Past Events

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers
	Citizens of Nowhere	Tue, 14.05.2019, 18:00	Panels and Discussions	Ivan Vejvoda Niccolo Milanese Ulrike Lunacek	Citizens of Nowhere How Europe Can Be Saved from Itself Tue, 14.05.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Niccolo Milanese Ulrike Lunacek Series: Panels and Discussions Europe might appear like a continent pulling itself apart. Ten years of economic and political crises have pitted North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet, these years have also shown a hidden vitality of Europeans acting across borders, with civil society and social movements showing that alternatives to the status quo already exist. Read more
Citizens of Nowhere How Europe Can Be Saved from Itself Tue, 14.05.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Niccolo Milanese Ulrike Lunacek Series: Panels and Discussions Europe might appear like a continent pulling itself apart. Ten years of economic and political crises have pitted North versus South, East versus West, citizens versus institutions. And yet, these years have also shown a hidden vitality of Europeans acting across borders, with civil society and social movements showing that alternatives to the status quo already exist. Read more
	The East/West Within	Mon, 13.05.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Scott Spector	The East/West Within Jewish Cultural Innovation in Habsburg Galicia and Vienna Mon, 13.05.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Scott Spector Series: Seminars and Colloquia Austrian Jews under the Habsburg crown came to be perceived and to perceive themselves as sharply divided by an imaginary boundary between East and West. The presumption of a more traditional and insular Jewish communal life in Galicia, in particular, in contrast to the assimilated Judaism of cities like Prague and Vienna, resulted at times in relationships characterized by paternalism and suspicion. But are there ways in which this peculiar structure was the foundation of forms of intellectual creativity? Taking off from comparisons of the Habsburg Empire to colonial empires, I am interested in bringing the Algerian Jewish theorist Alfred Memmi’s insights in The Colonizer and the Colonized to bear on Jewish writers who passed between Austria’s Eastern and Western regions. Original forms of Zionism emerged from such subjects, who also contributed to novel forms of literature, journalism, and other media. The dialectical tensions in the particular cultural products discussed together in this colloquium pertain to a specifically Habsburg Jewish condition of identifying both as subject and object of the orientalist gaze. Read more
The East/West Within Jewish Cultural Innovation in Habsburg Galicia and Vienna Mon, 13.05.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Scott Spector Series: Seminars and Colloquia Austrian Jews under the Habsburg crown came to be perceived and to perceive themselves as sharply divided by an imaginary boundary between East and West. The presumption of a more traditional and insular Jewish communal life in Galicia, in particular, in contrast to the assimilated Judaism of cities like Prague and Vienna, resulted at times in relationships characterized by paternalism and suspicion. But are there ways in which this peculiar structure was the foundation of forms of intellectual creativity? Taking off from comparisons of the Habsburg Empire to colonial empires, I am interested in bringing the Algerian Jewish theorist Alfred Memmi’s insights in The Colonizer and the Colonized to bear on Jewish writers who passed between Austria’s Eastern and Western regions. Original forms of Zionism emerged from such subjects, who also contributed to novel forms of literature, journalism, and other media. The dialectical tensions in the particular cultural products discussed together in this colloquium pertain to a specifically Habsburg Jewish condition of identifying both as subject and object of the orientalist gaze. Read more
	Judenplatz 1010	Thu, 09.05.2019, 19:00	Lecture	Timothy Snyder	Judenplatz 1010 A Speech to Europe 2019 Thu, 09.05.2019, 19:00 Speakers: Timothy Snyder Series: Lecture ERSTE Foundation has initiated a public lecture, which will be held annually at Judenplatz as of 2019, in honour of Europe Day. The first speaker was the prominent historian Timothy Snyder from Yale University, who is also a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. The place and time chosen for the lecture are no coincidence: European history is presented at Vienna’s Judenplatz like in no other place. Every year will provide a new opportunity to ask: Which text emanates from this urban space today? A text that shows the European narrative, which brought forth today’s Europe, in a different light. It is a contribution towards giving this idea of Europe – which for so long was an assurance of peace – a place in the centre of the city and of our awareness. Read more
Judenplatz 1010 A Speech to Europe 2019 Thu, 09.05.2019, 19:00 Speakers: Timothy Snyder Series: Lecture ERSTE Foundation has initiated a public lecture, which will be held annually at Judenplatz as of 2019, in honour of Europe Day. The first speaker was the prominent historian Timothy Snyder from Yale University, who is also a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. The place and time chosen for the lecture are no coincidence: European history is presented at Vienna’s Judenplatz like in no other place. Every year will provide a new opportunity to ask: Which text emanates from this urban space today? A text that shows the European narrative, which brought forth today’s Europe, in a different light. It is a contribution towards giving this idea of Europe – which for so long was an assurance of peace – a place in the centre of the city and of our awareness. Read more
	What is Political Cruelty?	Mon, 06.05.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Aishwary Kumar	What is Political Cruelty? Liberalism of Fear and the Democratic Life Mon, 06.05.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Aishwary Kumar Series: Seminars and Colloquia “The important point for liberalism is not so much where the line is drawn,” Judith Shklar writes in a fascinating moment in her critique of cruelty, “as that it be drawn, and that it must under no circumstances be ignored or forgotten.” Where is this line? And who lives under its ambiguous constitutionality? Neither in her 1989 theses on the “liberalism of fear” nor in her 1982 demand that liberals start “putting cruelty first” does Shklar fully pursue the consequences of this morally unforgiving yet spatially uncertain line of liberal intolerance of cruelty. And while she does starkly pose the question “what is moral cruelty?” in terms of its debilitating effect on human freedom, the limit—border—that circumscribes liberalism’s constitutional response to extreme violence continues to waver. In this paper, Aishwary Kumar offers an archeology of this vacillating, political “line” that runs through liberal resistance against cruelty. By way of exploring its global implications, he follows Shklar on the cosmopolitical path she takes, along with BR Ambedkar and Hannah Arendt, into that “most ancient,” most exemplary form of organized violence and constitutional stasis known to legal and moral philosophy: the “Indo-European caste society,” which in her later writings Shklar sometimes replaces by the adjacent term “warrior society.” Her legalism is not causal. For it is in that trans-continental tradition that a relation is forged between caste and war, and the sovereignty of the line—maryada—attains its apotheosis. Might a semblance of political courage still be retrieved from that tradition of cruelty—a modern part of which becomes genuinely “anticolonial”—and rehabilitated into norms of democratic government today? Read more
What is Political Cruelty? Liberalism of Fear and the Democratic Life Mon, 06.05.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Aishwary Kumar Series: Seminars and Colloquia “The important point for liberalism is not so much where the line is drawn,” Judith Shklar writes in a fascinating moment in her critique of cruelty, “as that it be drawn, and that it must under no circumstances be ignored or forgotten.” Where is this line? And who lives under its ambiguous constitutionality? Neither in her 1989 theses on the “liberalism of fear” nor in her 1982 demand that liberals start “putting cruelty first” does Shklar fully pursue the consequences of this morally unforgiving yet spatially uncertain line of liberal intolerance of cruelty. And while she does starkly pose the question “what is moral cruelty?” in terms of its debilitating effect on human freedom, the limit—border—that circumscribes liberalism’s constitutional response to extreme violence continues to waver. In this paper, Aishwary Kumar offers an archeology of this vacillating, political “line” that runs through liberal resistance against cruelty. By way of exploring its global implications, he follows Shklar on the cosmopolitical path she takes, along with BR Ambedkar and Hannah Arendt, into that “most ancient,” most exemplary form of organized violence and constitutional stasis known to legal and moral philosophy: the “Indo-European caste society,” which in her later writings Shklar sometimes replaces by the adjacent term “warrior society.” Her legalism is not causal. For it is in that trans-continental tradition that a relation is forged between caste and war, and the sovereignty of the line—maryada—attains its apotheosis. Might a semblance of political courage still be retrieved from that tradition of cruelty—a modern part of which becomes genuinely “anticolonial”—and rehabilitated into norms of democratic government today? Read more
	Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn	Fri, 03.05.2019, 18:30	Lecture	Ayşe ÇağlarDani Rodrik, Kari Levitt, Ayşe Buğra, Andreas Novy, Maria Vassilakou, Sigrid Stagl, Brigitte Aulenbacher	Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn Fri, 03.05.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarDani Rodrik, Kari Levitt, Ayşe Buğra, Andreas Novy, Maria Vassilakou, Sigrid Stagl, Brigitte Aulenbacher Series: Lecture Globalization took a wrong turn when it overlooked Polanyi’s central insight that markets need to be embedded in institutions, both for effectiveness and legitimacy. The brief period of Bretton Woods-style globalization in the decades following World War II was more Polanyiesque in so far it did not question the centrality of national economic management and regulation. Constructing a viable globalization will require going back to that central insight, though the results are unlikely to look much like the Bretton Woods regime. Read more
Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn Fri, 03.05.2019, 18:30 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarDani Rodrik, Kari Levitt, Ayşe Buğra, Andreas Novy, Maria Vassilakou, Sigrid Stagl, Brigitte Aulenbacher Series: Lecture Globalization took a wrong turn when it overlooked Polanyi’s central insight that markets need to be embedded in institutions, both for effectiveness and legitimacy. The brief period of Bretton Woods-style globalization in the decades following World War II was more Polanyiesque in so far it did not question the centrality of national economic management and regulation. Constructing a viable globalization will require going back to that central insight, though the results are unlikely to look much like the Bretton Woods regime. Read more
	The New Asian Geopolitics	Mon, 29.04.2019, 18:00	Panels and Discussions	Shivshankar Menon	The New Asian Geopolitics Mon, 29.04.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Shivshankar Menon Series: Panels and Discussions In this talk, Ambassador Menon considered the longer term drivers of this phenomenon and where they might take the geopolitics of Asia in the future. Read more

	European Universities	Mon, 15.04.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Christian Rogler Jakub Jirsa	European Universities A Laboratory of Dead-End Paths Mon, 15.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Christian Rogler Jakub Jirsa Series: Seminars and Colloquia Universities all around the globe nowadays find themselves in an almost schizophrenic situation: highly successful and growing on one hand, yet suffering from pressure and uncertainty on the other hand. The presentation will explain how this situation is caused by problems of accountability that universities face in the age of popular democracy. Secondly, it will more specifically discuss the problems of humanities departments in Central Europe. These institutions share the global problems, but in addition face specific problems that originate from the troubled history of the region (both before 1989 and after). In many cases, this leads to the failure of local universities to enact their own legislation that would create a transparent and stable environment for research and education. The talk referred to particular cases that nicely demonstrate the tremendous impact that these problems have on concrete university life. Read more
European Universities A Laboratory of Dead-End Paths Mon, 15.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Christian Rogler Jakub Jirsa Series: Seminars and Colloquia Universities all around the globe nowadays find themselves in an almost schizophrenic situation: highly successful and growing on one hand, yet suffering from pressure and uncertainty on the other hand. The presentation will explain how this situation is caused by problems of accountability that universities face in the age of popular democracy. Secondly, it will more specifically discuss the problems of humanities departments in Central Europe. These institutions share the global problems, but in addition face specific problems that originate from the troubled history of the region (both before 1989 and after). In many cases, this leads to the failure of local universities to enact their own legislation that would create a transparent and stable environment for research and education. The talk referred to particular cases that nicely demonstrate the tremendous impact that these problems have on concrete university life. Read more
	Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Rural Economy of East European Borderlands (19th-20th Century)	Mon, 08.04.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Irina MarinRolf Bauer	Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Rural Economy of East European Borderlands (19th-20th Century) Mon, 08.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Irina MarinRolf Bauer Series: Seminars and Colloquia The borderlands of Eastern Europe, that is the territories on the edges of the three empires Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist and Ottoman, remained predominantly rural in character well into the 20th century. As late as 1960 up to 40% of the population in the region still lived and worked in the countryside. The social history of the region is thus inevitably the history of the rural communities that inhabited this space and this history is a mixture of development and underdevelopment. Poverty and wealth coexisted side-by-side begging the question of what propelled some rural communities forward into the 20th century and why others still retained an outlook and cultivation techniques that harked back to the Middle Ages. Read more
Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Rural Economy of East European Borderlands (19th-20th Century) Mon, 08.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Irina MarinRolf Bauer Series: Seminars and Colloquia The borderlands of Eastern Europe, that is the territories on the edges of the three empires Austro-Hungarian, Tsarist and Ottoman, remained predominantly rural in character well into the 20th century. As late as 1960 up to 40% of the population in the region still lived and worked in the countryside. The social history of the region is thus inevitably the history of the rural communities that inhabited this space and this history is a mixture of development and underdevelopment. Poverty and wealth coexisted side-by-side begging the question of what propelled some rural communities forward into the 20th century and why others still retained an outlook and cultivation techniques that harked back to the Middle Ages. Read more
	Imaginaries of Democracy and Dissent	Wed, 03.04.2019, 18:00	Lecture	Jiri Priban	Imaginaries of Democracy and Dissent From Kelsen's Legal Normativism to Patočka's Philosophical Heresy, and Beyond Wed, 03.04.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Jiri Priban Series: Lecture When Charles Taylor engaged in explorations of modern social imaginaries more than two decades ago, he could hardly have predicted how popular his inquiry would become among political and legal philosophers in recent years. Imaginaries precede theoretical knowledge and refer to the ways people imagine and share their social existence. As deeply entrenched modes of collective understanding, they evolve in society and represent a symbolic dimension in which members imagine their collective existence and living as a whole. Read more
Imaginaries of Democracy and Dissent From Kelsen's Legal Normativism to Patočka's Philosophical Heresy, and Beyond Wed, 03.04.2019, 18:00 Speakers: Jiri Priban Series: Lecture When Charles Taylor engaged in explorations of modern social imaginaries more than two decades ago, he could hardly have predicted how popular his inquiry would become among political and legal philosophers in recent years. Imaginaries precede theoretical knowledge and refer to the ways people imagine and share their social existence. As deeply entrenched modes of collective understanding, they evolve in society and represent a symbolic dimension in which members imagine their collective existence and living as a whole. Read more
	Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation	Mon, 01.04.2019, 16:00	Seminars and Colloquia	Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore	Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation Mon, 01.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore Series: Seminars and Colloquia As the socialist project went bankrupt with the break-up of the USSR, workers were left in an ideological vacuum. It was filled either by hope-filled dreams of successful individual adaptation to the capitalist order, or by nostalgic sentiment towards the Soviet past as a means of critiquing the present, or (on the contrary) by blaming all the current problems on the Soviet past in an attempt at ‘decommunisation’ and investing in nationalist or religious conservative projects. Read more
Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation Mon, 01.04.2019, 16:00 Speakers: Anastasiya Ryabchuk Marci Shore Series: Seminars and Colloquia As the socialist project went bankrupt with the break-up of the USSR, workers were left in an ideological vacuum. It was filled either by hope-filled dreams of successful individual adaptation to the capitalist order, or by nostalgic sentiment towards the Soviet past as a means of critiquing the present, or (on the contrary) by blaming all the current problems on the Soviet past in an attempt at ‘decommunisation’ and investing in nationalist or religious conservative projects. Read more

Past Events

Current Fellows' research