extractivism in Southeast Asia’s youngest nation
17 January 2025 from 6 pm
The lecture will be held in the seminar room of the Lusatian seminary
(U Lužického semináře 90/13, Prague)
You can attend the lecture via MS Teams.
Abstract
In the years after Timor-Leste regained independence from Indonesia, ‘oil fever’ took hold in the country – an intense contagious excitement about the prospect of oil wealth enabling a profound societal transformation and leading to full independence through resource sovereignty. This is when the government of Timor-Leste launched a plan for the implementation of the Tasi Mane project, a large oil development project aimed at transforming the thinly populated south coast into a futuristic, high-modernist, state-planned oil and gas infrastructure by 2020. Critics argued that the Tasi Mane project was economically and technically unviable and that it would have detrimental effects on local residents. So, to persuade affected communities to relinquish large stretches of land for the project, politicians and oil company employees mobilised customary practices traditionally associated with ritual authorities. Their ability to regulate ‘nature’ came to be seen as a sign of their legitimacy to implement this mega project. By doing so, they combined practices based on two seemingly incompatibly logics: animism and extractivism. This paper examines how these two seemingly opposed logics transformed each other in the making of the post-revolutionary state in Timor-Leste. The central argument is that animism and extractivism not only intersect as they were incorporated into modes of national governance, but that they were constituted in dialogical interaction.
Bio
Judith Bovensiepen is the Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Honorary Professor at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Austria. She has been carrying out fieldwork in Timor-Leste since 2005. Her research focuses on political and environmental anthropology, examining resource extraction and its impacts on rural populations. Bovensiepen’s previous work explored the dynamics of post-conflict recovery, investigating how people’s relations with the environment are transformed by violence and forced displacement. She is the author of multiple publications, including journal articles, special issues a monograph entitled The Land of Gold: Post-conflict Recovery and Cultural Revival in independent Timor-Leste (2015, Cornell University Press). For her research achievements, she received the Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2020.
Link pro on-line účast skrze Zoom
Abstrakt
Přednáška nabídne reflexi tří deliberativních občansko-expertních panelů (Citizen-Expert Panels; CEPs) zaměřených na komunikaci o klimatické změně. Zatímco předchozí studie ukázaly efektivitu participativních metod v politické deliberaci, méně pozornosti bylo věnováno konkrétním procesům, v jejichž mantinelech účastnice*níci různých typů deliberativních mini-fór formují své výstupy. CEPs jsme proto využili jako specifický analytický nástroj, který umožňuje porozumět dynamice skupinových vyjednávání mezi zúčastněnými s odlišným potenciálem k podílu na moci. Sledovali jsme, jakou roli hrají charakteristiky jako pohlaví, věk, odbornost nebo osobnostní nastavení, ale také prostředí, pravidla diskuse apod. Na základě induktivní analýzy považujeme pro dynamiku rozhodovacího procesu v rámci CEPs za zásadní dva faktory: emoční bariéry (či svodidla) určující směr deliberace (ke konsenzu; bez jasného směru/proměnlivé; ke konfliktu) a typ leadershipu (symetrický vs. asymetrický). Identifikujeme šest ideálně-typických vzorců, které prostřednictvím různých kombinací dvou zmíněných faktorů popisují způsob, jakým participující dosahovali společných výstupů v rámci CEPs: konsensus, diskuse, rovnováha sil, vynucený souhlas, disent a dominance. V přednášce jednotlivé typy podrobně popíšeme a budeme diskutovat, nakolik nám jejich reflexe může pomoci dále rozvíjet existující participativní nástroje a teorii deliberativní demokracie.
Bio
Ondřej Císař je sociolog, přednáší na Fakultě sociálních věd UK a pracuje v Sociologickém ústavu AV ČR jako šéfredaktor Sociologického časopisu/Czech Sociological Review. Výzkumně působil na mnoha zahraničních pracovištích, např. University of California, Irvine a Columbia University, New York. Je autorem a spoluautorem několika knih a mnoha studií a kapitol v českých i zahraničních časopisech a knihách. Zabývá se proměnami konfliktů v současných demokraciích.
Veronika Frantová je socioložka, působí jako odborná asistentka na Katedře společenských a humanitních věd Pedagogické fakulty Technické univerzity v Liberci. Výzkumně se pohybuje ve fluidním prostoru mezi kulturní sociologií, kvalitativní metodologií a aktivizačními metodami výuky společenských věd. Zajímá se především o de/konstrukci diskurzivních nerovností a konfliktů v různých polích občanské společnosti.
Abstrakt
This talk sketches a cultural sociology of artificial intelligence (AI) and demonstrates its empirical application in two cases. It consists of three parts: First, I briefly examine the relationship between culture, technology and society in classical and contemporary sociology their implications for the study of AI. I argue that the cultural sociology of technology, found in the works of Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith, offers a non-reductionist account of culture, technology and society and also shows great promise for the sociological analysis of AI. In the second part, I apply a cultural sociological toolkit to the case of AlphaGo, Google’s Go-playing AI that made headlines in 2016. I show how AlphaGo become an icon of AI research and how its remarkable performance and its discursive framing facilitated a shift in the public narratives surrounding AI from the mundane to the apocalyptic. In the third part, I apply cultural sociological genre theory to the discourses and narratives that accompanied the rise of large language models. Particularly interesting (and prominent) are apocalyptic narratives, which combine utopian and dystopian aspects. I illuminate their narrative structure using the political and eschatological concepts of interregnum and katechon. Through a cultural sociological lens, we can see that the future of AI (and humanity) not only depends on technological progress, but also on the social meanings we attribute to it.
Bio
Werner Binder studied sociology, philosophy and German literature in Mannheim, Potsdam and Berlin before earning his PhD at the University of Konstanz. He is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic), faculty fellow at the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology, book review editor of the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology and associate editor at the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. His research interests are sociological theory, cultural sociology, textual and visual methods of interpretation, the analysis of public discourses and, recently, the sociology of artificial intelligence. In 2024, he published “Technology as (Dis-)Enchantment. AlphaGo and the Meaning-Making of Artificial Intelligence”, Cultural Sociology 18(1), 24-47.
Dovolujeme si Vás pozvat na volební valné shromáždění, které se uskuteční
dne 17. 1. 2025 od 14:00 v Lužickém semináři, U Lužického semináře 90/13, Praha, a online na MS Teams.
Pozvánka s programem zde.
***
We cordially invite you to the annual electoral general meeting, which will take place on 17th Jan 2025, 2:00 pm, in the Lusatian Seminary, U Lužického semináře 90/13, Praha, or on MS Teams.
For more information see the programme.
Abstrakt
Ačkoliv Romové představují etnickou menšinu marginalizovanou a pronásledovanou napříč celým světem, existuje jeden kulturní rys, pro který jsou celosvětově obdivováni a oslavováni: jejich muzicírování a hudební tvorba. To se hojně odráží v kinematografii, ať už v hrané nebo dokumentární. Ve filmech se tak romští hudebníci stávají často zhmotněním odvěkých fantazií a stereotypů spíše než sami sebou. Dokumentární film Hopa lide přistupuje k romskému muzicírování z odlišné perspektivy. Autor filmu na základě desetiletého výzkumu v komunitě slovenských romských hudebníků inicioval vznik kolaborativního dokumentu skládajícího se ze tří kapitol. Každá z nich zachycuje tvorbu hudebního klipu, v němž se sami hudebníci ujímají rolí režisérů. Kamera rozpohybovaná neustálou improvizací a interakcí nám zprostředkovává dosud příliš neprozkoumaná zákoutí romského muzikantství – od zářných reflektorů velkých festivalů až po tichá zákulisí a intimní výpovědi o nesplněných (a nesplnitelných) snech; od humorných scén plných smíchu až po těžký každodenní boj o své místo na světě. Film vybízí diváky ke zpochybnění hluboce zakořeněných stereotypů o Romech. Spíše než dalším filmem „o romských muzikantech“ je Hopa lide jeden z mála existujících dokumentů natočených „s romskými muzikanty“.
Bio
Petr Nuska, Ph.D. je vizuální etnomuzikolog a tvůrce etnografických filmů, v současné době působící na české a slovenské akademii věd. Film Hopa lide vychází z jeho doktorského výzkumu na Durham University, v němž se věnoval právě romskému muzicírování na středním Slovensku.
Česká asociace pro sociální antropologii (CASA) vyhlašuje devátý ročník soutěže o nejlepší bakalářskou a magisterskou práci v oblasti sociální antropologie. Deadline pro doručení materiálů na emailovou adresu asociace info@casaonline.cz je 10. 11. 2024. Více informací o soutěži naleznete zde.
Abstrakt
Náboženská apropriace, spojená s idealizací a romantizací, má v antropologii špatnou pověst a je často vykreslována jako překážka vzájemně smysluplné mezináboženské spolupráce. Na základě etnografie návštěv původních obyvatel Latinské Ameriky v České republice tuto problematiku přehodnocuji pomocí konceptu ekvivokace jakožto ontologického dorozumění-v-nedorozumění, k němuž dochází při setkávání a překladu různých světů. Při těchto setkáních je obtížné vyhnout se vzájemné idealizaci, přesto je obě strany mohou považovat za smysluplná a přínosná, a to právě proto, že se odehrávají v rámci jejich vlastních perspektiv, jejichž prostřednictvím se vystavují jinakosti a možnosti transformace. Při posuzování interakce indigenních kosmologií a rituálů se západním alternativně spirituálním („New Age“) milieu je navíc nezbytné uvážit neredukovatelnou rozmanitost jednotlivých hlasů, přístupů a činitelů.
Bio
Jan Kapusta, Ph.D. je odborným asistentem na Katedře antropologie FF ZČU v Plzni. Zabývá se antropologií náboženství, terénní výzkumy prováděl mj. mezi Mayi v Guatemale. V současnosti se věnuje vzájemnému vztahu indigenních kultur a západní alternativní spirituality (např. indigenizaci a apropriaci, glokalizaci a hybridizaci náboženství či tvorbě globálního spirituálního diskursu). Teoreticky se pohybuje na rozhraní existenciálně fenomenologických a ontologických přístupů v antropologii. Je autorem knihy Oběť pro život: tradice a spiritualita dnešních Mayů (Argo 2020) a řady článků v odborných časopisech, jako jsou Český lid, Anthropos, Journal of Religion in Europe, Religion, State & Society nebo Ethnos.
Abstrakty
Mnohé zdi hlavního města Srbska utváří pomyslnou galerii pouličních velkoplošných maleb: murálů. Práce Ekologie zdí: etnografie bělehradských murálů staví na tezi, že pro porozumění tomuto fenoménu je třeba jít za jeho vizuální a estetickou stránku. A přistupovat k murálům jako ke komplexním entitám utvářejícím a odrážejícím dění v daném městském prostoru i srbské společnosti procházející poválečnými, postsocialistickými a neoliberalizačními proměnami. Metaforou ekologie zdí chce autorka poukázat na skutečnost, že i murály lze nahlížet jako svého druhu organismy, které mají vlastní socio materiální život a agency a jsou úzce provázány s ekosystémem hlavního města a srbské společnosti. Ekologická perspektiva jí umožňuje promýšlet problematiku holisticky jako průsečík jednání a dění, na kterém se podílí zdi a fasády, tvůrci i kolemjdoucí, místní nálady i globální politiky.
***
Afektová teorie zkoumá roli emocí a afektů, tedy osobního a ztělesněného, a představuje výzvu pro kulturní antropologii, kde emoce bývaly tradičně opomíjeny a odsouvány do oblasti psychologie. Jaké limity nám afektivní teorie odhaluje v současném zkoumání a jaké nové možnosti otevírá? Je její adaptace pouhým intelektuálním cvičením, nebo přináší skutečný přínos pro hloubku a rozsah antropologického porozumění? Tento příspěvek se zaměřuje na konceptuální rozsah afektivního obratu v kulturní antropologii a rozebírá tři klíčové vektory, které ukazují, jak může teorie afektu obohatit zkoumání porozumění lidské zkušenosti.
Bio
Jolana Miličičová vystudovala na magisterské úrovni sociální a kulturní antropologii na Fakultě humanitních studií Univerzity Karlovy. V současnosti působí jako výzkumná asistentka v rámci mezinárodního projektu CareOrg zaměřujícího se na transnacionální organizaci péče o seniory v Evropě.
***
Marek Hrubý vystudoval bakalářský stupeň kulturní antropologie a filozofie na Univerzitě Palackého v Olomouci. Studoval filozofii v nizozemském Groningen a zapojil se do pedagogické činnosti v rámci projektu Centrum kritického myšlení. Ve své teoretické kvalifikační práci se zabýval tématem afektu a jeho roli v kulturní antropologii. Poslední rok věnoval cestování, což mu umožnilo získat nové perspektivy a zkušenosti v různých kulturních kontextech.
Abstrakt
In this lecture, which is adapted from my most recent book, Wisdom from the Edge, I attempt to show how anthropological insights about the human condition are important elements in any future blueprint for social and cultural change. It is no exaggeration to state that the world is in trouble. Our routine social, cultural, and political and ecological expectations have been undermined. As David Vine recently wrote: “The Covid-19 pandemic, the global economic crisis, the unprecedented uprisings for justice have demonstrated the urgency of dedicating our skills, anthropological or otherwise, to healing the world.” In this presentation, I suggest that anthropologists can produce rigorously researched narrative works that are attuned to an age of crises. Those works, in turn, can convey to the world profoundly important anthropological insights that embody much-needed indigenous knowledge—in my case West African knowledge—to a world in dire need of indigenous wisdom. In the end, a more intense focus on writing-as-art can ensure that our slowly developed insights can become fundamental elements in the public sphere, elements that contribute directly to healing a world confronting a set of life-threatening social, cultural, ecological, and political crises.
Bio
Paul Stoller is Permanent Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies at Friedrich Alexander University/Erlangen.
Abstrakt
What if one were to take seriously the proposition that advertising isn’t like magic, rather it is magic? And further, what if advertising isn’t just a matter of manipulation, but also, for the magician themselves, a question of entering a volatile relation with ambiguous powers? My talk explores this theme via the story of the rise and fall of Kersy Katrak – charismatic Bombay adman, published poet, and practicing occultist. The talk is at the same time, in a minor key, a meditation on the long tail of ethnographic enchantment.
Bio
William Mazzarella is the Neukom Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India (2003), of Censorium: Cinema and the Open Edge of Mass Publicity (2013), and of The Mana of Mass Society (2017). He is the co-author, with Eric Santner and Aaron Schuster, of Sovereignty Inc: Three Inquiries in Politics and Enjoyment (2020), and the co-editor, with Raminder Kaur, of Censorship in South Asia: Cultural Regulation from Sedition to Seduction (2009). He is also the editor of K D Katrak: Collected Poems (2016).
Abstrakt
Attempts to apply actuarial methods in the field of criminal justice have been made for nearly 100 years. These methods, familiar to many people via the world of insurance, involve the mechanical combining of information for the purposes of classification, with the standard output being a probability figure relating to a certain outcome. More specifically, a company that provides car insurance may use information pertaining to a prospective policyholder (e.g. demographic characteristics such as age and gender) to determine the probability of that individual making an insurance claim within the terms/duration of their policy. Whereas the first actuarial/risk-management instruments designed for criminal justice settings were clunky and difficult to use, the advent of more compact instruments – involving fewer than ten items, in many cases – saw them become a part of standard decision-making procedures in the context of both bail and parole, as well as criminal profiling and multi-agency attempts to reduce urban violence. This paper explores the role of a specific actuarial instrument, the Gangs Violence Matrix (GVM), in attempts to reduce urban violence in England. The GVM scores and ranks ‘gang nominals’ based on intelligence connecting them with violent offences, weapons offences and/or access to weapons. Multi-agency plans are then designed and implemented for each nominal based on the probability of them carrying out and/or being the victim of a violent, gang-related attack. Here I ask and begin to answer a set of critical questions vis-à-vis the GVM and the actuarial approach to reducing urban violence, more broadly. These questions include: How is the ‘gang’ constituted as an object of actuarial knowledge? How do the limits of this knowledge (re)shape notions of the ‘gang’? What impact might gaps in the actuarial episteme – especially around ‘race’ and causality – have on GVM-based decision-making? And who is able to make authoritative actuarial statements about ‘gangs’?
Bio
Dr James Rosbrook-Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at City, University of London. Since 2018 he has carried out research in conjunction with various inner-London local authorities on issues including ‚gangs‘, serious youth violence, and disproportionality.
Abstrakt
Mothering as a social phenomenon and everyday practice is loaded with normative expectations, multi-layered meanings, and everyday negotiations. Based on the analysis of contemporary scholarship on motherhood and mothering and recent biographical and narrative interviews of mothers from all over the world (several countries in western and eastern Europe, Iran/western Asia, Canada/North America, Australia and Kenya/East Africa), that have been conducted and analysed by fifteen authors, the editors of the book Lyudmila Nurse, Lisa Moran and Kateřina Sidoropulu-Janků put together a co-edited monograph Biographical Research and the Meanings of Mothering. Life Choices, Identities and Methods, which will be presented in this talk. The special focus will be put on the normativity and intersectionality of mothering as a platform where identity negotiations and life choices take place. The first part of the talk will present the normative layers and dynamics of mothering and demonstrate how mothering as a social phenomenon affects mothers, as well as non-mothers. Further, the analysis of narratives of mothers and non-mothers from all over the world will provide a multi-layered perspective on mothering as an everyday practice and platform for realised identities and life choices. The talk presents mothering as a vivid phenomenon that, when researched from an everyday perspective, has great potential for understanding the dynamics of social reproduction and meaning-making.
Bio
Kateřina Sidiropulu-Janků, Ph.D is a senior researcher at the Institute for Applied Research on Ageing, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Klagenfurt am Wörtersee, Austria. She studied sociology at the Masaryk University in Brno, specialising in ethnographic sociology, research ethics, and inter-ethnic relations. She is a member of the European Sociological Association’s Research Network 03 „Biographical Perspectives on European Societies“, and her research includes biographical interviews with people from ethnic minority backgrounds and with migration experience. Kateřina also focuses on PAR and interdisciplinary research. Her recent work includes interdisciplinary research on the development of public open spaces, ageing and health, and assistive technologies in the context of small cities and rural areas.
Prague, 28 February 2024
Dear Prof. Dr. Patrick Cramer,
The executive board of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA) would like to express a widespread concern among the members of our association regarding the sudden termination of Prof. Ghassan Hage’s contract at MPI of Social Anthropology in Halle. This decision was particularly surprising as we know that Prof. Hage’s tenure at MPI has so far been fruitful, creative, and highly appreciated by colleagues and students. We considered his presence a significant impetus for the further development of social anthropology in Central Eastern Europe.
The accusations leveled at Prof. Hage in a tabloid right-wing media, which accuses him as an anti-Semite, are outrageous and reprehensible. Anyone familiar with Prof. Hage’s academic work as well as his public interventions knows that his long-standing research interest is precisely to expose forms of racism, nationalism, and the critique of violence that accompanies them. His contributions in this area have had a transformative effect on social theory and the anthropological epistemic community.
We at the CASA firmly believe that academic institutions, and especially a centre that aspires to academic excellent such as MPI, should support and protect academic freedom. The idea of cultivating an environment of rigorous and critical debate suffers enormously when it succumbs to interference by people who have no intention of seeking understanding or deepening our knowledge. We also wish to express our endorsement for the statement issued by the Board of the German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology on Academic Freedom in Germany. Like many scholars and colleagues from Germany, Israel, and other parts of the world, we strongly believe that we, as academics, should take additional measures to counter violent labeling, false accusations of anti-Semitism or racism, and persecution of dissenting voices. In these times of political polarization, it has become a common practice for dishonest public interventions to follow this pattern.
Participation in the networks, collaborations and events organized by the MPI for Social Anthropology in Halle has benefited many members of our association. Over the years, the Institute has been served as a hub of academic excellence where rigorous science and debate combine with respect for diverse opinions and courage in inquiry. We ask you not to put at risk this cherished character of your institution and urge you to reconsider your decision, revoke the contract termination and allow Prof. Hage to continue his work.
CASA executive board
Adam Horálek, Hedvika Novotná, Alžběta Wolfová, Nikola Balaš, Varvara Borisova, Barbora Stehlíková
&
Yasar Abu Ghosh, Martin Fotta, Jan Grill
Na valném shromáždění byly vyhlášeny výsledky soutěže o cenu CASA za rok 2023. V bakalářské kategorii zvítězil Marek Hrubý (FF UPOL) s prací Affect Theory: Theorizing the Emotional and the Affective in Anthropology. V magisterské kategorii zvítězila Jolana Miličičová (FHS UK) s prací Ekologie zdí: Etnografie bělehradských murálů. Gratulujeme! Více informací o soutěži zde.
Abstrakt
Multiple agents weave the fabric of temporality in a data-driven world, orchestrating futures and visions of (un)certainty and sparking promises to contain what is to come. The possibilities of modeling the world with algorithmic means are fundamentally changing perceptions of humans experiencing time and space – new publics, new socialities, new identities are emerging, and rules of coexistence must be negotiated with them. My interest is how phenomena come into being and how temporality operates as part of research processes within complex infrastructures, entangling humans and more-than-humans, hardware, software, and algorithms in a techno-scientific as well as posthuman world of many worlds. This talk will address the above questions utilizing an “ethnographic rhythm analysis“. Analytic outcomes are based on data gathered during long-term qualitative research in algorithmic environments at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the Supercomputing Centre in Jülich, and the experimental world of quantum optics of the University Vienna. I will look into the rhythms of “doing things” and the thingness’ agencies, with a focus on procedural models, material cuts, and ruptures which disturb and destabilize seemingly seamless infrastructures. This will allow me to draw preliminary sketches of what seems to be important to share from an anthropological view to critically (re)think present times future(s) to come from a theoretical and ethical perspective.
Bio
Anne Dippel is a freshly cultural anthropologist and historian with a passion for ethnographic inquiries of all kinds, researching and teaching at University of Jena (Germany). She studied in Berlin and London (PhD Humboldt-University Berlin 2013, Habilitation University Jena 2022) and became a specialist in physics and computers scientific cultures as well as German speaking societies. She held fellowships, taught, and researched in Germany and abroad, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Cluster of Excellence “Image Knowledge Gestalt” (HU Berlin), the Institute for the Advanced Study of Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS) at Lüneburg University and the Department for Ethnology at the University of Heidelberg. She did extensive ethnographic research in Vienna/Austria, Geneva/Switzerland and different physics laboratories and data centers in Europe and USA. For the purpose of her current research, she has been an associated member of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN).
presents
LADISLAV HOLY LECTURE 2024
by
DAVID N. GELLNER
University of Oxford
Liberalism and Hierarchy:
A Tension-Filled Relationship as seen from Social Anthropology
27 January 2024 from 5 pm
The lecture will be held in the Ground floor seminar room of the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Na Florenci 3, Praha 1).
You can attend the lecture via MS Teams.
Abstract
Ladislav Holy made the distinction between representations, ideals, and behaviour central to his theoretical and methodological reflections. That distinction underlies many of the political and ecological problems that humankind faces today, including the problems currently faced by liberalism. Using an understanding of hierarchy derived from Louis Dumont, and ethnographic case studies of attempts to impart the ideals of liberalism around the world (including in eastern Europe), I argue for a liberalism that takes fraternity and equality as seriously as liberty, while incorporating the anthropological virtue of empathy.
Bio
David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology and Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. He undertook his first fieldwork in Nepal where he focused on Vajrayana Buddhism of the Newars. As a leading scholar on Nepal and specialist on Buddhism and Hinduism, he authored and co-authored innumerable articles on religion, nationalism, ethnicity, or politics, trained generations of students, and contributed significantly to the development of anthropology. Among his many publications are Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual (1992), The Anthropology of Buddhism and Hinduism: Weberian Themes (2001), or Rebuilding Buddhism: The Theravada Movement in Twentieth-Century Nepal, co-written with Sarah LeVine (2005).
Abstrakt
Current climate crisis and the inadequacy of energy transition fuel a new impetus to transform a masculinist techno-literacy into alternative propositions of ‘deep energy literacy’ (Wilson 2022), or, within an emerging elemental turn, of activating the radiant potential of the sun for seeking out energy justice or ‘solarity’ (Szeman and Barney 2021). While such proposals appear removed from everyday realities, there is a lack of attention to what kind of energy subjects and literacies are already emerging that unsettle boundaries between the human and the environment, the body and technology. This presentation turns to fieldwork and participatory photography with Czech solar micro-producers, renewable industry representatives and those who live around large solar plantations in the Czech lands to trace mixed and differential literacies (Haraway 1997) ‘where each new attainment of literacy introduces difference in what counts as literacy’ (Colebrook 2012). Encounters for these literacies and their attendant ethos include the surges of joy in being touched by readings of solar generated electricity on the solar monitoring app; the thermoception of ‘plantation heat’ or rising ambient temperature around the solar farm; and the unexpected and uncertain spectral flashes of nuclear radiation and electromagnetic interferences at home. Drawing on the frame of technoecologoies the analysis focuses not only what these visceral sensory engagements bring together, but also what is left out or disarticulated in specific encounters but can be seen as productive “limits” that entail immanent possibilities for rethinking proposals for community energy.
Bio
Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, Charles University where she teaches in the Graduate Programme in Gender Studies. Her research emerges at the intersection of corporeal feminisms, technoscience studies and new materialism, currently in relation to solar energy, corporeal solidarity, and Romani cooking. She recently co-edited the Special Issue ‘Climate Action: Transforming Infrastructures, Cultivating Attentiveness, Practicing Solidarity’ (Sociální studia/Social Studies 2022), and works on a Romani Cookbook for a Liveable Climate. She serves as section co-editor of the journal Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research.
Proběhlé:
201. Jane Desmond: Multi-Species Families and Social Justice
202. Daniel Cobb: Ethnobiography as Approach and Practice: The Life of D’Arcy McNickle In and Over Time
203. Patrick O’Hare: Disappearing the Plastic Proletarian
Nadcházející:
204. Dagmar Lorenz-Meyer: Re-Articulating Embodied Energy Literacies (For Solarity) (18. ledna 2024)
205. Anne Dippel: Temporality and thingness. Towards manyworlding futures in/of Anthropology (8. února 2024)
206. Kateřina Sidiropulu Janků: Meanings of Mothering (28. března 2024)
207. James Rosbrook Thompson: Interrogating the Public Health Approach: Lessons from the Field of Urban Violence (25. dubna 2024)
208. William Mazzarella: Advertising as Integral Magic (9. května 2024)
209. vítězové ceny CASA (6. června 2024)
Abstrakt
This paper identifies and explores a tendency within multidisciplinary studies and popular discussions of plastic to downplay or ignore the role of workers at various stages of its value chain, from fossil fuel extraction and manufacturing, to recycling and waste disposal. It argues that the marginalisation of plastic labour takes place through four key mechanisms: aestheticization, fetichism, flexibilization, and wasting. Aestheticization refers to the way that plastics are focused on as aesthetic objects, not only when associated with design modernism and the household mundane, but also when used as symbols of ecological devastation and the Anthropocene (as with so-called ‘plastiglomerate’). The second process draws on Marx and Lukacs’ concept of commodity fetichism, where a perceived relationship between objects in a capitalist marketplace masks the human relationships and labour involved in production. Third, flexibilization refers to one of the ways in which the voice of organised labour in the plastics industry has been marginalised, a move complemented by the benefits offered to plastics sector workers to deter industrial unrest. Finally, the wasting of plastic refers not to the generation of plastic waste, which has been amply covered elsewhere, but to the way in which a focus on (consumer) plastic waste has crowded out the attention paid to plastics production. Finally, the paper turns to the way in which the new UN treaty on ending plastic pollution is, through a focus on ‘just transition’, finally shining a light on the plastic labour involved in the various oil, chemical, manufacturing, and recycling firms that together compose plastics supply chains.
Bio
Patrick O’Hare is a Senior Researcher and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and a member of the editorial board of ‘Worldwide Waste: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies’. Dr. O’Hare holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge (2017) and has held research positions at the Universities of Cambridge, Manchester, and Surrey. He has conducted research in Uruguay, Mexico, Argentina, and the UK on themes relating to labour, waste, cardboard publishing, and plastics.
Dovolujeme si Vás pozvat na Valné shromáždění, které se uskuteční
dne 27. 1. 2024 od 13:00 v sále Ústavu pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v.v.i., Na Florenci 3, Praha, a online na MS Teams.
Pozvánka s programem zde.
***
We cordially invite you to the Annual general meeting, which will take place on 27th Jan 2024, 1:00 pm, in the Ground floor lecture room, Institute for Czech literature, CAS, Na Florenci 3, Praha, or on MS Teams.
For more information see the programme.
Abstrakt
Forty-five years ago, the interdisciplinary scholar James Clifford authored a brilliant essay in which he articulated a unique approach that he called “ethnobiography.” While it seems not to have garnered the praise or currency of his other writings, including The Predicament of Culture (1988) and Routes (1997), I have found it both prescient and transformative. In this talk, I will share my own take on Clifford’s notion of ethnobiography as approach and practice. I will do so in the context of my ongoing work on the life of D’Arcy McNickle (1904-1977), one of the twentieth-century’s most important American Indian writers, intellectuals, and political actors. At the heart of my own published and public-facing digital scholarship is McNickle’s diary, which extends from 1930 to 1971. I will demonstrate how I have put an ethnobiographical approach into practice and, in so doing, reimagined his remarkable life synchronically (in time) as well as diachronically (over time). What emerges is not a life rendered as a series of events but a window on what Clifford calls an “experiential world.”
Bio
Daniel M. Cobb is Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he serves as Co-Chair of the Dean’s Working Group on Global Indigeneity, Coordinator of American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and Associate Chair. He has also served as Assistant Director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois (2003-2004), the Fulbright Bicentennial Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Helsinki (2017-2018), and Visiting Researcher at the University of Tübingen (May-July 2019). An award-winning writer and teacher, his publications include Beyond Red Power (2007), Native Activism in Cold War America (2008), Say We Are Nations (2015), and numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals. His passion for public-facing scholarship can be found in his Great Courses devoted to Native North America, which was produced in partnership with the Teaching Company and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Indian History (2016), public programs and exhibitions devoted to American Indian activism, activists, and memory, and an ongoing digital project inspired by the diary of Flathead writer and intellectual D’Arcy McNickle.
Česká asociace pro sociální antropologii (CASA) vyhlašuje osmý ročník soutěže o nejlepší bakalářskou a magisterskou práci v oblasti sociální antropologie. Deadline pro doručení materiálů na emailovou adresu asociace info@casaonline.cz je 10. 11. 2023. Více informací o soutěži zde.
Abstrakt
Since 2020 in the U.S., the twin impacts of the devastating Covid-19 pandemic and the power of the Black Lives Matter movement, especially in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, have highlighted the striking differentials in health care across US communities, marked by stark inequalities aligned with race and social class. In this talk, I extend questions of “access to care” to the veterinary profession to ask: What happens if we reframe these vet issues not primarily as economic problems but rather in a social justice framework? Most U.S. families have pets that they say are “part of the family.” Should this lead us to conceive of pet health care as a fundamental right, and/or obligation of the state or society—that is, as a “public good” under the One Health model? What sorts of shifts in veterinary practice, policies, and community relations might this require so that underserved populations can access care? Can the “social determinants of health” model from human medicine be useful in this reimagining?
Bio
Jane Desmond, Ph.D., is Professor of Anthropology, Affiliate Prof. in Veterinary Medicine, and Director of the Human-Animal Studies@Illinois campus-wide initiative at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She is the founding editor of the Animal Lives book series at the University of Chicago Press, and Residential Director of the International Interdisciplinary Summer Institute in Animal Studies for early career scholars held each July at UIUC. Her five books include Displaying Death and Animating Life: Human-Animal Relations in Art, Science and Everyday Life (Chicago, 2016). A former Fulbright Professor in Germany, she is currently a 2023 British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, and a 2023–2024 Harvard Bioethics Fellow at the Harvard Medical School. Her current book project is Medicine Across the Species Line.
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Abstrakt
Na jubilejním, dvoustém Gellnerovském semináři vystoupí laureátky ceny CASA za nejlepší bakalářskou a magisterskou práci za rok 2022, a to:
Jana Gajić (FHS UK): Hood Elitism: Stylist Transgression of Dominant Cultural Meanings in the Music of the Serbian Artist Mimi Mercedes
&
Anna Vykoukalová (FHS UK): Hranice odpadu: Etnografie sběrného dvora
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Abstrakt
The onset of the Anthropocene challenges the very definition of education and its fundamental goals. Drawing on a multisited ethnographic project among schools and activist groups in India and South Africa, I explore what education might mean in the age of unprecedented environmental decay. I expose the depoliticizing effects of schooling and examine cross-generational knowledge transfer within and beyond formal education. I call for the bridging of schooling and environmental activism, to find answers to the global environmental crisis. For decades, environmental activist movements have wrestled with questions of responsibility and action in the face of environmental destruction; they inhabited the mental world of the Anthropocene before much of the rest of the world. My research highlights an innovative methodology of participatory observational filmmaking, describing how films made by children in the Indian and South African communities provide a window into the ways that young people make sense of the future of the Anthropocene. I argue that it is through their capacity to imagine the world differently that education can reinvent itself.
Bio
Peter Sutoris is an environmental anthropologist and Assistant Professor at the University of York, UK. Originally from (Czecho)slovakia, he studied at Dartmouth College and defended his doctorate at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Visions of Development (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Educating for the Anthropocene (MIT Press, 2022).
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Abstrakt
Monuments and memorials to victims of mass atrocities, such as the Stalinist Terror in Moscow and the Holocaust against Jews in Novi Sad and partisan revenge against its perpetrators, tend to reveal history. They have an apophantic force of bringing the past to the surface. Surface itself forms a plane of history and implies that there is something beneath. The Solovetsky Stone in central Moscow is one of the first monuments to victims of political oppressions in Russia. Until recently it was a nexus of remembrance of the dead for relatives and descendants, activists of Memorial and Last Address, historians, human rights advocates, and strangers. In 2022, the construction of the monument to the victims of violence in Novi Sad (Serbia) was disrupted by protesters who glued to its surface the names of the dead that include names of people killed by Yugoslav partisans and names of several Hungarian war criminals and collaborators. The surface of monuments enables a mediation of history and refraction of justice, as is the case with the Solovetsky Stone. Conversely, it can absorb the past and accrue the menacing power of a casket that buries the past within. Michael Taussig has argued that history and sorcery are substantially the same as they reveal and conceal violent processes. The surface of the above monuments is where knowing the past or hiding it are at play, and names of the dead, like the sorcerer’s invisible darts, stake out possibilities of justice.
Bio
Galina Oustinova-Stjepanovic is a Social Anthropologist and a Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Glasgow. She specialises in anthropology of historicity, political anthropology, and anthropology of religion. Her monograph Monumental Names. Archival Aesthetics and the Conjuration of History in Moscow (Anthropology of History, Routledge, 2023) is available in open access from the publisher’s site.
Na valném shromáždění byly vyhlášeny výsledky soutěže o cenu CASA za rok 2022. V bakalářské kategorii zvítězila Jana Gajić (FHS UK) s prací Hood Elitism: Stylistic Transgression of Dominant Cultural Meanings in the Music of the Serbian Artist Mimi Mercedes. V magisterské kategorii zvítězila Anna Vykoukalová (FHS UK) s prací Hranice odpadu: etnografie sběrného dvora. Gratulujeme! Více informací zde.
presents
LADISLAV HOLY LECTURE 2023
by
MARUSKA SVASEK
Queen’s University Belfast
Confronting the Un/Expected:
Reflections on Stretched Ethnography
25 February 2023 from 16.00
The lecture will be held in the auditorium of the Institute of Czech Literature of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Na Florenci 3, Praha 1)
and online via ZOOM here.
Abstract
This talk argues that the production of ethnographic knowledge is always a relational process in which human and nonhuman affective forces interact in expected and unexpected ways: researchers need to improvise and thus be creative in their dealings with interlocutors and research technologies. Not all fieldwork is improvisational and exploratory to the same degree, however, as a comparison of some of my pre-pandemic and pandemic research projects demonstrate. Of particular interest are cases that either purposely or unavoidably led to the blurring of boundaries between ethnography, art, documentation and play.
Bio
Maruška Svašek is Professor of Anthropology at Queens University Belfast, UK. Her main research interests include migration, art/efacts, politics and emotions. In the last ten years, her work has brought these strands together, exploring the affective relationality of humans, artefacts and spaces in an era of globalization, transnational connectivity and environmental change. At present, she is working on a book on art and the politics of visibility in Czechoslovakia/the Czech Republic, and investigating the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the lives of migrant women in Ireland. Her publications include Ethnographies of Movement, Sociality and Space: Place-Making in the New Northern Ireland (2018, with Milena Komarova), Creativity in Transition: Politics and Aesthetics of Cultural Production Across the Globe (2016, with Birgit Meyer), Emotions and Human Mobility: Ethnographies of Movement (2012), Moving Subjects, Moving Objects: Transnationalism, Cultural Production and Emotions (2012), Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production (2007), Postsocialism: Politics and Emotions in Central and Eastern Europe (2006) and Mixed Emotions: Anthropological Studies of Feelings (2005, with Kay Milton).
Dovolujeme si Vás pozvat na Volební valné shromáždění, které se uskuteční
dne 25. 2. 2023 od 12:00 v sále Ústavu pro českou literaturu AV ČR, v.v.i., Na Florenci 3, Praha, a online na platformě ZOOM.
Pozvánka s programem zde.
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Abstrakt
In recent years, conspiracy theories have been increasingly defined as a new social enemy, a threat to democracy. But scholars of conspiracy theories also point out that we have very little research that examines a direct link between conspiracy theories and political practice. We still know very little about the ways in which conspiratorial beliefs influence different forms of civic engagement and democratic participation. By examining Irish and Polish movements that endorse vaccination-related conspiracy theories, this article explores what relation they have to civil society. I argue that, in order to shed the negative label of conspiracy theories, such movements engage in the practices of mimesis and mimicry. According to Markus Hoehne, mimesis is a form of positive appraisal, an art of imitating wellestablished models of social and political organization. Mimicry, on the other hand, involves the deceptive imitation of such models in order to attain one’s own political agenda. What, then, are the Covid-19 era protests: masters of mimicry or masters of mimesis?
Bio
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz obtained PhD from the Cambridge University and then moved to Ireland where she held MarieCurie Fellowship and later a Lecturship. That period of her work resulted in the book Institutionalised Dreams: the art of managing foreign aid (2020). Currently she is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sociology (SAV). She was recently awarded ERC grant for the “Conspirations” project that examines conflicts over conspiracy theories in Europe. Drążkiewicz is also Principal Investigator in the CHASE project REDACT analysing how digitalisation shapes the form, content, and consequences of conspiracy theories. She is also leading the APPV project PanTruth analysing conspiratorial milieu in the Visegrad countries.
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Abstrakt
The aim of my presentation is to examine the phenomenon of multiple perceptions and ascriptions of identities amongst migrants from the former USSR in Germany. The main focus will be on Jews from Georgia, with a special emphasis on the formation of community after emigration. I discuss what new arrangements of belonging are formed among those affected and why; and consider how their experiences of living and growing up in diverse ethnic and religious settings influence the perception of one’s own belonging. To illustrate why certain configurations of belonging emerge, and in which contexts, I will analyse everyday relationships in one community in Osnabrück. While this community is officially known as “Georgian”, on closer inspection it becomes clear that the use of this term involves a much broader context of identification where its members have multiple affiliations.
Bio
Nino Aivazishvili-Gehne holds a PhD in social anthropology (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg) and is a researcher at the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET) in Vienna. The project was funded by the Gerda-Henkel foundation. Simultaneously, Aivazishvili-Gehne was an associate Member at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle. Her current project (started in March 2021) The search for the “good life” in Germany (Osnabrück) examines the societal perceptions of migrants from the former USSR in Germany and its consequences as well as their own agendas and proactive practices. She has published on themes of citizenship, borders, ethnicity, public and religious ceremonies.
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Abstrakt
The debates and research on religious lives in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been dominated by the ethnonational identitarian theories and frameworks of inquiry. This has been in particular the case for the study of Islam and Muslim lives as is epitomised in the work of Ernest Gellner. Drawing on my long-term fieldwork, in this talk I will show the inadequacy of such identitarian frameworks that bear only partial resemblance with the concerns and lifeworlds of my interlocutors for they write off the experiences and the vast array of relations with God. How can we then write about religious lives that are ultimately about relations with the divine without reproducing these hegemonic identitarian frameworks of analysis? I will reflect on my recently published book Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina to consider an alternative strategy. Specifically, this talk will zoom into three interlocking themes of the book, that of the everyday, ethics, and vital exchange.
Bio
David Henig, is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University, Netherlands, specializing in Muslim politics, military waste and war ecologies, and conflict and coexistence. He has conducted research in West Asia and Europe, is author of Remaking Muslim Lives: Everyday Islam in Postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina (Illinois, 2020), and co-editor of Economies of Favour After Socialism (Oxford, 2017), and Where is the Good in the World? Ethical Life between Social Theory and Philosophy (Berghahn, 2022). He is currently working on “Deadly Environments: Living among Explosive War Remnants in former Yugoslavia”, a project funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
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Abstrakt
While most of us feel that it is integrated and stable, the self relentlessly engages in a complex gymnastic. Not only does it oscillate between a plurality of facets, roles, ideas, values, emotions, sometimes contradictory, but it is also endowed with a relative elasticity. Certain immersive experiences constitute fascinating laboratories to explore such dynamics. Like actors, historical reenactors impersonate men and women of the past. Cosplayers embody comic book heroes whilst furry fans and puppy players pretend to be animals. Fiction writers invent literary alter egos for themselves, a fabrication of identity that resembles the creation of avatars in the cyberspace. Some anthropologists, too, are familiar with such experiences. In participant observation, the ethnographer self appears to be increasingly fragmented and malleable. I call these “exo-experiences.” Rooted in perspective-taking, empathy and imitation, they share a desire, that of having, as captured by Proust in La Prisonière, “other eyes, of seeing the universe with the eyes of another, of a hundred others, of seeing the hundred universes that they see.”
Bio
David Berliner, professor of anthropology and a book lover, ocasionally resurfaces as Derek Moses. His work touches on a number of objects and problematics, ranging from religion, memory and nostalgia to herrtage, sexuaiity and alterity. His most recent book Devenir autre (2022) will be the subject of his GS lecture.
Jako každý rok CASA vyhlašuje soutěž o nejlepší Bc. a Mgr. práce. Deadline doručení materiálů na e-mailovou adresu asociace info@casaonline.cz
je 7. 11. 2022.
Více informací o soutěži zde
VÝSLEDKY 7. ROČNÍKU SOUTĚŽE O CENU CASA (2022)
VÍTĚZ KATEGORIE BAKALÁŘSKÝCH PRACÍ
Jana Gajić – Hood Elitism: Stylistic Transgressions of Dominant Cultural Meanings in the Music of the Serbian Artist Mimi Mercedez (Fakulta humanitních studií UK, vedoucí práce: David Verbuč)
VÍTĚZ KATEGORIE MAGISTERSKÝCH PRACÍ
Anna Vykoukalová – Hranice odpadu: etnografie sběrného dvora (Fakulta humanitních studií UK, vedoucí práce: Bob Kuřík)
Soutěže se zúčastnilo 5 bakalářských a 3 práce magisterské.
Práce hodnotila porota ve složení: Tereza Hyánková (University of New York in Prague), Jaroslav Klepal (Fakulta humanitních studií UK), Zuzana Sekeráková-Búriková (Slovenská akadémia vied), Eva Šlesingerová (Fakulta sociálních studií MU) a Martin Tremčinský (Fakulta sociálních věd UK).
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Abstrakt
Common concerns anthropology is an experimental approach that identifies research questions not according to gaps in academic knowledge, but through understanding the concerns that people are grappling with in their everyday lives. The concerns include uncertainty, excessive competition, increasing pressure, and feelings of powerlessness. The concerns that reflect people’s subjective experience of objective social contradictions. As immediate, unarticulated perceptions, concerns demand new language and methods through which to analyse them.
Bio
Biao Xiang is Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany since 2021, and Professor at the University of Oxford before that. Xiang has worked on various types of migration in China, India and other parts of Asia. He is the winner of the 2008 Anthony Leeds Prize for his book Global Bodyshopping and the 2012 William L. Holland Prize for his article ‘Predatory Princes’. His 2000 Chinese book Transcending Boundaries was reprinted in 2018 as a contemporary classic, and Self as Method (coauthored with Wu Qi) was ranked the Most Impactful Book 2020 in China. Through public-facing articles and interviews, Xiang’s ideas regularly generate wide discussions in China and beyond. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish, German and Italian.
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Příspěvky
Martin Dolský: Město na kousky – tři příběhy Libeňského ostrova
Libeň prochází v posledních letech zásadní proměnou. Dříve industriální předměstí Prahy se stává žádanou lokalitou a volné proluky jsou zastavovány novou rezidenční i administrativní výstavbou. Spolu s novou zástavbou se mění i ráz místní krajiny, a původní Hrabalova Libeň tak přetrvává už spíše v ozvěnách. Uzavřený rezidenční areál DOCK River Watch, dokončený v roce 2018, představuje jednu z těchto dramatických změn.
Jakého významu rezidence nabývá? Jde o první vlaštovku lepších zítřků, která pozvedá špinavý a nebezpečný brownfield, kultivuje okolní divokou přírodu a zkrášluje místní městskou krajinu? Nebo areál narušuje klidný charakter místa, přetrhává historickou kontinuitu a bere Libni její dřívější ráz? Je výstavba příslibem lepších časů a katalyzátorem ekonomické prosperity, nebo zdrojem nejistoty a strachu z vymístění?
Ve své prezentaci představím tři etnografické viněty, pomocí kterých se pokusím uchopit mnohovrstevnatý a značně ambivalentní význam uzavřeného rezidenčního areálu. Co stojí za různorodými, často až konfliktními narativy místa? Jaké mají východiska a v čem se liší? A jak situaci ovlivňují společenské, materiální, ekonomické a historické kontexty? Cílem bude představit kvalitativní dopady procesu gentrifikace a regenerace postindustriálních městských krajin na příkladu konkrétního místa.
Martin Dolský v současnosti studuje magisterský program Antropologických studií na Fakultě humanitních studií Univerzity Karlovy. Jeho hlavním zájmem je urbánní antropologie, které se věnuje už od bakalářského studia. Je mu blízké i téma materiální kultury a v posledních měsících ho fascinuje hravost ontologického obratu. Vedle studia se věnuje aplikovanému výzkumu a participaci v rámci městského plánování.
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Varvara Borisova: Apoteóza černých šatů: tvorba hodnoty použitého oblečení na cestě od second k vintage
Nakupování v „sekáčích“ bylo dlouhou dobu širokou veřejností vnímáno jako záležitost nonkonformistů, excentrických umělců nebo lidí s omezeným rozpočtem. Avšak konzumní filozofie tzv. rychlé módy a dopady módního průmyslu na životní prostředí i trh práce se staly pro spoustu zákaznic důvodem pro hledání ekologičtějšího i etičtějšího způsobu zásobování šatníku.
Zatímco někteří se nákupu věcí vzdali vůbec, guru módní obce obrátili pozornost k oblečení z druhé ruky: ze secondhandu se staly vintage butiky a použitým kouskům se začalo říkat „pre-loved“. Během svého životního cyklu pre-loved kousek může opakovaně vstupovat do oběhu, stávat se darem, být chycen do limba hrabárny nebo čekat na znovuobjevení v babiččině skříně.
Cílem přednášky je ukázat, jaké praktiky tyto přechody umožňují a jak provozovatelky vintage prodejen konstruují hodnoty použitého zboží. Zároveň bych ráda pootevřela zákulisí české vintage scény, která současně zažívá rozkvět. Po představení svého etnografického výzkumu se zaměřím na závěry, jež v době hybridizace ekonomiky mohou být analyticky přínosné pro ekonomicko-antropologické bádání. Za klíčové východisko považuji předpoklad, že vintage oblečení je hybridní kategorií, která v sobě spojuje prvky kapitalistické směny i ne-kapitalistických sociálních vztahů, a tedy překračuje ustálenou antropologickou dichotomii daru a komodity.
Varvara Borisova je absolventkou magisterského programu Antropologická studia na Fakultě humanitních studií UK a současně studuje doktorský obor Obecná antropologie. Během magisterského studia se věnovala otázkám teorie hodnoty, materiální kultury a antropologie spotřeby. Ve své disertační práci se zabývá tématy spojenými s medicínskou antropologií.
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Abstrakt
This talk considers some absurdities of governance in Los Angeles: an attempt to non-lethally manage coyotes, who eat pet cats and dogs; an attempt to care for community cats, who eat birds and other endangered species; and an attempt by an oil company to restore a wetlands belonging to Native Americans, so that the birds will come back. These absurdities take shape in the technopolitical tools of environmental governance: Environmental Impact Reports slow what people want to accelerate, and accelerate what people wish to slow; a dispersed social media public sphere summons cloud coyotes and astroturfs the grasslands; and sophisticated scientific models of hydrology, habituation, and cat reproduction disclose the truth but cannot find a space of appearance to be effective. Are these forms of resistance, and if so, to what? Is their absurd interconnection something that should be resisted, or is it just the revenge of multispecies entanglement in the ruins of representative democratic institutions? What do the animals say?
Bio
Christopher M. Kelty is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has appointments in the Institute for Society and Genetics, the Department of Information Studies and the Department of Anthropology. Research interests center on social theory and technology, the cultural significance of information technology; the relationship of participation, technology, and the public sphere; and more recently, the role wild animals play in contemporary urban Los Angeles. He has written two books: The Participant: A Century of Participation in Four Stories (Chicago, 2019); and Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software (Duke, 2008). He has written articles on open source and free software, including its impact on education, nanotechnology, the life sciences, participation as a political concept, open access in the academy, piracy, the history of software, hackers and hacking, and many other inadvisably diverse topics.
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Abstrakt
Budeme mluvit o knize We, Other Utopians:/Recombinant DNA, Editing Genome, and Artificial Life, která vyšla na konci prosince 2021 a je reflexí etnografického výzkumu v biochemické laboratoři. Kniha se věnuje techno-imaginaci obklopující témata umělého života či přetváření, rekombinace, oprav genomu za účelem diagnostiky či léčby budoucích nemocí a vylepšování ještě neexistujících těl. Představení knihy chce inspirovat přemýšlení o současných formách a-politické biopolitiky či možných alternativních budoucnostech a vizích. Také o čase a temporalitě v biotechnologických představách budoucnosti. Pojďme spolu diskutovat současné utopie/dystopie umělého a více-než-lidského života!
Bio
Eva Šlesingerová je antropoložka/socioložka působící na Katedře sociologie/programu Sociální antropologie na FSS MU v Brně. Zabývá se tématy těla a tělesnosti, genomiky, umělé inteligence, sociálních robotů, kultury autismu či biotechnologického umění a experimentů. Vyučuje kurzy Antropologie a technologie, Kinship, Antropologie, roboti, těla, Umělecký výzkum či Současné kulturní teorie.
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Abstract
Based on and expanding from my decade-long ethnographic and historical work on segregated urban areas variously stigmatized as „Gypsy areas“ across Europe, in this talk I offer some ethnographic and theoretical insights to reflect on the social sciences‘ public and critical roles in the early 2020s. I aim to establish a conversation between debates on English-language „global“ knowledge production, a number of ethnographic observations from my fieldworks, and streams of established critical thought. One of the main lines connecting these three poles concerns the role of nuance in assembling social sciences‘ analyses and especially syntheses, and the need to keep alive discussions about what nuance may be and what it may be for.
Bio
Giovanni Picker is assistant professor in the Sociology of Inequalities at the University of Glasgow. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and Comparative Urban Studies from Milan-Bicocca University (2009). Prior to joining Glasgow University, he was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Research Fellow in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at Birmingham University (2016–2018), and before that he received a number of research fellowships in Romania, Russia, Hungary and Germany (2010–2016). His main research interest is race as a principle of social organization, and the ways in which racism plays out at the crossings of everyday life and urban politics. His most comprehensive publication on this topic is the monograph Racial Cities: Governance and the Segregation of Romani People in Urban Europe [Routledge, 2017].
Na valném shromáždění byly vyhlášeny výsledky soutěže o cenu CASA za rok 2021. V bakalářské kategorii zvítězil Martin Dolský (FHS UK) s prací Město na kousky: produkce a konstrukce prostoru uzavřeného rezidenčního areálu. V magisterské kategorii zvítězila Varvara Borisova (FHS UK) s prací Pre-loved: vintage obchody jako alternativa rychlé módě. Gratulujeme! Více informací zde.
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Abstrakt
Přednáška se zaměří na exilovou historii, kolektivní identitu a pojetí domova u tzv. namibijských Čechů, původně 56 dětských válečných uprchlíků z Angoly, kteří byli v roce 1985 přijati československou vládou na výchovu a vzdělání. Edukační program namibijských dětí v Československu vykazoval prvky sociálního inženýrství. Děti prošly československým vzdělávacím systémem (s prvky namibijské vlastenecké výchovy), osvojily si český jazyk, socializovaly se a postupně kulturně asimilovaly. Jejich dospívání bylo přerušeno po roce 1989, kdy padla železná opona a Namibie získala nezávislost. Děti byly v roce 1991 nuceně relokovány do Namibie bez jakékoliv jazykové, či psychologické přípravy, navíc bez dokončeného základního vzdělání. Jejich socio-kulturní adaptace v Namibii byla spojena s nostalgickou idealizací domova v Československu, vytváření “ostrůvků domoviny”, udržováním českého jazyka a utužováním kolektivní paměti skrze ritualizaci vzpomínek. Zkušenost se životem ve dvou kulturně odlišných prostředích vedla u namibijských Čechů k uvědomění si vlastní jinakosti a postupnému utváření svébytné kolektivní identity se silným přináležením k češství. I po téměř třiceti letech se namibijští Češi v Namibii hrdě hlásí k České republice, kterou považují za svůj jediný a pravý domov.
Biografie
Mgr. Kateřina Mildnerová, PhD. je česká afrikanistka, socio-kulturní antropoložka, v současné době působící na Katedře sociologie, andragogiky a kulturní antropologie UPa v Olomouci. Je také předsedkyní České asociace afrických studií. K jejím dlouholetým vědecko- výzkumným zájmům patří oblast antropologie náboženství (magie, čarodějnictví, tradiční léčitelství a africké křesťanské nezávislé církve), dále africké umění, kulturní turismus, kolektivní paměť a identita migrantů. Autorka má za sebou řadu terénních výzkumů v Zambii, Beninu a Namibii. Je autorkou monografií Můj soused čaroděj (Jota, 2011), Pití fetišů – náboženství a umění Beninu (Malvern, 2012), From Where Does the Bad Wind Blow (Lit Verlag, 2015), Černí Sokoli (NLN, 2020) a Namibian Czechs (Lit Verlag, 2020).