Strategy AV21
City as a Laboratory of Change; Historical Heritage and Place for Safe and Quality Life (2020-2024; Adéla Gjuričová – Coordinator; Coordinating institute: Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS; SAV21 č. 23)
Cities surround majority of the world´s population today. They dominate the world both in terms of economy and consumption of natural resources. Cities are also the heart of political decision-making and activism, and the place where technological innovations are applied. Safe and quality life is determined by circumstances and long-term sustainability of constructions, along with the current and future man-made environment. This programme of Strategy AV21 therefore focuses on residential aspects of human existence, considering technical, cultural and social aspects.
Part One explores city as the environment that lends an opportunity to observe and study the city as the fundamental challenge and threat for the future, and to explore its roots and history of transformation of man-made territory. This “laboratory of change” enables to study a city as dynamic space of migration, changing borders and communication networks, as an intellectual and political project, as the bastion of power, as well as mental and cultural space and, ultimately, the environment for urban life. Part Two approaches human residence from a different perspective. It takes construction and architecture as the central attributes of human conduct and life. From the outset, construction and architecture have been factors that contribute to the creation of human ecosystem. They determine its protection and change, and generate inimitable cultural and historical intervention. Study of material, constructions and technologies is among the most dynamic disciplines of the day. The programme aims to bring together individual institutes. Based on diagnostics, monitoring and modelling it endeavours to develop new methods and processes for new constructions, and for the conservation and restoration of historical heritage.
The common denominator in both Parts is an interest in the perspective of human residential sites vis-à-vis climatic challenges in terms of social and historically created structures, and in terms of technical parameters and resistance of the constructions. The output of the project that bridges technical, natural and social sciences shall be a research that exceeds mental horizons of individual disciplines, and presents findings for the public, and applicable commercially and in public decision-making.
Historical Memory (2022-2026; Oldřich Tůma – Research Theme Coordinator; programme Anatomy of European Society: history – tradition – culture – identity; Coordinating institute: Institute of Archaeology of the CAS)
A significant part of public and media space is filled with history. Historical events and phenomena are remembered, they are presented as models or warnings, history is measured against today, and thoughtful and vague historical analogies are made. History is both argument and curiosity, document and fascination. The concepts of Historical Memory, Cultural Memory or Social Memory are tools to grasp this living and actual relationship to the past. As in the case of the first research topic (Europe in the critical vision of the humanities), critical analysis must be involved. Whereas in the previous case it is applied on a general level, here it is applied specifically to memory phenomena. We are not exclusively examining historical phenomena (this is particularly the case in the second research theme), but above all the way in which they are used, the mechanisms of recollection and the techniques of memory. On the one hand, this refers to the relationship between individual and collective memory (official or socially conditioned views of the past, the influence of collective memory on the formation of individual memories), and on the other hand, to social or pop culture understandings of history and their hierarchization (e.g. medievalism, New Age movements, the popularity of classical ancient themes or even the current reproduction of historical symbols used by the Nazis; to a lesser extent, the celebration of individual freedom in the 1990s or the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s).
The cooperation on the research topic is organised by the Institute of Contemporary History of the CAS and involves the Institute of History of the CAS, the Oriental Institute of the CAS, the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the CAS and the Institute of Art History of the CAS. Among the most discussed topics are remembering Czechoslovak communism, official power turns to historical arguments, and collective and individual medieval and early modern sepulchral culture.
Transformations of Identity and Security in the Era of the New Cold War (2024-2028; Doubravka Olšáková – Research Theme Coordinator; Identities in the World of Wars and Crises Programme; Coordinating institutes: Masaryk Institute and Archives of the CAS, Institute of Ethnology of the CAS)
The previous interpretation considered the Cold War as a historically over period and focused on the study of a relatively static bipolar world order, the arms race and recurrent crises that threatened to escalate into nuclear conflict. Society, and indeed politicians and diplomats, were not prepared for the efforts to revise the post-bipolar order that Russia in particular, but not only Russia, was beginning to push for: China and others were also speaking out. The new realities of the world order are leading to new considerations and questions in the social sciences and humanities. Many of these new questions are a reaction to the historical developments after 1989. These include, for example, new conceptions of dissent, old conflicts in strategic regions and in new peripheries, which bring with them new and updated understandings of security and of the tools to achieve dominance. The components of national identity are also changing, with the focus no longer being solely on language and culture, but also, for example, on science and technology, which is becoming a means of competition and national pride. This research topic therefore aims to analyse a new type of power relations both in the field of domestic politics of states and in international relations and the competition for an ‚unreadable‘ (and in a way abandoned) global space. Particular attention is paid to transformations in geopolitical thinking and to non-traditional, but also traditional, elements and actors. The aim is not only to open up new themes but also to point to their historical roots.