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French pragmatism and the renewal of contemporary sociology

Time & Venue:

  • 15 December, 16.30-18.30: Room 212, FSV UK, Hollar Building, Prague;
  • 16 December, 9.00-15.00: Conference room, CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague

Organizers: Paul Blokker (FSV UK) and Nicolas Maslowski (Warsaw University), with CEFRES
Partners : Institute of Sociological Studies (FSV UK), Department of Historical Sociology (FHS UK), CEFRES and CCFEF UW—Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies of Warsaw University
Language: English

Program

Thursday 15 December
Time: 16.30-18.30
Venue: Room 212, Hollar Building

Opening, keynote lecture: “CRITICALLY DIFFERING IN A COMMON CITY. Arts of human cohabitation and urban composition in a comparative perspective” by Prof. Laurent Thévenot.

Friday 16 December
Time: 9.00-15.00
Venue: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3

9:00 – 10:30 Panel 1

  • Chair: Clara Royer
  • Pavel Barša – “Sociology of Emancipation between unmasking and modelling
  • Paul Blokker – “Justifications for Law in the Plural”
  • Yuliya Moskvina – “Legality and legitimacy in the civil polity. Example of urban movements”
  • Petra Beránková – “Justifying political activism in the Czech Republic: A battle over the right activism”

10:30-11:00 – Coffee break

11:00-12:30  Panel 2

  • Chair: Paul Blokker
  • Nicolas Maslowski, Warsaw University – “Love and justice in international relations”
  • Simon Smith – “In search of argumentatively strong moments in newspaper-hosted online discussion”
  • Olga Gherghiev, Charles University – “Exploring the sociological dimension of the World Trade Organization: how the norms are created”
  • Csaba Szaló – “The role of aesthetics in the critical moment: From speech and concern to commitment”

12:30-13:30 Lunch break

13:30–15:00 Panel 3

  • Chair: Nicolas Maslowski
  • Dino Numerato – “Critical actors and criticized institutions: the case of football fan activism”
  • Tereza Stöckelová – “Latourian variations: between sociology and arts”
  • Jakub Mlynář – “Ethnomethodological roots of French pragmatic sociology (and their coalescent sprigs)”
  • Ivana Rapošová (co-authored with Adam Gajdoš) – “Juggling Grammars, Translating Common-place: Justifying an Anti-Liberal Referendum to a Liberal Public”
  • Adam Gajdoš  – “Common-place lost or regained? Urban remembering of ethnic cleansing and the different ways it is made common and good”

See the abstracts of the speakers here

Abstract

French pragmatic sociology will be the main theme in the workshop on “French pragmatism and the renewal of contemporary sociology”, held on 15 and 16 December, and organized by the Institute of Sociological Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences), the Department of Historical Sociology (Faculty of Humanities), Charles University, Center for French Civilization and Francophone Studies (Warsaw University) and the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES).

Pragmatic sociology – as a distinct, new type of French social science – probably became most well-known in the global academic community because of the publication in English of the landmark publication by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, On Justification. Economies of Worth, in 2006 (original: 1991, Editions Gallimard).  On Justification is, however, probably best understood as a ‘travail d’étape’ , an intermediate stage in a much larger and highly original social-theoretical enterprise, to which evermore scholars in a variety of disciplines contribute (e.g. historians, anthropologists, economists) in a range of research endeavours. The workshop will explore the fundamentals of this approach and the insights it has brought, and still brings, to contemporary sociological and interdisciplinary research. The upshot is to explore the rich potentialities of pragmatic sociology and to discuss its relevance and usage in Czech sociology.

Read the call for papers for the workshop.

Academic Work. A Tale of Essential Tension Between Research and Teaching

A lecture by Prof. Pierre-Michel Menger, professor at Collège de France

This lecture is held in the frame of the Historicko-sociologických konfrontací organized by the Department of Historical Sociology of the Faculty of Humanities, UK.

Organizers: HISO FHS & CEFRES
Where: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, building C, 3rd floor, conference room
Language: English

Pierre-Michel Menger (1953) is a French sociologist specialized in the sociology of art and creation. A professor at the prestigious Collège de France (Chaire de Sociologie du Travail Créateur) and at the EHESS, he has recently published The Economics of Creativity. Art and Achievement Under Uncertainty (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2014).
Read more

Abstract

During the last fifteen years, European reforms in higher education have introduced differentiation in the fabric of academia, and triggered transformations in academic careers even if the various scientific disciplines and generations of academic researchers have been unequally exposed to the main impact of these reforms, that of a pervasive growth of individual and institutional competition on a national and international scale. Competition alters the architecture of organizations, the principles underpinning the evaluation of academic work and workers, the coupling of teaching and research, the incentive tools for scientific production, and the correlation between working conditions and salary levels.

How is the functional link between teaching and research still to be understood in a context of heightened competition between and within universities? Three options surface: complementarity; substitution; sheer dissimilarity and nil correlation between quality of teaching and research.

Analyzing the asymmetrical relationship between the two tasks seems to provide a fruitful agenda of investigation. There are striking dissimilarities between them: the production function of teaching is additive, while that of research is multiplicative. This is why management of research activities has granted increasing importance to the concentration of critical masses of talent to leverage the faculty’s research potential. Meanwhile, teaching staff becomes more substitutable once they move (or are moved) away from the frontiers of advanced research. Unsurprisingly, given the crucial importance of reputational capital to higher education institutions, tension between research and teaching missions is mounting.

My main argument is as follows. In research, the distribution of individual productivity and professional visibility has a highly skewed, Pareto-like profile, whereas individual performance in teaching has a normal, Gaussian, distribution. Since the chances of success in each activity are distributed very differently, their conjunction functions like a risk management mechanism, both individually and collectively. Yet given the differential return on effort and ability in the two tasks, complementarity is best understood when redefined as complementarity under asymmetry.

From an anthropological to an ontological pluralism

A lecture by Philippe Descola organized by the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences and CEFRES, in cooperation with the French Institute in Prague.

Where: Conference Room, Jilská 1, Prague 1
Language: English

Abstract

The key concept and methodological tool of Lévi-Straussian structural anthropology is the group of transformation. A structure, understood as a system of contrastive oppositions, only acquires an analytical dynamism thanks to its capacity to organize the transformations between the models of a same group of phenomena. For a structure to be differentiated from a mere system, then, invariant relations must be brought to light between the elements and the relations of different sets so that each of these is connected to another by the means of a transformation. However, there are different ways to conceive a structural transformation in anthropology. The lecture will explore some of them, particularly those used by the lecturer in his book Beyond Nature and Culture (2013), and will build on these results to approach the epistemological consequences of apprehending ontological pluralism as a group of transformation.

Philippe Descola graduated in philosophy from the École normale supérieure of Saint-Cloud and in ethnology from the University Paris X and EPHE. Since 2000, he has been professor at the chair in Anthropology of nature at Collège de France and he supervises the research laboratory on social anthropology (Collège de France, EHESS, CNRS). Renowned for his groundbreaking work on comparative anthropology of the relationships between human and non-human beings, he is the co-author of Nature and Society (Routledge, 1996), with G. Pálsson, and of the Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie (PUF, 1991). He is the author of several major works attempting to transcend the traditional dualism between nature and society such as Beyond Nature and Culture (Par-delà nature et culture, 2005).
Read more on Philippe Descola

Developments in Post-Soviet Studies on Soviet Jewry

A lecture by Professor Yaacov Ro’i (Tel Aviv University)

Where: CEFRES library
Language: English

Professor Yaacov Ro’i from the Cummings Center for Russian and East European Studies at the Tel Aviv University is a leading expert on history of Jews in the Soviet Union.  Among his recent publications are however also books on Islam in the postwar Soviet Union.

The lecture will be followed by a workshop during which Dr. Kamil Kijek, Dr. Kateřina Čapková and Dr. Stephan Stach will present their projects on postwar history of Jews in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Basis of the workshop will be a discussion of their texts under the leadership of Prof. Ro’i.

To take part in the workshop following the lecture of Prof. Ro’i, please write to capkova@usd.cas.cz.

The event is co-organized by the Institute for Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences and by CEFRES.

Visegrad Forum: Lydia Coudroy de Lille, between Budapest & Prague

Program

Monday 14 March – Budapest

3-5 PM
Lecture within the frame of the French-Hungarian Workshop of the Faculty of Arts of Lorand Eötvös University.
Topic: Thinking Dwelling and Housing Beyond National Categories.

Wednesday 16 March – Prague

10 AM-4 PM
A young researcher workshop on “Neighbourhoods”, organized by the Institut of World History of the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, program Erasmus+ TEMA – European Territories: Identity and Development; http://www.mastertema.eu.
Discussant: Lydia Coudroy de Lille.
Convener: Luďa Klusáková.
Language: English.
Where: at CEFRES, Na Florenci 3.
A complete program is available here.

Thursday 17 March – Prague

5:30-7 PM
Lecture by Lydia Coudroy de Lille – in the frame of the European Habitat United Nations regional conference (see the program here).
Topic: How do we call the urban change? The case of Central and Eastern Europe.
Discussant: Pr. Ludĕk Sykora.
Language: English.
Where: Prague Congress Center, room Club D. 5. Kvetna 65, 140 21 Prague 4.
Registration is compulsory on the conference’s website https://www.habitat3.org/prague. The entrance is free.

Social Presences: Toward an Approach of Interdependency Enhancing Time and Gender

A lecture by French sociologist Marc Bessin, head
of IRIS – Institute of Interdisciplinary Research on Social Stakes  (UMR 8156 CNRS – EHESS – U997 Inserm – UP13), organized by CEFRES Platform.

Language : French with simultaneous Czech translation.

Venue : CEFRES, Národní 18, Prague 1, conference room, 7th floor.

Outline
This lecture is grounded in empirical research on health, social, and parental care. It will be briefly presented to feed the debate on the moral and practical aspects of care activities, with a specific highlight on such stakes as temporalization and sexuation. Our hunch is that such practices of help concern academic space as well, which will be approached through the prism of temporal tensions, between an acceleration affecting our research practices and Slow Science, refered to by the sociology of social presences.

Continue reading Social Presences: Toward an Approach of Interdependency Enhancing Time and Gender →