Events Calendar
December 2019
04
Dec
2019
Dec
2019
Between Kyiv and Vienna
This multidisciplinary conference seeks to reexamine the modern history of the space broadly bounded today by Ukraine and Austria, through the lens of circulation and motion. It considers people who moved within, out of, and into the region, interrogating the forces that drove them and the consequences of their movement; examines the flow of ideas …
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September 2019
26
Sep
2019
Sep
2019
Paradox Europa
„Wenn die Union scheitert, wird Europa zwar eine Vergangenheit haben, aber keine Gegenwart und noch weniger eine Zukunft, es wird sich in ein Museum verwandeln.“ (Agnes Heller) Ágnes Heller ist die wohl bedeutendste Philosophin der Gegenwart. Sie hat alle politischen Systeme erfahren, die uns auch heute beschäftigen: die beiden großen Totalitarismen, die Demokratie und jüngst …
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26
Sep
2019
Sep
2019
Vienna Humanities Festival
Wir durchleben eine Zeit verketteter globaler Krisen. Die langgedienten Prinzipien rationaler Politik weichen zusehender Emotionalisierung; Demokratien scheinen sich angesichts autoritärer Regime selbst zu demontieren; ökonomische Ängste und Sorgen über neue Technologien und Automatisierung grassieren. Dreißig Jahre nach dem Ende des Kommunismus in Osteuropa ist die liberale, marktwirtschaftliche Demokratie längst nicht mehr das selbstverständliche gesellschaftliche Ziel. …
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August 2019
17
Aug
2019
Aug
2019
Democracy and Demography
To exist in a democracy means to be counted, and ideally to feel as if what one does truly counts. At this summer school, we will discuss how the demography of a polity is presumed to impact its form of government. Thus, the summer school will address a few central questions: Are there distinctive concerns …
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June 2019
27
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
The Challenge of Technocracy
With: Stefan Auer is Associate Professor in European Studies and Jean Monnet Chair in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Hong Kong. Prior to this, he worked at La Trobe University in Melbourne (2006-2013) and University College Dublin (2001-2006). He is the author of Whose Liberty is it Anyway? Europe …
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20
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
Which Future for Democracy in a Post-political Age
The lecture will analyze the current conjuncture in Western liberal democracies and the reasons for the increasing success of right-wing populist movements. It will elaborate the thesis that the only way to fight against those movements is to develop left populist alternatives. Specifically, it shall be argued that it is a lack of understanding for …
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13
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
Discussion: What is Wrong with Economics?
Introduction by Robert Skidelsky For too long economists have ignored the implications of ethics, philosophy, history and sociology within their discipline, assuming without question that humans are rational beings whose wants are given. The resulting orthodoxy is incapable of offering any critique of the human hunger for accumulating wealth without limit, and has drastically overreached …
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12
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
Technology and Utopia
In contemporary discussions about the future of artificial intelligence we often lose our heads. While economists offer bleak predictions of mass job losses and a deepening of already widespread precarity, Silicon Valley utopians insist that new technologies are bringing us ever closer together and will one day deliver us from work, disease and poverty. But …
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12
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
Europe’s Futures Final Symposium
We need platforms to renew and reinvent Europe. In cooperation with leading European organisations and think-tanks, IWM and ERSTE Foundation have joined forces to tackle some of the crucially important topics: asylum and migration, rule of law and democracy, European enlargement and social inclusion. Europe’s Futures has clear objectives: a European Union that protects its …
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06
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
What the EU can learn from the Habsburg Empire
In the fourth event of the series “Geopolitical Talks” IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev will talk with A. Wess Mitchell, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2017-2019), about current geopolitical challenges and lessons from the past. A. Wess Mitchell is co-founder and vice chairman of the CEPA Board (Center for …
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05
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
The International State System after Neoliberalism
I begin by recalling a short essay by Karl Polanyi, written in 1945, in which he discusses the prospects of a new, peaceful global order, based on the lessons of the war and the interwar period. In it Polanyi advocates an international regime beyond both Communist and neoliberal universalism that allows for national political-economic self-determination. …
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03
Jun
2019
Jun
2019
Dilemmas of Popular Sovereignty: Tocqueville’s Perspective
Might a 19th century thinker help us grapple with political dilemmas of the 21st? This talk brings Tocqueville to bear on liberal democracy’s present discontents by exploring his understanding of popular sovereignty and its ramifications for democratic politics. While Tocqueville embraced popular sovereignty as an abstract principle and American practice, he also diagnosed its inherent …
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May 2019
28
May
2019
May
2019
Migrants and City Making in Disempowered Cities
What do cities which have lost their economic, political, and cultural power and population reveal about the location of migrants in city-making and urban politics? What do they disclose about the fault lines of neoliberal urban redevelopment? Empirical findings from left-behind cities might provide new insights to think about migrants, urban politics, and current populist …
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28
May
2019
May
2019
Making Sense of the Results of the European Elections
“Democratic politics need drama,” the political analyst Ivan Krastev is convinced. Elections are a form of therapy session in which voters are confronted with their worst fears – a new war, demographic collapse, economic crisis, environmental horror – but become convinced they have the power to avert the devastation. If this assumption is correct, then …
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27
May
2019
May
2019
European Elections 2019: The Day After
European elections represent the biggest electoral contest in Europe. But since the first votes in 1979, turnout in European parliament elections has been declining ever since. Could anything be different this time? One of the most important tests for the future of the EU seems to be the next European elections. These are the first …
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22
May
2019
May
2019
Democracy and Its Enemies
Democracy is undoubtedly the most successful form of government in our times. Unlike in the early 20th century democracy today is neither endangered by dictators or by military coup d’état. We are witnessing instead a growing erosion of democracy and its legitimacy from the inside. The title the IWM publication expresses this new threat succinctly …
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21
May
2019
May
2019
What Europeans Really Want
70 percent of Europeans are yet to make up their minds on who they want to vote for, and nearly 100 million swing voters are up for grabs. Just days ahead of the European election, and building on a comprehensive survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations, our distinguished panel will offer insight in how Europe’s new …
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20
May
2019
May
2019
The Return of Geopolitics?
Over the past several years, it has become common to announce the ‘return of geopolitics’ in shaping the world order and relations between states. The popular media, but also the discourse of state leaders, increasingly makes use of classical geopolitical concepts in describing global events, from ‘spheres of influence’, ‘balance of power’ or ‘grand …
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16
May
2019
May
2019
Junior Fellows’ Conference
Program 10:00–10:30 Martha Nussbaum and the Uses of Imagination in Political Philosophy Krzysztof Skoneczny Assistant Professor, Faculty of Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw Discussant: Aishwary Kumar 10:30–11:00 Trust in Decent Society Aleksandra Głos Scientific Assistant, Department of Research on Professional Ethics, Jagielonian University Discussant: Aishwary Kumar 11:00–11:30 Dialogues Behind the Scene. Ethical Moments in Making …
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14
May
2019
May
2019
Citizens of Nowhere
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 …
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13
May
2019
May
2019
NZZ Podium Wien “Europa”
Zahlen lügen nicht, sagt man. Das Bruttosozialprodukt Italiens, das moribunde Lieblingsland all jener, die Europa bereits auf dem Sterbebett liegen sehen, liegt bei rund 2 Billionen Dollar. Dies ist deutlich mehr als der Wert der «wiedererstarkten Weltmacht Russland». Und wer weiss, dass der Binnenmarkt des sich «am Abgrund befindenden Europas» fast doppelt so viel erwirtschaftet …
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13
May
2019
May
2019
The East/West Within
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 …
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09
May
2019
May
2019
Judenplatz 1010
»The work of memory is in the present. In our century, a place such as the Judenplatz is not simply a square within a city, but a site that might be viewed from a distance, anywhere in the world, through technology. Jews were once taken from Vienna to be murdered, and that crime cannot …
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06
May
2019
May
2019
What is Political Cruelty?
“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 …
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03
May
2019
May
2019
Karl Polanyi and Globalization’s Wrong Turn
Registration closed! Live stream on radiokulturhaus.orf.at 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 …
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April 2019
29
Apr
2019
Apr
2019
The New Asian Geopolitics
In the last two decades, globalisation, rapid development and the rise of China and other emerging economies have moved the centre of gravity of the world politics and the economy to Asia. In this talk, Ambassador Menon will consider the longer term drivers of this phenomenon and where they might take the geopolitics of Asia …
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15
Apr
2019
Apr
2019
European Universities
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 …
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08
Apr
2019
Apr
2019
Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Rural Economy of East European Borderlands (19th-20th Century)
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 …
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03
Apr
2019
Apr
2019
Imaginaries of Democracy and Dissent
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 …
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01
Apr
2019
Apr
2019
Workers’ Experiences of Post-Soviet Deindustrialisation
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 …
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March 2019
28
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
The Architecture of Global Migration Politics
The new Global Compacts on Refugees and Migrants are important documents of the global politics of migration. They are also valuable documents to understand the way migration is politically and intellectually constructed as a research and policy issue. In their multi-stakeholder and market-inspired approach, these documents identify the role of migration/migrants in global economy prioritizing …
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27
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
How Smart People Got Too Powerful and Why That Might be About to Change
There is one overarching explanation for current political discontents that is hiding in plain sight: cognitive ability—that hard to define ability that helps people to pass exams and then process information efficiently in their professional lives—has become the gold standard of human esteem. People with higher levels of cognitive ability—what one might call the cognitive …
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25
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Messianism and Sociopolitical Revolution in Islam
This report of my work on progress follows a new theoretical approach to the sociology of revolution offered in Revolution: Structure and Meaning in History to appear next month with regard to the motivation to revolutionary action. This approach shifts the focus of analysis from the putatively general causes of revolutions to the specific motivation …
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24
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Brexit: Deal or No Deal? What’s next for Britain and the EU?
In June 2016, the majority of the British population voted in favour of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Since then, this decision has created enormous political waves within Great Britain – it has been in fact already termed as the biggest political crisis in the UK since World War II. It has also …
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19
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Systemic Earthquake: National, Regional and the Global Dimensions
In the second event of the series “Geopolitical Talks” IWM Permanent Fellow Ivan Krastev talks with Ahmet Davutoğlu, former Prime Minister of Turkey (2014-2016), about the current geopolitical challenges on national, regional and international level. Ahmet Davutoğlu is a Turkish politician, diplomat and academic. He is the author of the book “Strategic Depth: Turkey’s international …
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18
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Soviet Ukrainian Patriotism in Brezhnev`s Dnipropetrovsk
One of the biggest Soviet industrial centers, a city of more than a million people in southern Ukraine, Dnipropetrovsk (today Dnipro), was closed to foreigners beginning in 1959 because of the secret rocket production in the city. It was also considered ‘Brezhnev’s city’ because the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union …
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14
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Between Predation and Protection
Why, despite long-term and general declines in all forms of lethal violence, are some states and regions caught in an “insecurity trap”? What are the processes and mechanisms that facilitated the emergence of pacific states in the 19th and 20th century, and where (and why) do these conditions not hold today? The talk will explore …
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11
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Statelessness in South Asia
The lecture examines the entanglements of citizenship policies and practices with the spread of statelessness today. It discusses the genesis of the Rohingya question in Myanmar in the broader context of citizenship registration drives in some postcolonial countries, which render massive number of “illegal immigrants” stateless. Current citizenship policies in these countries reflect the desire …
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05
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
Historia i Prawda
Serdecznie zapraszamy na 29. Debatę Tischnerowską, której tematem będzie “Historia i Prawda”. Czy historia opisuje prawdę? Na jakiej prawdzie opiera się polityka historyczna? Czy uczciwy historyk może być przekonany, że mówi prawdę? O tym dyskutować będą: Timothy Snyder historyk nowożytnego nacjonalizmu oraz dziejów Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History Uniwersytetu …
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04
Mar
2019
Mar
2019
How Does Scholarship Persuade?
In this talk, I will identify as one of the main sources of authority in a scholarly argument an implicit–or, in some cases, explicit–conversion narrative. This narrative, in which the scholar confronts evidence that compels him or her to a conclusion very different from the expected one, is at the core of scholarship as such, and …
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February 2019
26
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Changing Politics and Geopolitics
President Trump has now survived his first test as US President and, barring serious findings from the Mueller Inquiry, he will run for a second term with reasonable prospects of winning. Like him or not, he is set to be the most consequential president for fifty years. An assessment of the implications of a return …
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25
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Democracy and Conspiracy
We live in an age of both informational excess and epistemic poverty. More sources of knowledge than ever are accessible to an ever greater number of people, but this accessibility has created an environment in which manipulation, propaganda, neurotic scrutiny and mild paranoia flourish. Drawing on research about conspiracy theories and their communities, this talk …
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18
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Real Existing Post-Socialism
In the colloquium Muriel Blaive will outline her book project on memory politics in the Czech Republic. She will especially ponder on the conflation between memory and commemoration, research and activism, history and politics. The talk will broach five aspects: 1) the totalitarian paradigm adapted to the post-1989 Czech terrain; 2) an epistemology of the …
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17
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Vorhang auf oder Schotten dicht? Was bleibt von 1989?
Im Frühsommer 1989 bekam der Eiserne Vorhang erste Risse. Im November 1989 fiel symbolträchtig die Berliner Mauer, bis Jahresende verschwanden die alten Regime in der DDR, in Polen, Ungarn, in der Tschechoslowakei, in Bulgarien und Rumänien. Es war eine historische Zäsur – politisch, wirtschaftlich, gesellschaftlich. Plötzlich schienen Freiheit und Demokratie überall möglich, und das geteilte …
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12
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Svätopluk Mikyta: Die Monochrome. Überdenken der Vergangenheit, Interpretation der Gegenwart
In Kooperation mit dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen zeigt die Knoll Galerie Wien in den Räumlichkeiten des IWM eine Werkauswahl des slowakischen Künstlers Svätopluk Mikyta aus seiner Serie „Die Monochrome“. Svätopluk Mikyta wurde in 1973 in der Slowakei geboren. Er hat auf der Akademie der Bildenden Künste und Design in Bratislava und auf …
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12
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Aid in Times of Crisis, the Crisis of Aid
Aid is still regarded as an important instrument for human development, nationally and internationally. Yet, the nature of aid, its structuring and implementation has changed considerably in recent years. It has been increasingly integrated into the financial and economic system, giving rise to a thriving new industry dealing in „social bonds“ and „social business“, thus …
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11
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Modern Cruelty
This lecture is part of a research project which is focused on discourses on cruelty that means on a form of an organized speech that legitimates cruelty as a positive or at least as an unavoidable element of life and is essential for male identity. It is connected with a ‘realism’ arguing that cruelty is …
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07
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
European Culture Wars?
The “culture wars” were for a long time associated with struggles between social progressives and social conservatives in the United States, where they crystallized around issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. During the last decade, the culture wars appear to have also taken root in Europe, with Russia having become a main champion of …
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04
Feb
2019
Feb
2019
Europe’s Far Right on the Rise
European polities are facing a challenge from the far right unprecedented in the post-WW2 era. This new fascism is well financed, transnational and intent on turning the clock backwards on democracy, human rights, and the freedoms of minorities. They also often promote climate change denial at this dangerous moment for the ecological future of our …
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January 2019
29
Jan
2019
Jan
2019
International Lawyers’ Failing
Miloš Vec will analyze the intersection of the idea of pariah weapons with clashes between moral verdicts and legal bans in the 19th century. The industrial revolution and subsequent technological progress enabled the production and use of a new range of weapons and military equipment. How did international law and lawyers react to this development? …
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28
Jan
2019
Jan
2019
Marx, Colonialism, and India
The ways in which the colony features in Marx’s thoughts as an object of knowledge also make the colony a part of the global history of capital, and goes beyond the usual binary of colonialism/nationalism or colony/nation. It also forces us to think of associated questions of primitive accumulation, borders, universalism, concrete, etc. Colonies were …
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21
Jan
2019
Jan
2019
Pflegerinnen: Migrant Women in Domestic Care
New forms of solidarity have emerged among Eastern European migrants working in domestic care in Western countries. Far from their families and often working in isolated places, these women rely a lot on social media. They are part of several Facebook groups, where they find useful information, learn about their rights and how to navigate …
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15
Jan
2019
Jan
2019
McMafia and the Geopolitics of Crime
Organized crime is part of all our worlds—often without us even knowing. In our times of the return of geopolitics Misha Glenny renowned author and journalist will present and discuss the deep and intricate connections in the world of international organized crime and how these developments affect today’s politics and societies. Misha Glenny is a speaker, …
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14
Jan
2019
Jan
2019
Beyond the “Power of the Powerless“
A closer look onto the intellectual context of Havel’s famous essay reveals that, among Czechoslovakian dissidents, there were more serious critiques of his piece than outspoken supporters. The fact that Havel became an iconic figure of the 1989’s revolution and the successive road towards freedom makes it difficult to look impartially on the discourse of …
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