18. 6. 2009
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek & Jan Paleček: Příběh vizionářky a pravda zjevení: Posezení nad dokumentarním filmem [A visionary's life story and the truth of an apparition: Discussing a documentary film] (Praha)
Lecture within the series of CTS Thursday seminars (10-12am, seminar room, 3rd floor)
2. 4. 2009
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: "This is for the first time when it is for the second time": Reflections on uniqueness in sociological descriptions and explanations (Praha)
Presentation at the joint CTS (Praha) and IGPP (Freiburg) workshop on "The challenge of uniqueness", Center for theoretical study, April 2-4 2009 (Husova 4, Praha 1, CTS seminar room)
The problem of uniqueness in sociology is often seen as a problem of methodology. It refers to research configurations in which we deal only with a few cases or even with a single case so that it becomes impossible using standardized statistical tools and generalizing our findings to cover some wider population. In such situations, we mobilize “qualitative methods”. I will briefly comment on their practical relevance and on the nature of knowledge they bring about. Uniqueness, however, can also be taken as a substantive sociological issue. There are sociologists (including myself) who consider uniqueness as an omnipresent and irreducible feature of social reality – a feature that should be taken seriously. This implies a radical redefinition of the sociological perspective and of basic sociological questions. The redefinition is often misunderstood though. While we must understand and deeply respect that everything happens only once, and at one place, it is equally serious that we take account of things made durable, repeatable, and standardized or generalized on a mass scale and daily basis. It is not a paradox: the former should be taken as a theoretical-methodological precondition of the latter.
9. 3. 2009
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Přirozený svět a naturalizace skutečnosti: K debatám o "přirozeném" světě z pohledu sociologa [Life-world and naturalization of reality: Toward the ideas of life-world from a sociologist's view] (Praha)
Presentation within the series of transdisciplinary seminars on life/lived/natural world
13. 10. 2008
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: K debatám o kognitivismu v sociologii [Towards sociological debates on cognitivism] (Praha)
Speech at the special seminar at the occasion of Ivan M. Havel birthday celebration, CTS (Seminar room, 9-17h)
13. 1. 2007
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: The language metaphor in sociology - two different trajectories
Presentation at the international workshop Languages of science: Where metaphors and models meet (Science, or else series), Villa Lanna, Praha, January 12-14, 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.
21. 10. 2005
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Identity work in an environmental controversy
Presentation at the 5th international conference on Conflict in identities, identities in conflict, Faculty of social studies, Masaryk University in Brno
When participating in environmental controversies, social actors engage not only in arguing, but also in various forms of “identity work”. By articulating the subject of a controversy, they often imply definitions of themselves and of their opponents. Examples from my recent empirical work suggest that flexibility, mutability and multiplicity of these identities are an important resource for conflict resolution. Although this may sound as a typically abstract academic view of the problem I will discuss its practical political relevance.
16. 2. 2004
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Ještě k propojování a navazování - poznámky k „asociologii“ prostoru [Once more about associations and connections: Notes toward an „asociology“ of space]
Lecture within the series of CTS Monday seminars (5_30 pm, seminar room, Husova 4, Praha 1)
12. 11. 2001
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Sporná místa činu a berličky svobody [Controversial sites of action and crutches of freedom]
Lecture within the series of Monday CTS seminars (seminar room, Husova 4, Praha 1)
21. 10. 2001
:::: Ivan M. Havel & Zdeněk Konopásek: Jak zacházet s věcmi na hranici známého? [How to deal with issues on the borders of what is known?]
Presentation at the 20th bi-annual workshop of CTS in Rybníček near Jičín
11. 12. 2000
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Objektivita a hermeneutika: spory o vědu a vědeckost [Objectivity and hermeneutics: Controversies over science and scientificity]
Lecture within the series of Monday CTS seminars (seminar room, Husova 4, Praha 1)
18. 10. 2000
:::: Zdeněk Konopásek: Obrat k textům a láska k realitě [The textual turn and love for reality]
Presentation at the seminar of the department of cultural and social anthropology, Faculty of humanities, Western-Bohemian University in Plzen
