Past events

Cultured meat is presented as a technology that promises to save the planet, to be sustainable, to protect human health, to eliminate animal suffering and to help feed the planet and fight world hunger.

CESCAME invites you to the Mid-term Conference in Prague, where we will explore the micro-practices driving societal transformation in the face of global environmental change, particularly within urban populations. Our confirmed guests are Luca Sára Bródy, Laura Berger, Jonas van der Straeten, Bianka Plüschke-Altof. Please register if you want to participate.

The event will begin on Thursday, October 3, with a public lecture by Will LaFleur at the Institute of Sociology, titled “Rethinking Beer: Histories and Futures of Tastes, Practices, and Reproduction for a Post-Growth World.” Registration is not required for this lecture. The following 3-day workshop focuses on using the methods and concepts of social sciences and arts to explore foraging as a mode of coexistence in multispecies relations.

Foraging involves activities that not only complement but also subvert existing distribution chains and encourage the search for non-industrial food production. “Edible commons” are sometimes proposed as a measure against crises threatening conventional industrial food distribution chains (Sardeshpande et al. 2021). Furthermore, Chang and Bai (2020) contrast foraging to “capitalistic food culture” since the industrial production and buying of food off the shelf obscures the chain of activities needed to create a product. Consumers often ignore the conditions under which products are made due to the disconnection between production and consumption, as scholars of feminist commons observed (Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen, 2001; Federici, 2012). Foraging, in contrast, makes the food production processes visible and tangible. Annemarie Mol (2021) noted that during the act of eating, the world moves through the body. While building upon her approach, the workshop will pursue the following questions: What is metabolised when we eat food that we have gathered, prepared, and reflected on together? What new entanglements between people and non-human forms of life emerge when food is obtained through foraging? How does eating change if the labour and joy—and, perhaps even pain—of foraging is part of the food preparation?

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.

Sociological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Sociology of the Institute of Sociological Studies FSS CU invite you to the spring cycle of Thursday sociological seminars.

Sociological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Sociology of the Institute of Sociological Studies FSS CU invite you to the spring cycle of Thursday sociological seminars.

Sociological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Department of Sociology of the Institute of Sociological Studies FSS CU invite you to the spring cycle of Thursday sociological seminars.

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. Guided by studies on the structure of apologies, it distinguishes ten features of apologies, seven of which concern their content and three their protagonists. Based on the analysis of apology statements by Japan to South Korea, the paper further breaks these features (factors) down into 32 elements (levels). Their acceptance is examined in a randomized conjoint experiment, which was embedded in large online quota-based surveys in Japan (n=2,700) and South Korea (n=3,000). The analysis reveals the relative importance of protagonists over the content of apologies and the possibilities for acceptable apologies for both nations. The analysis of subgroup differences showed that apology features are less important for its acceptance than contemporary perceptions and ideology in the perpetrator-nation but more important than the role of gender and age.

The public lecture is organized by the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in collaboration with Italian Cultural Institute in Prague, Centre for African Studies (Faculty of Arts, Charles University) and the Czech Association for African Studies.

The European Social Survey (ESS) has published a call for papers aimed at those who wish to present their research at the ESS Visegrad Network+ Conference in Prague, Czechia, on 13-14 October 2022.

CESCAME invites you to an exciting series of three guest lectures on urban practices and politics. In the last lecture, Lela Rekhiashvili will show how marketisation produces new forms of urban informality, criticising interpretations of informality as a product of ‘deficiencies’ in Central and East European and Eurasian transition.

Recent studies highlight the importance of creating a more gender-sensitive entrepreneurship culture, including awareness raising campaigns, role models and developments in the education system (OECD, 2021). Focusing on three very different cultural contexts of Iran, India and France, this round table session aims to explore the impact of gendered cultural and institutional contexts on how women entrepreneurs start and operate their businesses. It will offer recommendations for policy makers and those involved in supporting women entrepreneurs.

CESCAME invites you to an exciting series of three guest lectures on urban practices and politics. In the second lecture, Alexa Färber will present her concept "urban promises".

Call for applications for the Training school of the COST action TRACTS: Traces as Research Agenda for Climate Change, Technology Studies, and Social Justice.

CESCAME invites you to a series of three guest lectures on the city, sustainability, urban practices and politics, everydayness and informality and their potential for social change. In the first lecture, our guest Örjan Sjöberg will conceptually discuss the Sustainable Development Goals and the possible risks and conflicts between the social world and environmental goals.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, democracy worldwide continued to deteriorate. As established and new democracies faced unprecedented challenges to public health and the economy, their democratic quality declined. While established democracies could largely prevent pandemic erosion of democratic quality, democracies in transitions could not. Pandemic is an opportunity for executive aggrandizement –strengthening governments, weakening parliaments, and testing the judiciary.

Lecture by sociologists Ruta Śpiewak and Wojciech Goszczyński on Alternative Food Networks in Poland

We would like to invite you to an international symposium Borders, Mobility of Care and Translocal Social Reproduction. The event will be held as a hybrid event on Thursday December 2, 2021. Please, register to the event. We will send you the link and ID if you prefer to participate online. In case you are in Prague, you can attend in person (Academic conference centre, Husova 4a, Praha 1).

CESCAME (Centre for the Study of Social Change and the Material Environment) invites you to the online conference organised (online) at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, 13 – 15. 10., 2 – 5 pm each day (GMT +2 / Prague time).

The conference Deepening the ERA through Gender Equality will provide a platform for Member States, Research Funders, ERA stakeholders and experts to reflect on the recent advances in gender equality at the national and European levels and emerging needs to be addressed in the new ERA. Building on the results of the EU-funded GENDERACTION project, the conference will provide an opportunity to discuss key lessons and opportunities of EU policy coordination in gender equality, with a focus on gender equality plans as the main instrument to promote institutional changes.