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Knowledge, Power and Academic Freedom in Europe (and Beyond) – Part 1

Part 1 of CEFRES 30th Anniversary Conference

The French Center for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES) is celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year. CEFRES has been both an actor and an observer of the reshaping of research in Central Europe after 1989. It has first accompanied the remarkable restoration of academic freedom and the takeover of its destiny by the academic world. Thirty years of activity in the heart of Central Europe have made CEFRES a witness to the growing importance of the European level in the structuring and financing of the research sector, to the internationalization and the intensification of international competition, and to the structural transformations that affect the social sciences and humanities. This is the reason why CEFRES and its privileged partners, the Czech Academy of Sciences and Charles University, as well as the CEFRES Alumni Association, are devoting this thirtieth anniversary conference to the great transformation of the academic world from the point of view of the recompositions of the relationship between academic knowledge and power, as well as to academic freedom.

The first part of the conference will be held in Prague in a hybrid format (face-to-face/remote) on May 27th and 28th 2021. It will be opened on Thursday, May 27th at 5 pm by an inaugural conference moderated by Mr Jérôme Heurtaux, Director of CEFRES, and introduced by Mr Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs of the French government (by video), Ms Eva Zažímalová, President of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Mr François-Joseph Ruggiu, Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at CNRS and Mr Tomáš Zima, Rector of Charles University, with, as guest of honour, Mr Michael Ignatieff, Rector and President of the Central European University. On Friday, May 28th, the conference will gather 26 representatives of the academic and diplomatic world, former directors and researchers of CEFRES, who will discuss past and future of the Czech-French relationship in the European context, the challenges of knowledge transmission and internationalization.  The day will begin with a keynote lecture by Mr Pierre-Michel Menger, Professor at the Collège de France.

Dates: Thursday 27 may and friday 28 may 2021
Organizers: CEFRES, Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University, CEFRES Alumni Association
Place: Prague and online (the conference will be streamed at this address: https://www.facebook.com/cefres)
To join the different sessions, please see the links below.
Languages: French, English, live interpretation in English
Participants: download the complete list of participants here.

Program

Thursday, May 27th 2021, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm

Inaugural Round Table
Place: Czech Academy of Sciences – online
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84680097684
Language: English
Please find the login code here: 846 8009 7684

Chair: Jérôme Heurtaux, Director of CEFRES

  • Clément Beaune, Secretary of State for European Affairs of the French Government (by video)
  • Eva Zažímalová, President of the Czech Academy of Sciences
  • François-Joseph Ruggiu, Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (InSHS), CNRS
  • Tomáš Zima, Rector of Charles University

Guest of Honour:

  • Michael Ignatieff, Rector and President of the Central European University

Friday, May 28th 2021 

Place: Karolinum, Charles University rectorate, Prague  & online
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86543574454
Please find the login code here: 865 4357 4454

9:00 am – 10:30 am : Keynote Lecture (in English)

Chair: Tomáš Kostelecký, sociologist, member of the Academy Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences

  • Pierre-Michel Menger, sociologist, Professor at the Collège de France, holder of the Chair “Sociology of creative work”: Scientific research: A matter of resources, performance, competition and collaboration

10:45 am – 1:30 pm: From Bilateral to European Level: CEFRES in its History

Chair: Nicolas Maslowski, sociologist, Director of CCFEF (Warsaw)

  • Marie-Elizabeth Ducreux, historian, emeritus research Director at CNRS, former Director of CEFRES (1991–1993)
  • Yves Saint-Geours, diplomat, former deputy Director of archeology and social sciences at the MEAE (1990–1993)
  • Antoine Marès, historian, emeritus Professor at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, former Director of CEFRES (1998–2001)
  • František Šmahel, historian, medievalist, former Director of the Institute of History, then of the Center for Medieval Studies  of Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Pavel Baran, philosopher, President of the Scientific Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Vice-President of the Research, Development and Innovation Council of the Czech Republic
  • Lenka Rovná, political scientist, Vice-Rector for European Affairs, Charles University
  • Christian Lequesne, political scientist, Professor at Sciences Po, former Director of CEFRES (2004–2006)

Lunch

3:00 pm – 4:45 pm: Intergenerational Dialogues

Chair: Georges Mink, political scientist, emeritus research Director at CNRS, holder of the Chair of European Civilization and History in memoriam Bronisław Geremek at the College of Europe, Natolin, President of the ICCEES, former Director of CEFRES (2001–2003)

  • Marie-Claude Maurel, geographer, Directrice d’études at EHESS, former Director of CEFRES (2006–2010)
  • Taťána Petrasová, art historian, member of the Academy Council of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 2013 to 2021
  • Gábor Sonkoly, historian, Professor at Institute of Historical Studies and Atelier, Department of Interdisciplinary History, ELTE University, Budapest
  • Petr Horák, philosopher, emeritus Professor of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Professor at the University of Pardubice
  • Milena Lenderová, historian, former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Pardubice
  • Michel Perottino, political scientist, Professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University, former General secretary of CEFRES
  • Mátyás Erdélyi, historian, post-doctoral fellow at CEFRES

5:00 pm – 6:30 pm: Researchers Without Borders? Internationalisation and Research Trajectories, 1991-2021
Roundtable of the CEFRES Alumni Association (English)

Chair: Clara Royer, senior Lecturer at Sorbonne University, former director of CEFRES (2015–2018)

  • Florence Vychytil-Baudoux, historian, doctoral student at EHESS, associated with CEFRES
  • Pascal Marty, geographer, Director of the Maison française d’Oxford, former deputy Director of InSHS of CNRS
  • Jana Vargovčíková, political scientist, junior Professor at INALCO
  • Gilles Lepesant, geographer, research Director at CNRS
  • Hana Fořtová, political scientist, translator, researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Luděk Brož, anthropologist, researcher at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences
  • Eloïse Adde, historian medievalist, Marie Curie researcher at the Saint-Louis University in Brussels

You can download the program here.

Human Rights

The 8th session of IMS / CEFRES Epistemological seminar will be hosted by:

Zuzana Krulichová (PhD candidate at FSV UK)
Topic: Human Rights

Organisers: Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES), Claire Madl (CEFRES), Tomáš Weiss (FSV UK) and Mitchell Young (IMS FSV UK)
Where: on line
To register, please contact: claire(@)cefres.cz
When: Wednesday, May 19th, 4:30 pm- 6:00 pm
Language: English

Reading:

  • Amartya Sen : “Human Rights and Capabilities”. Journal of Human Development, Vol. 6, No 2, July 2005.

”And so the Bulgarian Jews were saved…” Researching, retelling, and remembering the Holocaust in Bulgaria

Tandem Webinar
organized by Michèle Baussant (CEFRES, CNRS / ICM Fellow) with the collaboration of Maria Kokkinou (CEFRES / FSV UK) and Johana Wyss (CEFRES / Institute of Ethnology AV ČR)

Date: Wednesday, May 12th, 2021, 3:00–5:00 pm
Place: Online, streamed live on CEFRES Facebook page: www.facebook.com/cefres
Or on Zoom, to register please contact Claire Madl: claire(@)cefres.cz
Language: English

Presentation of the book: « Et les Juifs bulgares furent sauvés… ». Une histoire des savoirs sur la Shoah en Bulgarie (Presse de  Sciences Po, 2020) with the participation of:

The author, Nadège Ragaru, Research Professor, Center for International Studies of Sciences Po (CERI, CNRS),

And as discussants:
Henriette-Rika Benveniste (Professor of History, University of Thessaly, Greece)
Jan Grabowski (Professor of History, University of Ottawa, Canada)

Bulgaria was an exception, a state allied with the Reich that refused to deport its Jewish community. This image of Bulgaria during WWII has persisted until the present day, overlooking the fact that in the Yugoslavian and Greek territories occupied by this country between 1941 and 1945, almost all the Jews were rounded up, sent to Poland, and exterminated.

The result of a vast documentary and archival investigation, Nadège Ragaru has pieced together the origins of what was long assumed to be factual because it was widely believed. It explains why a single aspect of a complex and contradictory history was emphasized in the transmission of history. She shows how the deportations, although not expunged, were considered secondary in public discourses, museums, history books, and the arts. She looks at how writings on the persecutions of Bulgarian Jews became caught up in the Cold War and then the political and memorial struggles of the post-communist period in the Balkans and the rest of the world.

Deeply original in its approach and in its style, this historical investigation is an exemplary reflection on the silences of the past.

For more information about the Tandem 2021 research project De-imperial Europe: A Resentful Confederation of Vanquished Peoples? Raw and Lapsed Memories of Post-imperial Minorities, please see here.

For more information about the Tandem programme, see here.

Ernest Gellner Legacy and Social Theory Today

CEFRES is glad to contribute to the international conference
Ernest Gellner Legacy and Social Theory Today,
organized by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA)

When:  May 6th, 7th and 8th, 2021 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. (CEST)
Where: CEFRES and online

Organising committee: Nikola Balaš, Jérôme Heurtaux, Petr Skalník, Daniel Sosna, Zdeněk Uherek
Main organizer:  Petr Skalník

This conference is supported by the Open Society Policy Center (Open Society Foundations).

Does Ernest Gellner remain an inspiration for 21st century social theory?

A quarter of century after his death in 1995, is the British-Czech anthropologist still a reference for those dealing with such different topics as modernity, neo-nationalism and populism in Europe, migratory pressure from Africa and Middle East on Europe, revolutions and civil wars in Arab countries, Islamic terrorism, the historical ascent of Asia, the crisis of European unity, post-communist illiberalism, Russian post-Soviet nostalgia or with any other topics which Gellner paid attention to?

Leading Ernest Gellner scholars will come together for three days to discuss Ernest Gellner’s strengths and tools for thinking about our contemporary world.

Program

Thursday May 6, 2021 at 2 p.m.

Chair: Daniel Sosna

Opening

2 p.m.–2.05 p.m. Martin Heřmanský (Past President, Czech Association for Social Anthropology)
2.05 p.m.–2.10 p.m. Jérôme Heurtaux (Director, French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences)
2.10 p.m.–2.15 p.m. Petr Skalník (Main organiser, Czech Association for Social Anthropology)

Papers and Comments

2.15 p.m.–2.35 p.m. David Shankland: Gellner: Right and Wrong
Discussant: Lale Yalçın-Heckmann 

2.35 p.m.–2.55 p.m. Johann Arnason: Gellner and the Habsburg, Window on Modernity
Discussant: Christopher Hann

2.55 p.m–3:15 p.m. Daniele Conversi: Gellner in the Anthropocene. Modernity, Nationalism and Climate Change
Discussant: Thomas Hylland Eriksen 

3:15 p.m.–3:30 p.m. Break

3:30 p.m.–3.50 p.m. Ian Jarvie: The Persistence of the Individualism Debate Today
Discussant: David Gellner

3.50 p.m.–4.10 p.m. Alan Macfarlane: Ernest Gellner and the Limits of Understanding
Discussants: Adam Horálek and Richard Marshall

4.10 p.m.–4.30 p.m. Adam Horálek: Nation Building in Aging Taiwan: Gellnerian Perspective
Discussant: Alan Macfarlane

4.30 p.m.–5.00 p.m. Discussion

Main discussant: Aleksandar Bošković
General discussion

Friday  May 7, 2021 at 2 p.m.

Chair: Thomas Hylland Eriksen

Papers and Comments

2 p.m.–2:20 p.m. David Gellner: Ernest Gellner and Populism
Discussant: Mihály Sárkány

2:20 p.m.–2:40 p.m. Grażyna Kubica: Gellner’s Theory of Nationalism and the Study of Silesianess
Discussant: Marcin Brocki

2:40 p.m.–3:00 p.m. Guido Franzinetti: Gellner and the Historians
Discussant: David Shankland

3:00 p.m.–3:20 p.m. Chris Hann: Conditions of Liberty Revisited: The Bitter Consequences of Sweet Commerce and Liberal Utopias
Discussant: Johann Arnason

15:20-15:35 Break

3:35 p.m.–3:55 p.m. Ralph Schroeder: The Ghost in the Machine: Gellner and Beyond with Data-Driven and Formalized Social Theory
Discussant: Siniša Malešević

3:55 p.m.–4:15 p.m. Vytis Čiubrinskas: Politics of Ethnification: Political Subjectivity of  Nation-States vis-à-vis Polish Minority in Eastern Europe
Discussant: Zdeněk Uherek

4:15 p.m–4:35 p.m. Zdeněk Uherek: Conceptualizations of Nations and Nationalisms and their Developments: The Czech Reflection
Discussant: Vytis Čiubrinskas

4:35 p.m.–5:00 p.m. Discussion

Main discussant: Nikola Balaš
General discussion

Saturday May 8, 2021 at 2 p.m.

Chair: David Shankland

Papers and Comments

2 p.m.–2:20 p.m. Thomas Hylland Eriksen: Postcolonialism as a Possibility: A Dialogue that Never Happened
Discussant: Grażyna Kubica

2:20 p.m.–2:40 p.m.  Siniša Malešević: War and Group Solidarity: From Ibn Khaldun to Ernest Gellner and Beyond
Discussant: Guido Franzinetti

2:40 p.m.–3:00 p.m.  Nikolay Kradin: Ernest Gellner and Debates about World History Periodization
Discussant: Anatoly Khazanov

3:00 p.m.–3:20 p.m. Anatoly Khazanov: After Ernest Gellner: Nationalism and Nation-States Today
Discussant: John Hall

3:20 p.m.–3:35 p.m. Break

3:35 p.m.-3.55 p.m.  Andre Gingrich : The Importance of Reading Ernest: Historical Methodologies as Hidden Resources for Anthropology
Discussant: 4.35 p.m : Daniele Conversi

3.55 p.m.-4.15 p.m. John Hall: The Philosopher of Anthropology: Ernest Gellner (1925-1995)
Discussant: Ian Jarvie

4.15 p.m.-4.35 p.m. Lahouari Addi: L’islam, Platon et le protestantisme : Gellner et la société maghrébine
Andre Gingrich  will introduce Lahouari Addi´s paper and comment on it as well

4.35 p.m.-5.00 p.m. Discussion

Main discussant: Petr Skalník
General discussion

Closing

The first session of the conference (May 6) will be streamed on CEFRES Facebook page.

 

List of Participants

  1. Lahouari Addi (Professor Emeritus, Sciences Po Lyon, Visiting Researcher at Georgetown University)
  2. Johann Arnason (Professor Emeritus, La Trobe University)
  3. Nikola Balaš (Board member, Czech Association for Social Anthropology)
  4. Aleksandar Bošković (Professor of Anthropology, University of Belgrade)
  5. Marcin Brocki (Associate Professor, Institute of Ethnology, Jagiellonian University)
  6. Vytis Čiubrinskas (Professor of Social Anthropology, Vytautas Magnus University)
  7. Daniele Conversi (Research Professor at the University of the Basque Country)
  8. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo)
  9. Guido Franzinetti (Lecturer, Department of Humanistic Studies,
    University of Eastern Piedmont)
  10. David Gellner (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford)
  11. Andre Gingrich (Founding Director, Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences)
  12. John Hall (Emeritus James McGill Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology)
  13. Chris Hann (Director, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
  14. Martin Heřmanský (Past President, Czech Association for Social Anthropology)
  15. Jérôme Heurtaux (Director, French Center for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences)
  16. Adam Horálek (Head, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Pardubice)
  17. Ian Jarvie (Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, York University)
  18. Anatoly Khazanov (Ernest Gellner Professor of Anthropology (Emeritus), University of Wisconsin)
  19. Nikolay Kradin (Director, Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, Far Eastern Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences)
  20. Wolfgang Kraus (Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna)
  21. Grażyna Kubica-Heller  (Associate Professor, Social Anthropology Section, Institute of Sociology, Jagiellonian University)
  22. Adam Kuper  (Professor Emeritus, Brunel University)
  23. Alan Macfarlane (Professor Emeritus, Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
  24. Siniša Malešević (Professor of Sociology, School of Sociology, University College Dublin)
  25. Richard Marshall (Editor of 3:16am, on line magazine of philosophy, art and culture)
  26. Mihály Sárkány (Senior honoris causa, Institute of Ethnology, Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
  27. Ralph Schroeder (Professor of Social Science of the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford)
  28. David Shankland (Director, Royal Anthropological Institute)
  29. Petr Skalník (Main organiser, founding member of the Czech Association for Social Anthropology)
  30. Daniel Sosna (Senior Researcher, Institute of Ethnology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic)
  31. Zdeněk Uherek (Director, Institute of Sociological Studies, Charles University)
  32. Lale Yalçın-Heckmann (Professor Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)

Informations : cefres@cefres.cz

Nutag: A Mongolian conception of Homeland?

The 11th session of IMS / CEFRES Epistemological seminar will be hosted by:

Véronique Gruca (PhD candidate at Université Paris-Nanterre & CEFRES)
Topic: Nutag: A Mongolian conception of Homeland

Organisers: Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES), Claire Madl (CEFRES), Tomáš Weiss (FSV UK) and Mitchell Young (IMS FSV UK)
Where: on line
To register, please contact: claire(@)cefres.cz
When: Wednesday, May 5th, 4:30 pm- 6:00 pm
Language: English

Reading:

  • Sayana Namsaraeva: “Ritual, Memory and the Buriad Diaspora Notion of Home”, in: (ed. Franck Billé, Grégory Delaplace & Caroline Humphrey) Frontier Encounters, Open Book Publishers, 2012.

Crisis of the foundations: foundation of the crisis?

Yoann Morvan (French Research Centre in Jerusalem CRFJ)

will be taking part in the seminar called
Current Issues. Reflection on Crises
organised by CEFRES.

Date: Wednesday , May 5th 2021, 12h30 – 13h50
Where: Online on Zoom.
Organisators:  Maria Kokkinou (post-doc at CEFRES / Charles University), Jérôme Heurtaux (CEFRES)
Language: French

Link to join the seminar: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84097191940 

For more information about the programme and the seminar,  see the website: http://cefres.cz/fr/seminaires/penser-les-crises.