Metropolitan University Prague

This research challenges unilinear and disparate explanations of the Palestinian-Israeli spatial composite. We argue that traditional Westphalian spatial model and related Geographies of Adaptation predicated on mimetic structural expectations, as well as a localized response to its problems, that is, Geographies of Defiance informed by post-colonial theory, are insufficient. By introducing novel research around Geographies of Compensations, we rethink spatial relations and political organization, revealing the hidden functionalities within ostensibly dysfunctional spaces. Utilizing Deleuze and Guattari’s diagrammatics, we avoid perspectivist normativity and symbolism, which have obfuscated much of the existing analyses. Through spatial analysis grounded in human geography, we re-examine three critical sites: Palestinian refugee camps, Palestinian embassies, and Israeli settlements. Our study demonstrates that while the Westphalian structure dominates, it is far from operating according to normative isomorphism and has in fact been a part of a wider assembled spatial composite. We show how non-Westphalian actors—both Palestinian and Israeli—effectively penetrate and operate within this structure, showcasing its elasticity. Although our primary contribution is theoretical, exemplifying transferrable research on trans-structural spatial circulations, our research carries notable empirical implications. The article utilizes recent interviews conducted by the authors with experts, diplomats, journalists, humanitarian workers, and representatives of UNRWA.

The concept of “ASEAN centrality” emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War but renewed power rivalries in the Indo-Pacific have put its relevance under scrutiny. This study contributes to the debate on the continuity of ASEAN centrality by examining major powers’ willingness to adhere to and engage with ASEAN-led mechanisms, which we argue will have a decisive impact on the dominant form of the organisation of regional order. Our analysis shows that the major powers – China, the European Union, India, Japan, and the United States – subscribe to an enhanced role for ASEAN in the economic realm but do not see the mechanism as the first resort in political and security cooperation. ASEAN centrality is hard to continue, although a possible way out for ASEAN is to leverage its in-between position to help diffuse tensions so major powers have a stake in maintaining its centrality.

This article aims to analyse the media representation of trans* people in a non-anglophone environment, specifically on the example of a docusoap series produced by Czech Television, V jiném těle (‘In a Different Body’) (2022). Using the theoretical framework of ‘transnormativity’ and related concepts such as medicalization and the ‘born/trapped in the wrong body trope’, we analyse the narrative strategies and production and post-production practices present in the programme in question, which discursively set limits to the ways in which the participants could express themselves and how both they, and trans* identity in general, are presented to the audience. In particular, the findings of the study include the extreme medicalization of trans* identity and the significant tailoring of its expression to the cis viewers, resulting in highly stereotypical and transnormative portrayals of trans* people.

This chapter analyses the role of sociology in the transformation of Czechoslovak and, subsequently, Czech society from the model of so-called real socialism to a liberal-democratic regime and market capitalism. In the first part, we reflect on the historical development of sociology, its anchoring in Czechoslovak society and with a specific emphasis on its relationship with the political system. We aim to present the fractures associated with the rise of totalitarian regimes and periods of revitalisation and liberalisation. We pay particular attention to the period of the so-called Prague Spring (1967–1969) because, in this short period, discourses and epistemic communities were already forming, which played an important role in the transition to democracy in 1989 and the following decades of transformation. The main part of the analysis then focuses on the role of sociology in the new democratic conditions, assessing, in particular, the impact on Czech politics and policy, as well as the emphasis on key priorities related to the changing characteristics of Czech society and its political and institutional culture. The analysis more or less traces the changes in governments dominated by the two key parties of the transition period and shows how centre-left governments sought to exploit the analytical and futurological potential of sociology, while centre-right governments preferred economic expertise within the social sciences. Our analysis showed little influence of sociology on Czech politics, including the formulation of public policies.

The European Union was among the first from the Global North to accept the Global South's proposal to construct a Loss and Damage fund at the UNFCCC's Conference of Parties in Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022. The establishment of this fund has, however, long been a red line for the EU's negotiation strategy. So why did the EU accept the proposal, even though it remained convinced that the existing infrastructure was better suited to deal with the issue? Building on the literature of the EU's interactive leadership in climate negotiations, and an ethnographic account of my personal experience as a EU delegate at the COP, I argue that the EU accepted the proposal because of three interrelated reasons: First, it strived not to be seen as an actor blocking the negotiations after the failure of such a proposal at COP in Glasgow. Second, the EU became aware that several Umbrella Group members were willing to support the fund and did not want to be left behind. Third, the EU traded the establishment of the fund for a limited support for several of its own priorities. These findings reverse the understanding of climate leadership. Instead of treating it as a dependent variable (an outcome of the EU's actions), it shows how leadership conditioned the EU's negotiation strategy. This paves the way for future research on the EU's climate leadership and, at the same time, provides a firsthand experience of the Loss and Damage negotiations at COP27 in Egypt.

Based on a comprehensive examination of Nagorno-Karabakh’s critical junctures within Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, this article introduces the concept of the “hierarchized amoebic composite” framework. This model surpasses traditional paradigms of state sovereignty and territorial disputes by revealing the dynamic and contingent relationships within composite structures. Empirically, we use the Nagorno-Karabakh-Armenia relationship to demonstrate the framework’s applicability. Central to our analysis are two key research questions: how can we conceptually and empirically reflect on the relationship between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia and what have been the factors influencing patterns of stability and change in this relationship? We argue that Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrates amoebic spatiality, characterized by its ability to be both integrated into and dissociated from Armenia. This relationship is further influenced by the Russian neo-imperial presence, which redefines the region’s strategic calculus. Our research explores two key dyads of interaction between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh: identity and territory for contingency and amoebicity, and diplomacy and economy for stable interconnection. Although Nagorno-Karabakh was seized by Azerbaijan and its unrecognized republic dissolved in 2024, the hierarchized amoebic composite framework allows us to study the ongoing transformation. We suggest that while traditional perspectives consider the conflict resolved with Nagorno-Karabakh’s incorporation into Azerbaijan, our framework indicates a spatial shift of the conflict’s epicenter to Armenia. This shift involves the same actors in a reconfigured yet persistent struggle, highlighting the conflict’s evolving nature. Through this perspective, we offer fresh insights into conflict mechanisms and coexistence in post-Soviet spaces and beyond, challenging the Westphalian model’s limits in explaining the complex spatial realities.

This research employs the ARDL (Autoregressive Distributed Lag) model to examine the impact of COVID-19 on mutual trade between Germany and the Visegrad Four (V4). We focus on trade with Germany due to its status as the strongest and geographically closest trade partner of these four post-communist countries. Additionally, the extensive value chains of industrial production create robust economic connections between Germany, as an industrial leader, and the adjacent states, which is evident in the frequent mutual trade. The pandemic caused a sudden disruption of these value chains, particularly in the manufacturing sector, which dominates the region. In our analysis, we estimated the ARDL model for each country, considering both export and import data. Initially, we estimated long-run models, revealing that the coefficients of import and export models for the countries yielded different long-term results. In the short-run models, the dummy variables for both export and import models across all countries were significant, indicating that COVID-19 affected international trade between the V4 and Germany. Moreover, in all models, the coefficient of the dummy variable was negative, suggesting that COVID-19 had a detrimental effect on international trade. An important finding is that, depending on the nature of the dummy variable used, the effect of COVID-19 was observed during the pandemic period, with international trade returning to its previous trend post-pandemic. This experience highlights that while predicting the next pandemic and its negative impacts remains challenging, countries and their production chains are now better prepared. They have adapted to operate with greater flexibility, enabling them to effectively face similar unexpected challenges in the future.

Türkiye, a re-emerging non-Western power, has intensified its relationship with Africa by strategically integrating soft power elements into its foreign policy. Unlike other actors, Türkiye assigned a special role to its national carrier, Turkish Airlines, in this endeavour. This article assesses Turkish Airlines’ role as Türkiye’s soft power actor in Africa, primarily as a facilitator and connectivity agent. It explores Türkiye’s deployment of soft power tools and instruments to expand relations with Benin, Mauritania and Somalia, countries with recent significant increases in trade with Türkiye. We argue that Turkish Airlines’ involvement as a soft power actor and facilitator of connectivity in these countries has significantly enhanced the effectiveness of various actors, contributing to achieving Türkiye's regional goals. As such, it serves to confirm and enrich soft power theory.

This article discusses the promotion of policy coherence of migration and development policies that have figured high on the agenda of international organizations and the European Union but have been hardly explored in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 Czech experts on migration and development , we identified three key contradictions: (i) The increasing prominence of a security perspective on both migration and development policies and the lack of coherence between these policies in practice; (ii) The tension between the national and transnational perspectives guiding migration policymaking and development policies; and (iii) The lack of reflection on crucial issues, such as remittances and brain drain, in the dominant paradigm of labour migration. We argue that the findings on (in)coherence between Czech migration and development policies help us understand policy responses of Central and Eastern European governments since the 2015 'migration crisis'.

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) necessitates both theoretical reflection on strategic changes in educational content and forms, and the exploration of AI's potential to enhance educational quality. AI will replace many activities of a person in his/her professional career and personal life. Questions arise regarding the uniquely human abilities that current AI cannot replicate. What are the strategic implications of the introduction of artificial intelligence into our lives for university education or other levels and forms of education, including the specifics of individual disciplines? We aim to summarize research findings on the distinctions between current AI and human intelligence, focusing on identifying human intelligence's specificity and promoting its development within educational systems. We are contemplating the possibility of creating a type of AI that could replace even those human abilities that the current type of AI cannot.

This chapter analyzes the discursive and non-discursive techniques of subjectification that are inscribed both in the architectural arrangement of Lumon Industries and in the presentation of the job description on the severed floor. Lumon’s aim is to adopt the severance procedure as a solution for achieving a happy life, but this seemingly perfectly organized machine will fall apart because the brain eugenics at Lumon Industries is a diabolical biopolitical mechanism that seeks to achieve the ultimate goal of overcoming mortality. Thus, it is only a small step from brain eugenics to absolute desubjectification of the workers and their loss of humanity, where they may live forever, but with a memory that can be erased and activated at any time for a precise time and with respect to the goals Lumon Industries wants to achieve.

South Africa’s energy system is in the midst of significant change and disturbance. On the one hand, a decrease in available generational capacity means that planned blackouts, known as load shedding, have increased to record levels over the last few years; on the other, the country has instituted an ambitious agenda to decarbonize its energy infrastructure. These processes have both caused upheaval across the country’s cities and raised questions regarding the politics of infrastructural provision and development. This article contributes to these debates by exploring the confluence between infrastructure, urban development, and (geo)politics. In particular, we put concepts from critical infrastructure studies (ruin, renewal) into dialogue with Gramscian traditions of political economy in order to analyze what the ongoing breakdown of South Africa’s energy system reveals about shifting power dynamics within the state apparatus. Likewise, we ask whether multi-scalar processes of infrastructural renewal will produce more equitable energy futures. We posit that the energy crisis is creating the pressures and policy space for a considerable reorganization of South Africa’s governance, largely taking the form of decentralization wherein large cities attempt to attain significantly more autonomy vis-à-vis the central state. Nevertheless, as the crisis engenders movements and counter-movements, renewal is likely to be a protracted, and contested, process.

This research builds upon theoretical assumptions regarding the relationship between openness to international trade and corruption. It seeks to answer the question of whether it matters for Africa with whom it trades. Specifically, our goal is to estimate and compare the impacts of Africa’s trade with two key entities: the European Union (EU), its traditional primary trading partner whose share in Africa’s bilateral trade has recently declined, and China, its emerging trading partner whose share in Africa’s bilateral trade has been steadily increasing. This assessment will be focused on impacts on corruption. Our research utilizes a panel dataset comprising twenty-eight African countries for the period spanning from 2002 to 2016. We employ regression models including pooled OLS, fixed effects, and random effects, drawing upon data from the International Trade Centre, International Country Risk Guide, and the World Bank. Our findings suggest a weak but positive correlation between Africa’s rising trade activity and corruption. However, this correlation is more pronounced in the case of trade with the EU, where the impact is estimated as positive, as opposed to trade with China, where it is estimated as negative. Additionally, while higher natural resources rents tend to have a negative impact on corruption in Africa, our results indicate that this is not the case of rents derived from trade with the EU.