The research excellence platform Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order was established at the Oriental Institute in 2015.
The aim of the platform is to support junior researchers starting new projects at the beginning of their academic careers. Simultaneously it enables senior researchers to begin new projects and establish new research teams cooperating across national and international institutions and fields. In all cases, the platform aims to foster research excellence and to provide new perspectives by applying transregional and transdisciplinary theories and methodologies.
The thematic framework of the research follows a broad conception of power as the heteronomous reduction or expansion of individual, collective, or institutional autonomy which can be effected through military, economic, ideological, and political means. Projects conducted as part of the Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order platform address a range of questions pertinent to the study of various Asian and Middle Eastern societies from the ancient past to the present, investigating systems and structures that inform power in visible and invisible ways. Analysing top-down state governance and the bottom-up responses, as well as related grassroots and horizontal dynamics, through compliance and conformity, creative adaptation and resistance, the individual projects contribute to an improved historical, sociological, cultural, and anthropological understanding of the emergence, stability, and transformation of political and social structures. The platform is focused on interdisciplinary collaboration to help foster new ideas and approaches to challenges that affect our lives, such as political processes, economy or environment, gender and sexuality, language and knowledge, inter-ethnic relations, etc. The research draws on primary sources such as archival documents, government statements, cultural production, or ethnographic data, and provides an in-depth look at the power phenomenon from various perspectives.
Through regular seminar series and workshops, the platform Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order offers space to present and discuss ongoing research, enhance cooperation, and enlarge study networks. A regular summer school program offering insight into rare languages of Asia and the Middle East, which targets both undergraduate and graduate students, helps to situate the Oriental Institute within an international network of study programs.
2025
Ongoing projects
The Bomb, the Bullet and the Gandhi Cap: Revolutionary Anti-colonialism and Political Surveillance in British India, 1904-1945.
Shaivya Mishra
This project traces how science served as a handmaiden of colonial empires in the 20th century, while also doubling up as formidable instrument to further the cause of anti-colonial, violent dissent in the 20th century. It has a twofold objective. First, to trace the longer historical traditions that shaped anti-colonial uses of the bomb and other technologies in South Asia, and thus to explore how anti-colonialists harnessed forms of military knowledge that had emerged in urban townships in an earlier period. In what ways did older use of “subversive” technologies—including, the use of explosives, for example in quotidian subaltern agrarian practices—shape modern 20th century politics, it asks.
Second, the project explores the impact of anti-colonial scientific experiments on definitions of science. The British administration in the 20th century, scholars have noted, extended governmental control through various measures, while also letting loose an assortment of legislations to clamp down on “sedition”. Additionally, the British also attempted to regulate “subversive” scientific technologies. Aiming to occlude the diffusion of devices like the bomb, the state instituted systems of licensing, legislations, and increased surveillance over literature—with key implications for colonial classifications of science.
Women and Power in Mongol Eurasia and Beyond
Tobias Jones
This project is designed to assess the effects that the Mongol conquest had on the position of women in societies across Eurasia. Due to the great power of Mongol regent-empresses such as Töregene Khatun and Oghul Gaimish in the mid-13th century, Mongol scholarship has increasingly recognised the importance of women to the running of the empire. This scholarship has created a rather utopian image of female political agency in a world where this was not the norm. But what was the impact of Mongol rule on the areas under their control?
While there have been explorations into individual women and specific situations, this project seeks to pull together case studies from different geographical areas, such as the position of the empress in Yuán and Míng China, or the impact of Mongol rule on vassal states in the Ilkhanate such as Georgia, Armenia, Fars and Kirman; as well as in the cultural space, how did Mongol rule affect the appearance of women in poetry, art and literature. By utilising these various approaches, we can understand the contours of female power throughout the wide lands of the Mongol Empire. These different viewpoints can help to show us how Mongol cultural norms affected or did not affect the societies they controlled and how local stakeholders adapted these ideas.
Manifesting Benevolence: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in Sadanobu’s Garden
Nobuko Toyosawa
This project aims to reappraise one of the most important political leaders in Japanese history, Matsudaira Sadanobu (1758–1829), who served as the chief senior councilor to the eleventh and longest-serving shogun Tokugawa Ienari (1773–1841, r. 1787–1837). By putting the garden in dialogue with Sadanobu’s political discourse, the goal of the project is to examine late eighteenth-century Japan as a nation entering an expanding and global modernity comprising the rise of the natural sciences, the pursuit of picturesque beauty and aesthetic experiences, and the subsequent awakening of the Modern Subject.
In the past decade, Japanese-language scholarship has generated new trends that alter the portrait of Sadanobu from that of a zealous Neo-Confucian senior councilor pursuing overly strict and frugal policies to that of a refined man of culture. Examining such new developments, this project hopes to contribute to the broader discussion on the great peace of the Tokugawa era and the mechanisms of performativity of that peace.
China’s Ethnic Policy in Xinjiang (East Turkestan)
Ondřej Klimeš
This project investigates the ethnic policies of the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang (East Turkestan). It focuses on the processes of top-down governance of an authoritarian party-state, particularly in the spheres of political system adaptation, ideational governance, propaganda and media, and cultural production, dealing directly with the case of the Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim nationality living in northwest China. It also seeks to understand the correlation between ethnic identity building and cultural security, both from the top-down and bottom-up perspectives, in contemporary China. It addresses China’s transnational repression of Uyghurs in diaspora, as well as the Chinese Communist Party’s Xinjiang-themed propaganda and united front work abroad. The project works with sources in Uyghur and Chinese, particularly textual sources and ethnographic data from fieldwork in Turkey, Central Asia, and Europe.
Power-relations and transformation of local identitites in Himalayan borderlands
Jarmila Ptáčková
In the last 10 years, China's influence is increasingly visible even outside the territory of the PRC. Above all, the Himalayan and Central Asian states neighboring China, such as Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan or also India, often subordinate their decisions to the political situation in the PRC. Not only their economic measures are the result of China's influence and strategic calculation. Chinese influence is increasingly visible in the relationship of neighboring governments to various ethnic groups residing on their territory. An example is Tibetan-speaking groups residing outside the PRC, whether for centuries or those who have settled here only in the last 70 years. As a result of Chinese influence, the perception of the identity of these groups and its meaning changes, depending on the perspective from which they are perceived and by whom. They can become means to enforce political interest either from the side od the PRC or from the other side of the border.
The research project is based on field research, interviewes with involved parties and decision makers and discussions with experts in the field of sociopolitical situation in the Himalayan area. The findings will help to better understand not only the situation among local ethnic communities along the Chinese frontier, but also the ways of expansion of Chinese influence in Asia and elsewhere along China`s Belt and Road network.
Co-funded by Strategie AV 21.
Power seminar series
Summer school (coorganised with the Charles University, Faculty of Arts)
7–11 July 2025: Summer School of Chaghatay
Lecturer: Eric Schluessel (George Washington University)
15-26 September 2025: Summer School of Baluchi
Lecturer: Lutz Rzehak, Bidollah Aswar (Humboldt Universitaet)
Currently funded by Strategie AV 21 and Charles University, Faculty of Arts
Visiting experts
Power conference
Funded research grants that evolved from the research excellence platform Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order
Migration and us: Mobility, Refugees, and Borders from the Perspective of the Humanities, Jarmila Ptáčková, Thomas Loy, Ondřej Klimeš, funded by OP JAK (2025-2028)
Remapping the Japanese Empire Today: beyond the Clash of Knowledge and Memories, Nobuko Toyosawa, funded by Strategy AV 21 (2021-2023)
Political changes along China’s border and transformation of local identities in the Himalayas, Jarmila Ptáčková, funded by Strategie AV 21 (2024-2027)
Pathways of Literary Professionalization in Twenty-first-century Egypt, Giedre Sabaseviciute, funded by GAČR (2023-2025)
The Jewish Triangle: Connections and Disruptions in Persianate Jewish Life during the 19th, and 20th Centuries, Thomas Loy, funded by GAČR (2023-2025)
Balancing the Interests: Correlations of Ethnic and Foreign Policy in Contemporary China, Ondřej Klimeš, Jarmila Ptáčková, funded by Lumina quaeruntur (2019–2023)
Concluded projects
Niki Alsford: Representations of Power among the Resistance Movements during the Taiwan War of 1895.
Publications: Alsford, N. 2017. Transitions to Modernity in Taiwan: The Spirit of 1895 and the Cession of Formosa to Japan. London: Routledge.
Malika Bahovadinova: Convergence and congruence of post-Soviet and neoliberal modes of governance and citizens’ reactive practices.
Publications: Bahovadinova, M. 2020. In the Shade of the Chinar. Dushanbe’s Affective Spatialities. Focaal—Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 1–17.
Giulia Cabras: Sense(s) of belonging and aspirational identities on WeChat.
Publications: Cabras, G. 2021. Technologymediated communicaton and representatons of Islam in Northwest China: insights from visual postings on Weixin. International Journal of Islam in Asia 2, 70–98. DOI:10.1163/25899996-20223003.
Táňa Dluhošová: Relevance of power in the literary scene and power relationship among respective agents investigating language and ideology in the early postwar literature of Taiwan.
Věra Exnerová: Cultural security and representations of power in Uzbekistan. Muslim buildings in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Ferghana Valley.
Publications: Exnerová, V. 2016. Radical Islam from Below: The Mujaddidiya and Hizb-ut-Tahrir in the Ferghana Valley. Jones Luong, Pauline (ed.), Islam, Society and Politics in Central Asia. University of Pittsburgh Press.
Thomas Loy: Modernity and Modernism in Persophone Literary History.
Tomáš Petrů: Rise of social vigilantism in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines in context of the dynamics of power and politics in Southeast Asia.
Jarmila Ptáčková: Socialist new Countryside. Urbanisation policies and their impact on the enthic minorities in China. Rule and Authority on the Sino-Tibetan Frontier. Local Tibetan Rulers and Chinese-Administered Guards during the Ming and Qing Period.
Giedre Sabaseviciute: Writing Fiction in Contemporary Cairo: Gender, Class, and State Bureaucracy.
Daniel Sou: Function of administrative communication in early Chinese empire.
Publications: Sou, D. S. Crossing Borders: Control of Geographical Mobility in Early China.
Clément Steuer: Hierarchization of political issues in context of the citizenship and civil state in Egypt.
Publications: Steuer, C. 2018. L’Egypte après les Élections Présidentielles. Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique.
Hana Třísková: Phonetics and phonology of Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin).
Sam Tynen: Gender, Sexuality and Ethnic Politics: LGBT Identity in Kyrgyzstan.
Oliver Weingarten: Exhortation to social and ethical conformity; justification of social and ethical norms; representation of courage and cowardice; self-harm, self-sacrifice, and suicide; representations and justifications of violence in ancient China.
Guidelines
Any researcher of the OI is eligible to submit a proposal. The proposals are submitted at the end of each calendar year for the next calendar year according to the requirements in the respective call for proposals, which correspond to the framework of Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order. Preference is given to new research themes and projects which have no other external source of finance.
When reapplying, preference is given to applicants who provide the outcome of the research project they proposed in the previous application period.
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