Beyond Security: Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building (CoRe)
(Za hranice bezpečnosti: role konfliktu v posilování odolnosti)
Main Scientific leader: Prof. Petr Kratochvíl
Main coordinator: Dr. Martin Pehal (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)
Pardubice Principal investigator: Dr. Kamila Pacovská
Pardubice project administrator: Simona Krupa
Period: 1.9.2023 - 30.6.2028
Operational Programme Johannes Amos Comenius, call "Excellent Research" (OP JAK "Špičkový výzkum"), No. CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595
Project description
The project is defined as problem-oriented research on the relationship between resilience and conflict in Czech society. This reflects the unprecedented war situation in Ukraine and the contemporary climate, energy, migration, and epidemiological crises. The underlying thesis is that resilience (especially at the societal level) is based on the acceptance of social and political conflict as an integral and even productive part of a functioning of society.
The organizing principle of this interdisciplinary project is the systematic development of “resilience thinking”, which perceives individuals, societies, and the material world as a complex system, cyclically changing and reflecting itself through a range of diverse natural, social, and psychological processes. The research agenda comprises 3 Research Areas (RA), which are further subdivided into 9 synergically linked Research Work Packages (RWP). RWP1: Conflict in Thought: Resilience as Remedied Failure. RWP2: Conflict of Identities: Modern Art and Spirituality. RWP3: Conflict in Communication: Multilingualism and Psycholinguistics. RWP4: Conflict in Long-Term Perspective: Historical Experience as a Source of Resilience. RWP5: Conflict and Manipulation: Effect of the Framing Bias Phenomenon on Individuals and Society. RWP6: Conflict in Education: (Post)Crisis Transformation. RWP7: Conflict and Technologies in the Anthropocene. RWP8: Social Conflict: Political Polarization and Legitimacy Crisis. RWP9: Conflict and International Relations:Strategic Regions.
The interdisciplinary research is conducted by the consortium of 5 research institutions: Charles University in Prague (Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Law, Hussite Theological Faculty, Protestant Theological Faculty), Institute of Sociology (Czech Academy of Sciences), Institute of Philosophy (Czech Academy of Sciences), Masaryk University in Brno, University of Pardubice. Main coordinator is the Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague.
The international research team of the University of Pardubice comes from the Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value. It participates in the following three Research Work Packages:
Research Work Package 1: Conflict in Thought: Failure as a Resilience-inducing dynamic (RWP leader: prof. Vojtěch Kolman)
RWP 1 is based on the premise that thinking is based on conflict, within oneself and with others. The conflict within us therefore belongs to the conditio humana and cannot be definitively eliminated but at most used to our advantage. To do this, we need to have discursive representations that allow us to develop and adequately manage conflict in thought, i.e. to make us resilient to its destructive forms, as the institution of so-called critical thinking attempts to do, not always successfully. Based on a broad conceptual, historical, legal, literary and narrative analysis of the conflictual nature of experience and conflict situations, specific representations that resolve conflict and contribute to strengthening social resilience will be elaborated and implemented.
Pardubice Team members: Myrthe Bartels, Ondřej Beran, Niklas Forsberg, Lesley Jamieson, Kamila Pacovská, Sergej Kiš
Research Work Package 5: Conflict and manipulation: the impact of framing bias on individual and society (RWP leader: dr. René Levínský)
RWP5 will conduct an experimental analysis of the impact of populist “framing” (framing bias/labelling) on individual attitudes (micro-level) and the spread of these attitudes in society (by experimental methods, agent-based network models, or possibly. Bayesian networks) depending on the algorithmic structure of social networks (macro level) with the aim of designing policies that, depending on age, gender, education, and general psychosocial characteristics, increase resilience to populist framing both at the individual and societal level.
Pardubice Team members: Myrthe Bartels, Niklas Forsberg, Kamila Pacovská
Research Work Package 7: Conflict and Technologies in the Anthropocene (RWP leader: doc. Tereza Stöckelová)
The aim of RWP7 is to enhance ecological resilience (taking into account social, biological and technological as well as material dimensions) and to analyse the possibilities of transition to more sustainable forms of society (including the economy and energy) through empirical investigation of the ambivalent role of technology as both a contributor to climate change and the associated societal challenges and as a tool for addressing them. An analysis of people’s responses to a technologically transformed world, particularly in the affective sphere, moving on a scale between ecological despair and technological optimism.
Team members: Ondřej Beran, Laura Candiotto, Silvia Caprioglio Panizza
Interview with Prof. Petr Kratochvíl (in Czech)
Recording of CoRe Opening conference (in Czech)
