Konference, semináře, přednášky

Příspěvek na speciálním semináři k narozeninám Ivana M. Havla, CTS (seminární místnost, 9-17h)

Vystoupení na společné výroční konferenci Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) & European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) s názvem "Acting with science, technology and medicine", Rotterdam, Holandsko, 20.-23. srpna 2008 (Sekce 1.4.3: Modern diseases)

We study how catholic quasi/religious experiences are dealt with in psychiatric care. We ask how it happens that, in particular therapeutic or pastoral settings, phenomena such as hearing the voice of God or having an apparition of Virgin Mary are enacted by participants as, on one hand, a legitimate religious experience or, on the other hand, a symptom of mental illness. To understand this border-work carried out, from time to time, in psychiatric (and also pastoral) practice, we used a symmetrical approach, in which no preference is a priori given to spiritual or medical explanations. That is also why we interviewed, among others, not only psychiatric professionals, but also catholic priests. Our interviewees frequently manifested their genuine interest in our research. Facing their curiosity (but also initial hesitations) we started thinking about the value of symmetrical approach somewhat differently. We appreciated that the “politics of symmetry” has implications far beyond what and how is known and started thinking more of what the symmetrical perspective means for “acting with our scientific knowledge” in the medical and pastoral fields. We decided to set up an experiment. In our early paper on the topic, we discussed a horror/court drama “Exorcism of Emily Rose” (Scott Derrickson, 2005), which tells about a catholic priest accused of negligent homicide of a young woman, Emily Rose, who had been considered by her family and the priest as possessed and did not survive attempted exorcism. Two competing versions of the case were confronted during the trial: while the prosecutor argued that Emily had been sick and exorcism directly led to her death, the defendant – with the help of an anthropologist – tried to take seriously the reality of possession. In this early paper, we show how the movie on Emily Rose carefully develops a balanced view of the phenomena and we also use this analysis to explain the principle of symmetry in our own research design. In the experiment, we have asked some mental health professionals and clerics, to watch the movie and read our early paper to prepare themselves for subsequent focused discussions with us. In the paper proposed for the 4S/EASST conference, we thus want to offer a close analysis of these discussions and shed some light on how the (explained and applied) principle of symmetry might be understood or misunderstood, accepted or rejected as relevant by the concerned professional audiences. We therefore want to contribute to the STS literature on symmetry by a small empirical exercise focused not so much on the “cognitive” relevance of this methodological standpoint, but rather on how symmetrical accounts can be accepted, understood and used by actors in the field(s) under study.

Vystoupení na 5. obroční evropské konference Society for Literature, Science & Arts "Figurations of knowledge", Berlín, Německo, 2.-7. června 2008 (Stream 1: Inspiration & intuition)

In our research we focus on the thresholds, passages and incommensurabilities between psychiatry and spirituality. More specifically, we ask: How it happens, in terms of observable and accountable practices, that phenomena such as hearing the voice of God, having an apparition of Virgin Mary or suffering from demonic oppression are sometimes understood as symptoms of mental illnesses or, other times, as elements of true spiritual or religious experience? Assuming that it simply is psychiatry, which produces the former, and pastoral practice, which pushes such cases to the latter end, is misleading. The field of practices we study is much more complicated. A useful methodological tool for observing subtleties of our phenomena is taking a symmetrical stand toward them, i.e., taking the spiritual and the psychiatric equally seriously. In our paper we would like to discuss the movie “Exorcism of Emily Rose” (Scott Derrickson, 2005), a combination of horror and court drama, in which a priest is sued for causing death of a young woman by performing exorcism on her. We analyze various means by which the film maintains undecidability for us, as audience, as for the key point of the story: was the young woman, Emily Rose, sick, or possessed? The aim of our analysis is to show what such a symmetrical approach might mean and what implications it could have for research practice, which also can be seen, after all, as a kind of trial.

Přednáška v rámci čtvrtečních seminářů CTS (Centrum pro teoretická studia, Husova 4, 3. patro - seminární místnost, 10-12h)

Příspěvek pro mezinárodní workshop The potential and limitations of lists, Praha, Centrum pro teoretická studia, 6.-8. listopadu 2007.

Vystoupení na Annual Conference for the Society for Social Studies of Science, Montreal, Canada, 11.-13. října 2007 (Sekce 15.8: Magic, religion, and science)

Vystoupení na Annual Conference for the Society for Social Studies of Science, Montreal, Canada, 11.-13. října 2007 (Sekce 8.1: Managing nature)

We study processes by which the European nature-reserve project NATURA 2000 is being implemented in the Czech Republic. These processes involve production and mobilisation of expertise as well as political negotiations and decision-making. Expert knowledge and scientific criteria were to play a decisive role in this project, any other criteria being only secondary. An extensive and systematic review of the state of nature was initiated. In the beginning, exhaustive catalogues of biotopes were created so that any piece of landscape could be classified during the subsequent fieldwork. Hundreds of collaborators of varying professional and scientific background were then hired to undertake an unprecedented mapping of the Czech nature. On the basis of such a mapping, lists of protected areas were created, negotiated and proposed for approval. We discuss these processes and procedures in order to highlight diversity of interests, strategies, practical purposes and applications that all together contribute to the creation of above-mentioned catalogues, maps, and lists (as “boundary objects” of a kind). Above all, we are interested in how the business of expert knowledge production and evaluation was from the very beginning intertwined with everyday administrative work of responsible regional bodies or with the political agenda of environmentalist NGOs. In conclusion, we confront such “messy” practical local arrangements with the primacy of purely expert criteria emphasised by the official NATURA 2000 documents and by participants in particular controversies over the proposed areas of protection.

Vystoupení na 2. mezinárodní konferenci Interdisciplinary social sciences, University of Granada, Španělsko, 10.-13. července 2007

Vystoupení na 2. mezinárodní konferenci Interdisciplinary social sciences, University of Granada, Španělsko, 10.-13. července 2007

Vystoupení na 9. pracovní konferenci Biografu, Borek u Suchomast, 25.-27. května 2007

Přednáška v rámci čtvrtečních seminářů CTS (10-12h, seminární místnost, Husova 4, Praha 1)

Přednáška v rámci čtvrtečních seminářů CTS (10-12h, seminární místnost, Husova 4, Praha 1)

Vystoupení na mezinárodním workshopu Languages of science: Where metaphors and models meet (řada setkání Science, or else), Villa Lanna, Praha, 12.-14. ledna 2007

The metaphor of language is an influential sociological metaphor. It is, as Brown would put it, a root metaphor, since it functions as a widespread, often implicit general frame for imagining, observing and understanding social structures and processes. Further, for many sociologists, “social phenomena” are not like language, but they are language. Seeing reality as language, however, can mean very different things for sociologists and can even have conflicting theoretical and methodological consequences. For some, the language metaphor necessarily leads to a significant and fatal reduction: only small parts of the world, (directly related to) texts and linguistic exchanges, are taken as sociologically relevant, while the rest is omitted and put aside. For others, however, the same metaphor, taken seriously and consistently, implies a different move: our understanding of how language operates and what kind of entity it is, extended beyond the realm of the spoken or written world and applied to virtually any phenomena of the empirically observable world. Here, the reality is not reduced to texts, but recognized as textual. By outlining and explaining these two conflicting approaches I would like to emphasize interpretative flexibility of key metaphors in scientific thought.

Vystoupení na mezinárodní konferenci Science and democracy: A new frontier between Eastern and Western Europe?, The Nobel Museum & Södertörn University College, Stockholm, 4.-6. září 2006

The situation in contemporary Czech Republic provides numerous examples showing that experts and scientists keep enjoying an unchallenged and privileged status of neutral arbiters, situated out of the political arena. Although comparisons between the post-communist East and (capitalist) West are always at risk of being schematic and inadequate, it seems that such de-politicized perception of science is much stronger in the Eastern Europe than in most Western European countries. Underdevelopment of STS (Science and technology studies) in the post-communist East is part of this diagnosis. Different political cultures of expertise in the “new” and “old” EU member states might even turn into sources of tension and misunderstanding on the level of particular problems and controversies. In my paper I would like to make the difference and its roots more understandable. I will discuss the political status of science under the communist regime and its implications for the development after 1989. That time, in the Czech Republic, science and expertise were to be “finally liberated” from the burden of the political, with the hope that this de-politicization would bring us closer to Western democracies. This was a huge misapprehension, however, since Western democracies were at the very same time shifting towards a kind of “re-politicization” of the realm of science and technology. Propensity toward de-politicization was further increased, again quite paradoxically, by the process of accession of the Czech Republic to the EU. This process, simply put, had the form of purely technical implementation of unquestionable measures and principles. Although my presentation will take empirical evidence and case examples mostly from the Czech Republic, it may open a more general discussion about science and expertise in other post-communist countries as well.

Vystoupení na mezinárodním workshopu Promises of science (řada setkání Science, or else), Villa Lanna, Praha, 14.-15. ledna 2006

Nanotechnology is a privileged and promising field of contemporary research. What seemed to be a science-fiction in Drexler’s book Engines of creation published in 1986 is becoming, at least in part, a matter of serious scientific debates. It is generally accepted that nanotechnologies are going to profoundly change our world and, indeed, ourselves. Applications in medicine and environmental politics are emphasised as examples of improvements brought about by this research field.  Promises that are articulated by promoters of “nano” are relatively widely debated. But what about those issues implied by nanotechnologies, but usually not included in explicitly stated promises? What about hidden or under-articulated parts of nano-sciences? Besides potential risks associated with “nano”, there is an important ethical dimension (reaching far beyond the usual issues of scientific ethics) to be discussed. I will briefly sketch specificities of these ethical issues as well as their current reflections in the politics of nano-related research.