About us
The Centre for the Study of Social Change and the Material Environment (CESCAME) based at the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences aims to foster the position of Czech Sociology in both international and local academic communication by:
- ground-breaking research which draws on opportunities offered by the Czech and wider Central and East European (CEE) context for the generation of sociological knowledge and theory on cities and innovations in everyday life;
- engaging in international research networks aimed at promoting CEE knowledge to the forefront of topical global debates;
- elevating the standing of sociological knowledge in Czech society by communicating the Centre’s findings to the general public via traditional and new media channels.
CESCAME was established thanks to the support of the Czech Academy of Sciences through the Fellowship for Prospective Researchers - Lumina quaeruntur in 2020 awarded to Slavomíra Ferenčuhová.
Our team
Slavomíra Ferenčuhová
Slavomíra Ferenčuhová leads the CESCAME research project as the Lumina quaeruntur Award holder (awarded in 2020). She received her PhD in Sociology at the Masaryk University in Brno. She was a short-term visiting Fellow at the University of Manchester in 2012, and at Leibniz Institut für Länderkunde in Leipzig in 2015, and visiting Fellow at the Imre-Kertész Kolleg in Jena (2019/2020). Her research is placed at the intersection of the fields of Urban Sociology and Urban Geography. She focuses on studying the history of urban planning in former Czechoslovakia and the history of urban studies in Central Europe before and after the fall of the Iron Curtain, and on theorising the (post-)socialist city. Her research also covers everyday life in housing estates and urban responses to climate change.
In her research in CESCAME, Slavomíra studies the history of standardized prefabricated architecture made of timber and built in former Czechoslovakia in the early post-war period, as an example of a historical ‘inconspicuous innovation’ in housing. She also engages with (and in) international debates about comparative urbanism from the perspective of post-socialist Central Europe, or about environmentally sensitive everyday practices in Central and Eastern European cities and their relevance for social change. Finally, Slavomíra develops the concept of ‘inconspicuous innovations’ for the studies of urban everyday life.
Personal profile on the website of the Institute of Sociology
Publications
Ferenčuhová, S. (2023) Overcoming the Limitations of Comparative Urban Research in the (Post) Socialist Context. In: LeGalès, P. and J. Robinson (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies. London, New York: Routledge, Ch. 26, pp. 353-363. ISBN 9780367254667.
Bouzarovski, S., Bichsel, C., Boyer, D., Ferenčuhová, S., Gentile, M., Mykhnenko, V., Oguz, Z. & Tysiachniouk, M. (2023). Russia, Europe and the colonial present: the power of everyday geopolitics. Geographica Helvetica 78(3), 429-451. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-78-429-2023.
Ferenčuhová, S., and P. Vašát. (2021). ‘Ethnographies of Urban Change: Introducing Homelessness and the Post-Socialist City’. Urban Geography 42 (9): 1217–29, doi: doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1930696.
Ferenčuhová S. (2022) “Inconspicuous adaptations to climate change in everyday life: Sustainable household responses to drought and heat in Czech cities,” Journal of Consumer Culture 22(3): 729–746. doi: 10.1177/14695405211013955.
Ferenčuhová, S. (2021) “Thinking relationally about socialist cities: cross–border connections in Czechoslovak post-war urban planning and housing construction,” Planning Perspectives 36(4), 667-687, DOI: doi.org/10.1080/02665433.2020.1844042
Ferenčuhová, S. (2020) “Not so global climate change? Representations of post-socialist cities in the academic writings on climate change and urban areas,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 61(6), 686-710. DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2020.1768134.
Ferenčuhová, S. (2016) “Accounts from Behind the Curtain: On History and Geography in the Critical Analysis of Urban Theory,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 40(1), 113-131. DOI 10.1111/1468-2427.12332.
Ferenčuhová, S. and Gentile, M. (2016) “Introduction: Post-socialist Cities and Urban Theory,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(4-5), 483-496. DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2016.1270615.
Hirt, S., Ferenčuhová, S., and T. Tuvikene (2016) “Conceptual Forum: The ‘Post-Socialist’ city,” Eurasian Geography and Economics 57(4-5), 497-520. DOI: 10.1080/15387216.2016.1271345.
Ferenčuhová, S. (2016) “Explicit definitions and implicit assumptions about post-socialist cities in academic writings,” Geography Compass 10(12): 514-524. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12282.
Anja Decker
Anja Decker is a Cultural Anthropologist trained at Humboldt-University Berlin and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich. She has been visiting fellow at Charles University (2019) and University of West Bohemia (2020). Her research interest lies in the field of social and spatial inequalities, which she approaches with a focus on diverse economies, mobilities and local governance. In her PhD thesis, she currently finishes, she explores precarity and agency of rural dwellers in the Czech Republic through an ethnography of non-industrial agrifood work. Most recently, she has started to work on the local effects of global flows of capital, ideas and labour in rural as well as in urban peripheries and on new rurban assemblages emerging within alternative food networks and sustainability transformation processes.
Personal profile on the website of the Institute of Sociology
Publications
Bischof, S, and Decker A. ‘Out of Balance? Understanding Resident-Municipality Relations in Rural Peripheries through Ascriptions of Responsibility’. Journal of Rural Studies 97 (January 2023): 281–89.
Decker, A. (2021) Kooperationen, Abgrenzungen, (Un)Sichtbarkeiten. Landevents als temporäre Akteur*innengeflechte moralisierter Märkte [Cooperations, distinctions, (in)visibilities. Countryside events as temporal assamblages within moralized markes]. In: Fenske, M., Peselmann A. and Best, D. (eds.) Ländliches vielfach! Leben und Wirtschaften in erweiterten sozialen Entitäten. Bielefeld: Transcript, 295-317.
Trummer M, and Decker A. (eds.) (2020) Das Ländliche als kulturelle Kategorie. Aktuelle kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Stadt-Land-Beziehungen [The rural as a cultural category. Contemporary cultural-anthropological perspectives on urban-rural relationships]. Bielefeld:transcript. https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/68/48/89/ts4990_1.pdf
Decker, A. (2020) Kollektive Entwurzelung, ‚kranke‘ Dörfer und eine neue ländliche Generation. Symbolische Distinktionspraxen von Lifestyle MigrantInnen im tschechischen Grenzland [On collective uprooting, ill villages and a new rural generation. Symbolic distinctions of lifestyle migrants in the rural Bohemian borderlands]. In: Gehl, K., Roth, K., and Spiritova, M.: Eigenbilder, Fremdbilder, Identitäten im östlichen Europa (Ethnografische Perspektiven auf das östliche Europa, Bd. 4). Bielefeld:transkript, 125-142.
Bernard J., Contzen S., Decker, A., and Shucksmith M. (2019) Poverty, social exclusion and marginalisation in diversified rural contexts. Sociologia Ruralis 59(3): 353-368. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12260
Decker, A. (2019) A Freezer full of Meat. Subsistence Farming in the Context of Social Inequality. Journal for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis 3(2): 169-192. https://www.waxmann.com/artikelART102579
Decker, A. (2019) The ambiguous experience of motherhood in the Western Bohemian countryside: Exploring rural gender inequalities through the framework of precarity. Sociologia Ruralis 59(3): 517-539. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12257
Decker, A. (2019) Von Schätzen im Garten, hybriden Produkten und ländlichen Möglichkeitsräumen. Inwertsetzung, Ausdeutungen und Entgrenzungen ruraler Wirtschaftspraxen in einer tschechischen Obstbrennerei [On treasures in gardens, hybrid products and rural spaces of opportunity. Commodification, interpretation and blurring bounderies in a Czech fruit brandy distillery]. In: Braun, K., Dieterich, C-M., Moser, J. and Christian Schönholz (Hg.): Wirtschaften. Kultur-wissenschaftliche Perspektiven. Marburg: MaKuFEE: 653-660. https://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/es/2019/0032/pdf/makufee-s-01.pdf
Decker, A. (2017) Ein tschechischer Kleinstbauer zwischen Subsistenz- und Warenproduktion. Überlegungen zur Rolle der Kleinstlandwirtschaft im Kontext der Prekarisierung ländlicher Lebenswelten [A Czech small-scale farmer between subsistence and commodity production in the context of the precarisation of rural everyday-life] Berliner Blätter 74: 63-80. https://www.panama-verlag.de/shop/Produkt/strategien-etext/
Bernard, J., Decker, A., Mikešová, R., Vojtíšková, K. (2016) Living and Dealing with Limited Opportunities: Social Disadvantage and Coping Strategies in Rural Peripheries. Sociální studia/Social Studies, 13(2): 29-53. https://doi.org/10.5817/SOC2016-2-29
Petr Jehlička
Petr Jehlička received his PhD in Social and Political Sciences at Cambridge University (1998). He was a postdoctoral researcher (Jean Monnet Fellowship) at the European University Institute in Florence (2000/2001) and visiting Fellow at the Ruralia Institute in Mikkeli in Finland (2019). At present, he is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Sociology and at the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. His research revolves around everyday environmentalism and sustainable food consumption at the intersection of formal and informal food economies. More recently, he has explored these topics in relation to inequalities in the geography of knowledge production.
Personal profile on the website of the Institute of Sociology
Publications
Jehlička, P., Ma, H., Kostelecký, T., Smith, J. (2023) Chinese food self‑provisioning: key sustainability policy lessons hidden in plain sight, Agriculture and Human Values, online first, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10506-7.
McGreevy, S. R., Rupprecht, C. D. D., Niles, D., Wiek, A., Carolan, M., Kallis, G., Kantamaturapoj, K., Mangnus, A., Jehlička P., Taherzadeh, O., Sahakian, M., Chabay, I., Colby, A., Vivero-Pol , J-L., Chaudhuri, R., Spiegelberg, M., Kobayashi, M., Balázs, B., Tsuchiya, K., Nicholls, C., Tanaka, K., Vervoort, J., Akitsu, M., Mallee , H., Ota, K., Shinkai, R., Khadse, A., Tamura, N., Abe, K., Altieri, M., Sato, Y., Tachikawa, M. (2022) Sustainable agrifood systems for a post-growth world, Nature Sustainability, Open Access https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00933-5.
Daněk, P., Sovová, L., Jehlička, P., Vávra, J. and Lapka, M. (2022) From coping strategy to hopeful everyday practice: Changing interpretations of food self‐provisioning, Sociologia Ruralis, 62(3): 651-671 https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12395.
Visser, O., Kuns, B. and Jehlička, P. (2021) Beyond Confrontation: Silent growers, Symbiosis, and Subtle Peasantness in Post-Socialist Eurasia. In Akram-Lodhi, A. H., Dietz, K., Engels, B. and McKay, B. (eds.): Handbook of Critical Agrarian Studies. Edward Elgar, pp. 305-315.
Jehlička, P., Ančić, B., Daněk, P. and Domazet, M. (2021) Beyond hardship and joy: framing home gardening on insights from the European semi-periphery, Geoforum, 126: 150-158, Open Access https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.05.018.
Sovová, L., Jehlička, P. a Daněk, P. (2021) Growing the Beautiful Anthropocene: Ethics of Care in East European Gardens, Sustainability, 13(9): 5193. Open Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/su13095193
Jehlička, P. a Jacobsson, K. (2021) The importance of recognizing difference: Rethinking Central and East European environmentalism. Political Geography, 87. Open Access: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0962629821000391.
Jehlička, P. (2021) Eastern Europe and the geography of knowledge production: The case of the invisible gardener, Progress in Human Geography, 45(5): 1218-1236, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520987305.
Jehlička, P., Grīviņš, M., Visser, O. a Balázs, B. (2020) Thinking food like an East European: A critical reflection on the framing of food systems, Journal of Rural Studies, 76: 286-295. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2020.04.015.
Visser, O., Dorondel, S., Jehlička, P. a Spoor, M. (2019) Post-socialist smallholders: silence, resistance and alternatives. Canadian Journal for Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 40(4): 499-510. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2019.1688649.
Jehlička, P., Daněk, P. a Vávra, J. (2019) Rethinking resilience: Home gardening, food sharing and everyday resistance. Canadian Journal for Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du développement, 40(4): 511-527. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2018.1498325.
Fendrychová, L. a Jehlička, P. (2018) Revealing the hidden geography of alternative food networks: The travelling concept of farmers’ markets. Geoforum, 85: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.06.012.
De Hoop, E. a Jehlička, P (2017) Reluctant pioneers in the European periphery? Environmental activism, food consumption and ‘growing your own’. Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability, 22(7): 809-824, https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2017.1289160.
Jehlička, P. a Daněk, P. (2017) Rendering the actually existing sharing economy visible: home grown food and the pleasure of sharing. Sociologia Ruralis, 57(3): 274-296. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/soru.12160.
Terezie Lokšová
Terezie Lokšová is an Urban Sociologist. She completed her dissertation on how invited participation interferes with urban governance and architectural methods of working in 2023 at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno. In CESCAME, she explores the interplay between formal and informal innovations. She was a short-term visiting Fellow at the University of Latvia (2018) and at the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2018). More generally, she focuses on the intersections of politics, expertise and the material environment in urban contexts.
Personal profile on the website of the Institute of Sociology
Publications
Lokšová, T., and Galčanová Batista, L., (2021) “Postsocialist suburban governmentality: A shift from reactive to proactive discourse in the case of Brno, Czech Republic.” Cities 110, 103074. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.103074.
Past members
Petr Vašát
Petr Vašát is a Social Anthropologist and a former member of the Centre. Starting in the Fall 2021, he is working as a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Georg-Simmel Centre for Metropolitan Studies of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and remains a Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Using various methods and tools, such as ethnography, social networks analysis, photovoice and GPS tracking, his research is focused on the comparative study of architecture/design and poverty, informality and city, and the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of “street culture”.