Crossroads Podcast: The organizing principle of coloniality is structural gendered racism

In the latest episode of the podcast series Crossroads, we invited Sylvia Tamale who is a Professor of Law at Makerere University, where she was the first female Dean of the School of Law. She founded and served as a coordinator of the Gender, Law & Sexuality Research Project at the School of Law.

Tamale is a leading African feminist lawyer, scholar, and feminist activist. She has won several awards for her academic work and for defending the human rights of marginalized groups. She is a co-editor of the journal Feminist Africa. She has been a visiting professor at academic institutions around the world; in 2021 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Law by the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Her latest book Decolonization and Afro-Feminism was awarded the 2022 book prize from the Feminist Theory and Gender Section of the International Sociological Association.

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Crossroads Podcast: Indian music and art needs to be understood from below

Why can we find hardly any members of the lowest castes neither in Indian music academies nor in the juries of singing talent shows? Why do Dalit musicians write lyrics not only about their caste heroes but even about the Indian Constitution? How do traditional and modern musical styles come together in the struggle against historical injustices? And how do the privileged higher castes respond to all this? In the new episode of the Crossroads podcast series, Indian political scientist Chandraiah Gopani discusses why the caste system remains an important element of Indian society and how inequalities manifest themselves in music.

Chandraiah Gopani studied political science at the University of Hyderabad. He is now an Associate Professor at the Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute in Prayagraj (formerly Allahabad), India. His main research interests are in critical theory, caste and Dalit studies, and Dalit-Bahujan cultural and intellectual traditions. He is currently writing a book on the invisible and most marginalized Dalit castes.

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Crossroads Podcast: We cannot afford to not care about care

In the latest episode of the podcast Crossroads we invite dr Kristine Krause. Dr Krause is an anthropologist working at the intersections of political and medical anthropology, interested in subjectivities and health, citizenship and care. At the University of Amsterdam she is a member of the Health, Care and the Body Programme and the Long-term Care and Dementia Research Group. Together with Jeannette Pols she runs the Anthropology of Care Network.

In her current, ERC founded research ReloCare, she looks at care outsourcing within Europe, where geographic discrepancies in cost, access and salaries are played out. She analyses care as a social-material practice involving many different actors, driven by flows of people, and capital, but where family, state, and market remain influential.

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Crossroads podcast: Live-in care markets provide decent care under poor working conditions

In the latest episode of the podcast Crossroads we invite professor Brigitte Aulenbacher. She is a Professor of Sociological Theory and Social Analysis, the Head of the Department of the Theory of Society and Social Analyses at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz in Austria and a co-editor of Global Dialogue – the Magazine of the International Sociological Association. In addition, she is the vice-president of the International Karl Polanyi Society.

Her fields of research include social inequalities and justice, and theoretical and empirical work on labour, care, marketization and science. She is a distinguished scholar and author of many academic publications whose work has made important contributions bridging theories of contemporary capitalism, Critical Theory and feminist theory. In 2019 she received the Kurt-Rothschild-Award for her work on Karl Polanyi.

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Lecture “Rise and Fall of Jair Messias Bolsonaro”

18 December 2022, 7 pm
Prostor 39
Řehořova 33/39, Prague 3

Department of Political Philosophy and Globalization Research, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, invites you to a lecture of Frédéric Vandenberghe Rise and Fall of Jair Messias BolsonaroFrédéric Vandenberghe is professor of sociology at the Institute of philosophy and social sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Currently, he is the Distinguished Max Weber Fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg of the University of Erfurt.

Invitation (PDF)

International workshop “Imaginary Worlds and Imperial Power: The Case of China”

19 December 2022, 9 am
Akademic Conference Centre
Husova 4a, Prague 1

The participants of the workshop make use of the vocabulary of civilizational analysis, especially as developed in the work of Johann Arnason, to understand Chinese civilization in comparison with its Western counterpart(s), for instance in the discussion of a shared ‘Axial Age’, the continuities and paradoxes of tradition and modernity, the comparative studies of world empires, and the differing ‘social imaginaries’. The latter term refers to the role of our imagination in articulating our world and our place in it. In this way, society is seen as an institution with a network of imaginary meanings. An important question is what sort of meanings would apply to the Chinese context. To what extent do they differ from comparable Western meanings?

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Lecture “Political Apologies, their Content, and Protagonists”

14 December 2022, 4 pm
Institute of Philosophy CAS, room no. 124a
Jilská 1, Prague 1 / ZOOM (online)

Department of Political Sociology, Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences invites you to the lecture of prof. Roman David (Lingnan University, Hong Kong) Political Apologies, their Content, and Protagonists: Experimental Evidence from Victims and Perpetrators Nations.

Political apologies are recognized as a feature of effective diplomacy, projections of soft power, and instances of transitional justice. They have been found to have a positive effect on justice, trust, and reconciliation. However, the efficacy of apologies has also been questioned. This talk examines the acceptance of political apologies, their content and the protagonists in the victim-nation, the perpetrator-nation, and their subgroups.

Invitation (PDF)

International seminar “Indonesia – an Emerging Middle Power and Partner of the EU in the Indo-Pacific”

7 December 2022, 2 pm
Czech Academy of Sciences, lecture hall 108
Národní 3, Prague 1

The Oriental Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences & the Prague Platform for Southeast Asian Studies cordially invite you to an international seminar Indonesia – an Emerging Middle Power and Partner of the EU in the Indo-Pacific.

Programme (PDF)

The aim of this international seminar is to analyze Indonesia’s position as an emerging middle power in the Indo-Pacific and a major new actor on the global geopolitical scene in general. Indonesia has traditionally been considered – given its size and population – as a natural regional power, but has been perceived globally as a country ‘punching below its weight’. More recently, however, it has also increasingly been seen as a global middle power with influence comparable to the political and economic clout of some European countries. This recognition of Indonesia’s newfound status has been reflected, for example, in its G20 presidency in 2022, which the country’s diplomats and politicians have handled exceedingly well given the turbulent global situation. It is always tricky to predict how exactly Indonesia will succeed but one thing is certain – Indonesia is a country to watch.

Reservations at petru@orient.cas.cz

Presentation “Geopolitical momentum for WB-EU relations”

5 December 2022, 5 am
Institute of International Relations
Nerudova 3, Prague 1

Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Political Philosophy and Globalization Research invite to a paper presentation Geopolitical momentum for WB-EU relations: chances and risks for Western Balkans in the context of the war in Ukraine. Three authors of the paper will assess the last six months of geopolitical upheaval in the Western Balkans and inquire into the possibilities of EU-Western Balkan relations in the current context. Will the war in Ukraine negatively affect the stagnating EU-Balkans relations or can it in fact bring some progress in terms of geopolitical alignment, security and energy cooperation and enlargement?

Programme (PDF)

International workshop “Plants as/and Humans”

21–22 November 2022
Seminar room of the Institute of Ethnology CAS (5th floor)
Na Florenci 3, Prague 1

Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences and CEFRES – French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences cordially invites you to a workshop Plants as/and Humans: Southern Epistemologies and ‘Floral Turn’.

Symbiosis with the plant kingdom is not a possibility, but the very condition of human existence. The intensification of this symbiosis, usually called domestication or development of agriculture, has formed the world in which we live in a radical, hard to overestimate way. Reflecting on the world-making role of plants through the methods of the natural and social sciences reveals plants as mediators of intensifying political and economic transformations of social and ecological relationships in different regions of our planet. Human reflection on this historical agency of plants is just as diverse and dynamic and not limited to the so-called West.

Programme (PDF)