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Core-periphery

The 7th session of IMS / CEFRES Epistemological seminar will be hosted by:

Zach Lavengood (PhD candidate at FSV UK)
Topic: The concept of “Core-periphery”

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, March 10th, 4:30 pm- 6:00 pm
Language: English

Reading:

  • Shannon, T. R.  “The Contemporary World-system”. In : T. R. Shannon, An Introduction to the World-System Perspective (pp. 85-124). Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.

Cooking Inner Darkness and Making Kin: Behind the staff only doors

Gellner Seminar

Nafsika Papacharalampous (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK) will give a lecture within the Gellner seminar organized by the Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA– Česká Asociace pro Sociální Antropologii), the Czech Society of Sociology, in cooperation with the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and CEFRES.

When: 19 November, at 5 pm
Where: CEFRES Library (Na Florenci 3, Prague 1)
Language: English

Abstract

Cooking inner darkness and making kin: Behind the staff only doors
This paper follows the lives of the chefs and cooks within the boundaries of Athenian restaurant kitchens, offering an ethnographic sense of this professional context and environment of teamwork. Bringing Turner (1967a, 1995) and Goffman’s (1956) works together, this paper presents the often harsh realities of the cooks’ work settings and the chef’s behaviours.

The first part of the paper presents the division between the front and back of house in restaurants, engaging with Goffman’s work (1956) and situated in ethnographic narratives reveals the daily workings and lives of cooks. The second part of the paper observes and analyses the relationships of the cooks and the chef in the restaurant kitchen. Using Turner’s work on liminality (1967a, 1995) and Carsten (1995)’s work on kinship it explores the humiliation and abuse cooks experience from their chef, and the creation of communitas, and new formations and definitions of kinship. Within restaurant kitchens in Athens-in-crisis, the notion of teamwork comes to the fore and reveals how bonds are formed in a high-pressured environment.

References
Carsten, J., 1995. The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood, and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi. Am. Ethnol. 22, 223–241.
Goffman, E., 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.
Turner, V., 1995. The Ritual Process: Structure and anti-structure. Transaction Publishers.
Turner, V., 1967. The Forest of Symbols, Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London.

Nafsika Papacharalampous

Nafsika is currently a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is writing her dissertation on Greek traditional foods and markets, focusing on national identity, memory, terroir and heritage. Nafsika has a Master’s Degree in Anthropology of Food from SOAS and an MBA from the Athens University of Economics and Business. She has previously written a weekly column investigating the notion of Real Food for the London-based online food market Love Your Larder and has recently started cooking professionally for pop-up-restaurants in London. Nafsika is also the Recipe Editor for the SOAS Recipe Book and a food blogger at www.nafsikacooks.com, where she indulges her passion for both cooking and writing. She loves food history and has just started collecting old cookery books.

Contested Energy Transitions

Contested Energy Transitions.
Conflicts and Social Innovations in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and France

Kick-off meeting of a research project developed within AV ČR–CNRS TANDEM Program by the Czech Academy of Sciences, Charles University and CNRS, at CEFRES.

When: Tuesday 23 April 2024, 2 pm–3:30 pm
Where: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1 and online (to get the link, please register at cefres@cefres.cz)
Language: English

With the participation of the project coordinators:

et de

The meeting will be opened by:

  • Mr. Tomáš KOSTELECKÝ, Member of the Academy Council, Czech Academy of Sciences

Presentation

Gilles Lepesant, Martin Durdovic, and Krzysztof Tarkowski will present this project in energy social research. The project aims to better understand transition resistance and stakeholder conflicts arising from the adoption of EU energy transition policies and to identify new patterns in energy governance that will help overcome these challenges. The research is based on a comparative approach between countries and focuses on case studies at the local or regional level. 

Conservative mobilizations in transnational perspective

Conservative mobilizations in Central Eastern Europe in transnational perspective

International Conference

Date: 8-9 December 2022
Location: CEFRES Library
Organizers:
– CEFRES
– Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University
– Research Group (GDR)  “Connaissance de l’Europe médiane”, CNRS,
– The French Ministry of Higher Education and Research – PARCECO Programme
Convenors:  Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / Charles University), Valentin Behr (CNRS, Centre Européen de Sociologie et de Science Politique)
Language: English, French

Program

Day 1, 8 December 2022

09:30 : Welcome coffee & snacks
10:00 : Opening remarks, Mateusz Chmurski, Director of CEFRES
10:15 : General introduction, Valentin Behr & Anemona Constantin

10:30–12:00 – Panel 1 – Intellectuals’ engagements and the transnational circulation of ideas
Chair : Ronan Hervouet (CEFRES / Université de Bordeaux)
Discussant: Jakub Franek (IPS, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University)

10:30 : Alihan Mestci (CESSP, Paris I University/CNRS/ EHESS), “Erdoğan regime. The expertise on the issue of the “legitimate culture”

10:50 : Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / IPS, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University), “How the conservative intellectuals do mobilize? Reflections on the emergence of a conservative International”

11:10 Discussion

11: 30 : Q&A

12.00-13.30: Lunch

13:30–15:30 – Panel 2 – Espaces intermédiaires et registres de mobilisation conservatrice
Chair: Michèle Baussant (ISP-CNRS / ICM / CEFRES)
Discussant: Annie Collovald (ISP-CNRS / Paris Nanterre University)

13:30 : Marie-Hélène Sa Vilas-Boas (CREDA, IHEAL / ERMES / Paris 3 University – Côte d’Azur University) “The ‘truth’ as a programm. Production of the political offer and religious references among the Bolsonarists in Rio (online)

13:50 : Aurélie Stern (CETOBaC, EHESS / Galatasaray University), “All descendants of Attila? The Turkish presence at the Macar Turan Kurultayı identity festival in Hungary.”

14:10 : Adrien Nonjon (CREE, INALCO), “Technology as a tool of the conservative renewal in Baltic space? The case of the prometheist new-right wings”

14:30 : Discussion

14:50 : Q&A

15.30-16.00: Coffee break

16:00–18:30 –Panel 3 – Late socialism and illiberal post-communism in perspective
Chair: Valentin Behr (CESSP, Paris I University / CNRS / EHESS) & Anemona Constantin (CEFRES / Charles University)

16:00 : Michal Kopeček (Czech Academy of Sciences): “Compromise in the Rule-of-Law: politics of liberal constitutionalism and the Rule of Law doctrines in East Central Europe after 1989”

16:20 : Laure Neumayer (Picardie University “Jules Verne”): The transformations of Central European anti-Communism after 1989

16:40 : Jérôme Heurtaux ( Paris-Dauphine University) : “When left-wing historians and activists re-read the communist past in Poland” (online)

17:00 : Julian Waller (IERES / George Washington University) (online): “‘Illiberalism’ in the East but ‘postliberalism’ in the West? Conceptualizing and mapping ideological dissent from Eastern Europe to America” (online)

17:20 : Discussion

17:40 : Q&A

18.30: End of Day 1

19:30 : Dinner

Day 2: 9 December 2022

9:00–11.00 – Panel 4 – Civil society and grassroots mobilizations
Chair: Valentin Behr (CESSP, CNRS)
Discussant: Pavel Barša (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

9:00 : Eve Gianoncelli (Maison francaise d’Oxford) The forms and limitations of metapolitics: the case of the European Conservative (tbc)

9:20 : Marcin Ślarzyński (Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences), “From the rituals of rebellion to the rituals of power? Local cultural and political practices of right-wing civil society organizations in Poland before and after taking power in 2015”

9:40 : Adrien Beauduin (CEFRES / Central European University), “Learning from the West? Western sources of the Czech parliamentary far-right”

10:00 : Discussion

10:20 : Q&A

11:00-11:30: Coffee break

11:30–13:30: Panel 5 – Legal order, moral order and illiberal identities within the conservative realm
Chair: Fedora Parkmann (CEFRES / Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Discussant: Zora Hesová (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

11: 30 : Natasza Quelvennec (CESSP, Paris I University / CNRS / EHESS), “Gender on trial. A legal think tank at the heart of the conservative international”

11:50 : Victor Hugo Ramirez-Garcia (LIPHA, Paris-Est Créteil University), “European institutions’ response to conservative backlash. The case of transnational justice and gender education”

12:10 : Paul Gradvohl (Paris 1 University), “Moral order, social order and (inter)nationalist circulations during the 20th and 21st centuries”

12:30 : Discussion

12:50 : Q&A

13:30: End of Day 2 

You can find the call for papers here.

You can find the abstract of each presentation here.

You can download the programme here.

You can find the list of participants here.

Foto: Petr Sís, Člověk a víra.

Consequences of Ethnography: Knowing Violence via the Self and Its Aftermath

Organizers: Michal Šípoš and Luděk Brož (Institute of Ethnology, The Czech Academy of Sciences)
with the support of  Strategy AV21, programme: Global Con icts and Local Interactions: Cultural and Social Challenges
Venue: Villa Lana, Prague
Click here to register to the workshop!
See the pdf of the event Consequences of Ethnography_colloquium.

Outline

As Sherry Ortner famously argued, ethnography in its minimal de nition is “the attempt to understand another life world using the self—as much of it as possible—as the instrument of knowing.” It is hardly surprising that conducting ethnographic research among/with survivors of violence—be it military, community, domestic, sexual, self-in icted or another form of violence— has a strong impact on the researcher. That impact, given the nature of ethnography, then directly translates into issues that are simultaneously personal and epistemological. Implications for the ethnographically knowing subject stretch well beyond feelings of empathy with research participants, as well as beyond the space-time of the eldwork. In this colloquium, we want to address methodological questions connected to knowing violence ethnographically, such as—but not limited to—the following:

  • When conducting ethnographic eldwork, researchers are often confronted with survivors’ silence or with an urgent need to tell what survivors witnessed and endured. Does that translate into an equally polarised reaction on the side of the researcher?
    In other words, can we see increased academic productivity in some cases among ethnographers, but inhibition of speaking-writing in other cases?
  • How can we speak of trauma of research without inappropriately shifting attention from research subjects to the researcher him- or herself?
  • The needs of research subjects may significantly shape a researcher’s own trajectory in the eld. Should the researcher let research subjects take control over the project?
  • Some ethnographers who publicly voice their research agendas are targeted by various actors, including authorities, hate groups or even the perpetrators behind the violence sufered by their research subjects. How can we methodologically conceptualise such encounters as part of ethnographic endeavour? What is the epistemic role of fear in such cases?

Program

9:20 Registration

9:50 Welcome address

10:00-11:00—Keynote speech no. 1
Veena Das (Johns Hopkins University): The Character of the Possible: Modality and Mood in the Genre of Ethnography

11:00-12:00—Keynote speech no. 2
David Mosse (SOAS, University of London): Trauma and Ethical Self-Making after Suicide: The Existential Imperative to Respond

12:00-13:00 Lunch break

13:00-14:00—Keynote speech no. 3
Jonathan Stillo (Wayne State University): “No One Leaves This Place Except the Dead”: Tuberculosis as a Socially Incurable Disease

14:00-14:15 Coffee break

14:15-16:15—Roundtable discussion
with: Petra Ezzeddine (Charles University), Jaroslav Klepal, Michal Šípoš and Václav Walach (The Czech Academy of Sciences)

Conference: New Approaches to the History of the Jews under Communism

European Association of Jewish Studies Conference, Prague

Date & Place: from 23 to 25 May 2017, Villa Lanna, Prague
Language: English
Organizers: Kateřina Čapková (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences), Kamil Kijek (Department of Jewish Studies, University of Wrocław), Stephan Stach (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)

Program

23 May 2017 

20.00 –20.30 Oleg Zhidkov (Jerusalem): The Jewish Movement in the USSR: New Sources and Perspectives (Video Testimonies)

24 May 2017 

9.00 Welcome

9.15–11.00 Panel I – Jewish Life, Religious Practise and Folklore under Soviet Communism (I)

Chair: Ilana Miller (Chicago/Prague)

  • Valery Dymshits (St Petersburg), The Boundaries of Illegal: Religious Practices and Shadow Economy in Soviet Jewish Life
  • Victoria Gerasimova (Omsk), The Jewish Community of Omsk under the Soviets, from 1940 to the 1960s: Between Tradition and Survival
  • Diana Dumitru (Chişinău), ‘It is Better to Live in Romania Than in the Soviet Union’: How Bessarabian Jews Tried and Frequently Failed to Become Soviet Citizens during Late Stalinism

11.00–11.15 Coffee break

11.15–13.00 Panel II – Literature and Jewish Identity

Chair: Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Warsaw)

  • Daria Vakhrushova (Düsseldorf), The Utopia of Yiddish Literature after the Revolution
  • Magdalena Ruta (Krakow), Nusekh Poyln and the ‘New Jewish Man’: The Image of the Jewish Communist in Yiddish Literature of Post-war Poland
  • Gennady Estraikh (New York), Soviet Yiddish Cultural Diplomacy, from the 1950s to 1991

13.00–14.00 Lunch

14.00–15.45 Panel III – Paths of Integration/Disintegration into the Communist Political System and Society

Chair: Michal Kopeček (Prague)

  • Galina Zelenina (Moscow), ‘Po Kurskoi, Kazanskoi zheleznoi doroge’: Jewish Private Life in the Moscow Oblast between Leisure, Underground Religion, and National Revival
  • Agata Maksimowska (Warsaw), Being Jewish in Soviet Birobidzhan
  • Kateřina Čapková (Prague), Centre and Periphery: Jewish Experience in Communist Czechoslovakia

15.45–16.15 Coffee break

16.15–18.00 Round table: The Diversity of Jewish Experiences under Communism

Chair: Marcos Silber (Haifa)

  • Zvi Gitelman (Ann Arbor)
  • Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Warsaw)
  • Bożena Szaynok (Wrocław)
  • Andrea Pető (Budapest)
25 May 2017 

9.00–10.45 Panel IV – Jewish Identities and Ways of Life under Communism

Chair: Stephan Stach (Prague)

  • Anna Shternshis (Toronto), ‘I was not like everyone else’: Soviet Jewish Doctors Remember the Doctors’ Plot of 1953
  • Anna Koch (Southampton), ‘After Auschwitz you must take your origin seriously’: Perceptions of Jewishness among Communists of Jewish Origin in the Emerging German Democratic Republic
  • Kata Bohus (Frankfurt am Main), The Opposition of the Opposition: New Jewish Identities in the Samizdat of Late Communist Hungary

10.45–11.15 Coffee break

11.15–13.00 Panel V – Jewish Religious Life and Folklore under Soviet Communism II

Chair: Raphael Utz (Jena)

  • Ella Stiniguță (Cluj-Napoca), Mountain Jews and the Challenges of Ritual Life in the Soviet Caucasus
  • Mikhail Mitsel (New York), Jewish Religious Communities in Ukraine, 1945–81
  • Karīna Barkane (Riga), Beyond Assimilation: Jewish Religious Communities in the Latvian SSR

13.00–14.30 Lunch

14.30–15.45 Panel VI Jewish Transnational Encounters

Chair: Katrin Steffen (Hamburg)

  • David Shneer (Boulder), East Germany’s Jews, Their Transnational Networks, and East German Anti-Fascism
  • Eliyana R. Adler (State College/Warsaw), Strange Bedfellows: The Soviet Red Cross, Polish Jewish Refugees, and the American Joint Distribution Committee

15.45–16.15 Coffee break

16.15–17.45 Concluding Round Table

Chair: Kamil Kijek (Wrocław/Prague)

  • Audrey Kichelewski (Strasbourg)
  • Elissa Bemporad (New York)
  • Arkadi Zeltser (Jerusalem)

The experience of the Jews under the Communist régimes of east-central and eastern Europe has been a hotly debated topic of historiography since the 1950s. Until the 1980s, Cold War propaganda exerted a powerful influence on most interpretations presented in articles and books published on both sides of the ‘Iron Curtain’. Moreover, most works focused both on the relationship between the régime and the Jews living under it and on the role of the Jews in the Communist/Socialist movements and the political events connected with the rise of antisemitism and emigration.

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