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.
2024
Ongoing projects
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.
Exercising power between cultural expansion and enforced displacement on the eastern Mesopotamian margins: a socio-archaeological perspective
Melania Zingarello
This project explores archaeologically the impact and the outcomes that different forms of exercising power have had on past Mesopotamian societies and contemporary communities in Iraqi Kurdistan, the north-eastern sector of Ancient Mesopotamia. It focuses on the case study of Ahmad Awa, in the Governorate of Sulaymaniyah, both an archaeological site and a modern village abandoned in the 1980s. The project will make use of archaeological and sociological tools to investigate the modalities of political control in the late Third Millennium BCE and in modern times. In particular, a systematic archaeological survey of Ahmad Awa and its immediate surroundings, along with stratigraphical soundings at specific spots on the site, will provide a definite chronological and cultural framework of both ancient and modern vestiges. The analysis of the material culture will be fundamental in outlining how, when, and for how long Ahmad Awa fulfilled a prominent role in the region at the dawn of the first Mesopotamian empires, as the monumental size of its stone buildings and its geographical location seem to suggest. Whether in the time of the early states or in its recent past, therefore, Ahmad Awa will be used as a case study for an archaeology of power, of how it was practised, suffered, or integrated into the daily life of local communities.
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
26 February 2024: Avishek Ray (National Institute of Technilogy, Silchar, India) Zomia contra Nation State: The Vagabond in South Asian Imagination
Národní 3, room 205
2 July 2024: Katherine Swancutt, Jan Karlach, Yueqi Zuoxi ( King’s College London) Three Cosmological Visions of Climate Change: Mountain Spirits, Scientific Rewilding, and Sacred Forests in Southwest China.
Národní 3, room 206
Summer school (coorganised with the Charles University, Faculty of Arts)
20–24 May 2024: Summer School of Chaghatay
Lecturer: Eric Schluessel (George Washington University)
24–28 June 2024: Summer School of Dari
Lecturer: Thomas Loy, Ahmad Azizy (Oriental Institute, Humboldt University)
Currently funded by Strategie AV 21 and Charles University, Faculty of Arts
Visiting experts
Power conference
6 October 2024: Jews in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cross Border and Power Ralations in an Imperial Setting
Orientální ústav AV ČR, Pod Vodárenkou věží 4, room 44
Co-funded by GAČR
19 April 2024: Shifting borders in the Himalayas
Policies, power and the transformation of local identities along the border of the PRC
Národní 3, room 108
Co-funded by Strategie AV 21
Funded research grants that evolved from the research excellence platform Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order
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.
What is up?
Call for submissions for activities for the research excellence platform Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order for 2025:
Members of the OI are welcome to send in their submissions for research projects, power seminar series and power summer school to be conducted in 2025.
Please send your submissions to ptackova@orient.cas.cz by November 19, 2024.