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seminars

Uses and Limits of Concepts in Social Sciences and Humanities

CEFRES Epistemological Seminar 2016-2017

Conveners: István Pál Ádám (CEFRES), Clara Royer (CEFRES) and Tomáš Weiss (IMS FSV UK)
Where: CEFRES library – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: every second Thursday from 3:30 pm to 5 pm
23 February,  9 & 23 March, 6 & 20 April, 11 May
Language: English

The program of the Summer Semester 2016-2017 is already available on our calendar!

Abstract

This seminar wants to provide young researchers with a theoretical background and help them to reflect upon how they use and elaborate relevant concepts for their PhD research. It will also highlight the differences and similarities in using concepts in different disciplines.

Each session will be led by a young researcher, who will comment on a theoretical text introducing a key-concept for his/her field and open it for discussion. Therefore, various concepts will be presented through their definitions, uses and limits. Concepts can’t be considered as a permanent “tool box” to which a social scientist could turn each time he/she conducts research, hence the necessity to think upon concept formation. The seminar aims at preventing the pitfalls of flat empiricism, words confusion, over-theorization, and at thinking through the uses and misuses of concepts. It could touch upon concepts such as “identity”, “modernity”, “moral behaviour”, “security”, “society”, “culture”, “form”, “gender”, “church”, “capitalism”, “professionalism”, and so forth.

Seminar is open to PhD students and post-doctoral scholars. Each session will begin with an overview of one selected reading mainly in English, followed by a discussion. The reader with texts will be available in electronic form. Please write to Claire Madl to get the reader : claire@cefres.cz

A few texts on concepts

  1. Bastien Bosa, “Des concepts et des faits”, Labyrinthe [online], 37 | 2011 (2), online on 01/08/2013.
  2. John Drysdale, “How Are Social-Scientific Concepts Formed? A Reconstruction of Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation”, Sociological Theory 14, no. 1 (1996), pp. 71-88.
  3. Bernard Fradin, Louis Quéré, Jean Widmer (eds.), L’enquête sur les catégories. De Durkheim à Sacks, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 1994.
  4. John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences”, Polity 31, no. 3 (1999), pp. 357-93.
seminars

CEFRES EPISTEMOLOGICAL SEMINAR: USES AND LIMITS OF CONCEPTS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Conveners: István Pál Ádám (CEFRES), Clara Royer (CEFRES) and Tomáš Weiss (IMS FSV UK)
Where: CEFRES library – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
When: every second Thursday from 3:30 pm to 5 pm
2, 9 and 23 March, 6 and 20 April, 11 May 2017
Language: English

See the program of the Summer Semester 2016-2017

Abstract

This seminar wants to provide young researchers with a theoretical background and help them to reflect upon how they use and elaborate relevant concepts for their PhD research. It will also highlight the differences and similarities in using concepts in different disciplines.

Each session will be led by a young researcher, who will comment on a theoretical text introducing a key-concept for his/her field and open it for discussion. Therefore, various concepts will be presented through their definitions, uses and limits. Concepts can’t be considered as a permanent “tool box” to which a social scientist could turn each time he/she conducts research, hence the necessity to think upon concept formation. The seminar aims at preventing the pitfalls of flat empiricism, words confusion, over-theorization, and at thinking through the uses and misuses of concepts. It could touch upon concepts such as “identity”, “modernity”, “moral behaviour”, “security”, “society”, “culture”, “form”, “gender”, “church”, “capitalism”, “professionalism”, and so forth.

Seminar is open to PhD students and post-doctoral scholars. Each session will begin with an overview of one selected reading mainly in English, followed by a discussion. The reader with texts will be available in electronic form. Please write to Claire Madl to get the reader : claire@cefres.cz

A few texts on concepts

  1. Bastien Bosa, “Des concepts et des faits”, Labyrinthe [online], 37 | 2011 (2), online on 01/08/2013.
  2. John Drysdale, “How Are Social-Scientific Concepts Formed? A Reconstruction of Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation”, Sociological Theory 14, no. 1 (1996), pp. 71-88.
  3. Bernard Fradin, Louis Quéré, Jean Widmer (eds.), L’enquête sur les catégories. De Durkheim à Sacks, Paris, Éditions de l’EHESS, 1994.
  4. John Gerring, “What Makes a Concept Good? A Criterial Framework for Understanding Concept Formation in the Social Sciences”, Polity 31, no. 3 (1999), pp. 357-93.
CEFRES Team

Lenka Kužvartová: Research & CV

The One Who Sings Needs to Dwell. Experiments in Residential Architecture in Brazil from the 1980s

Research Area 3: Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Contact: kuzvartova@cefres.cz 

Photo_Lenka KužvartováThe main interest of my research is to explore a) the socially engaged role of architects, b) the possibilities of different production of urban space in the cities of the Global South, namely São Paulo, Brazil. Continue reading Lenka Kužvartová: Research & CV →

CEFRES Team

Katalin Pataki: Research & CV

The Place of Faith. The Implementation of Joseph II’s Monastic Policies in the Hungarian Kingdom

Research Area 3: Objects, Traces, Mapping: Everyday Experience of Spaces

Contact: katalin.pataki@cefres.cz

Pataki PictureMy PhD project investigates the implementation of the state-led church reforms carried out during the reign of Joseph II in the Hungarian Kingdom and intends to contribute to a better understanding of the new features of state power unfolding at the end of the 18th century. Continue reading Katalin Pataki: Research & CV →

CEFRES Team

Filip Herza: Research & CV

Imaginations of Bodily “Otherness” and Prague’s Freak Show Culture 1860-1939

Research Area 2: Norms & Transgressions

Contact: filip.herza@cefres.cz

My dissertation project traces the history of freak show culture in the 19th- and 20th-century Prague and the Czech lands from the perspective of disability theory. By studying popular exhibitions of “freaks” and other living “curiosities”, I try to explore reproduction of the 19th– and 20th-century disability discourse, including concepts and images of disability and related forms of socially produced “otherness”, namely class, gender and racial difference.  I am particularly interested in the significance of the embodied “Other” in fashioning social norms and imaginary social bodies of the time, namely the collective body of nation. Four case studies from Prague’s freak show stages, ranging from 1860s through 1920s, demonstrate the significance of “abnormal” bodies for the imagined Czech national society. The project thus ventures into a disabled history of Czech nationalism, offering a new perspective on nation building and its interconnectedness with biopolitical reasoning, from the late 19th century up until the interwar period.

Beside representations of disability in popular entertainment culture, Filip works on the history of science, expert cultures and social movements (such as social hygiene and eugenics) in the 19th and the 20th century, mainly from the perspective of gender, disability and postcolonial theory.

His latest research concerns disability, hygiene and health related politics in the colonial setting of interwar Czechoslovakia, particularly the activities of Czech scientists in Slovakia and Subcarpathian Ruthenia.

CV

Education

Filip holds a Mgr. in cultural and social anthropology from the Faculty of humanities, Charles university Prague (2012), where he also pursue his PhD, under the supervision of PhDr. Lucie Storchová, Ph.D.

Academic jobs and fellowships

From 2017, Filip works as a researcher at the department of gender studies and from 2018 as an assistant professor at the department of anthropology, Faculty of humanities, Charles University Prague. In the years 2014-2016, Filip received fellowships from the University of Vienna, Central European University Budapest and Collegium Carolinum in Munich.

Research projects

2017-2019 Joint grant project GAČR (Czech Grant Agency) and DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft): (Post)Socialist Modernity and social and cultural politics of disability and disablement

2017-2018 Participation on an international project called Staged Otherness: Human Oddities in Central and Eastern Europe 1850-1939 (Polska Akademia Nauk)

Selected Publications    

Herza, Filip. (forthcoming). “Faces of Masculinity: Shaving Practices And The Popular Exhibitions Of “Hairy Wonders” In Early 20th Century Prague”. In Beauty And The Norm: Debating Standardization In Bodily Appearance. Palgrave Macmillan.

Herza, Filip. 2016. “Anthropologists and Their Monsters: Ethnicity, Body and Ab/normality In Early Czech Anthropology”. East Central Europe 43 (1-2). Leiden: Brill: 64-98.

Herza, Filip. 2016. “Black Don Juan and The Ashanti From Asch: Representations Of “Africans” In Prague And Vienna, 1892–1899”. In Visualising The Orient: Central Europe And The Near East In The 19Th And 20Th Centuries, Adéla Jůnová Macková, Lucie Storchová, and Libor Jůn, 95-106. Prague: Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU).

Herza, Filip. 2012. “Tiny Artists From The Big World: The Rhetoric Of Representing Extraordinary Bodies During The Singer Midgets’ 1928 Tour In Prague”. In Exploring The Cultural History Of Continental European Freak Shows And ‘Enfreakment’, 193-210. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.