PhDr. Pavel Mašek, Ph.D.
Department of Ecological Anthropology
e-mail: masek[at]eu.cas.cz
Education
2023 PhDr. in Sociology, Institute of Sociological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
2023 Ph.D., Ethnology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic.
Disertation: Rusting Away: An Ethnography of Totaled Cars, Informality, Capitalism, Waste, and Sustainability at a Bohemian Auto Salvage Yard (supervisor: Daniel Sosna, Ph.D.).
2018 Mgr., Master of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic. M.A. Thesis: Waste, Man, Death: An Anthropological Perspective on Waste Incineration and Human Cremation (supervisor: Daniel Sosna, Ph.D.).
2006 Bc., Bachelor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of West Bohemia, Pilsen, Czech Republic.
B.A. Thesis: Current Contemporary Dance Field.
Research Interests
economic anthropology; ecological anthropology;inequality; informality; materiality; morality and ethics; social life of things; waste
Funding
2019 – 2021 V4Net: doctoral scholarship, Department of Resilience and Transformation in Eurasia (Prof. Dr. Chris Hann), Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany
Employment
2020 – 2022 Researcher, Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
2016 – 2019 Freelance Artist – performer, dancer
2012 – 2015 Performer, Ultima Vez / Wim Vandekeybus, Brussels, Belgium
2004 – 2012 Freelance Artist – performer, dancer
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Journal Papers
2023 Ecologies of Quantification in Waste Management: Landfilling, E-Waste Recycling, and Car Breaking. Critique of Anthropology. (Sosna, D., Stehlíková, B., and Mašek, P.)
2023 'It’s Only Us, Hyenas, Who Profit Out of It': Wrecked Cars, Leaked Humans, and the Death of the Person-car. Journal of Material Culture 28(1): 24–39.
2022 Grey greening: quiet sustainability at auto salvage yards. Geografie 127(1): 55–73.
2020 "Čistě ekologicky": Autovraky, recyklace a morálka. Biograf 71-72: 3–24.
Reviews
2019 Skládka není izolovaný svět (Joshua O. Reno. Waste Away: Working and Living With a North American Landfill). Cargo 1-2: 145–149.
Recent Presentations
2022 Grey Greening: Quiet Sustainability in Unsettling Landscapes of Auto Salvage Yards. Unsettling Landscapes 2022 AAA Annual Meeting, Seattle, USA, 9–13 November.
2022 Našedlé zelenání: tichá udržitelnost na autovrakovištích. Department of Environmental Studies, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czechia, 4 October.
2021 The Dark Side of the Container: Creating and Manipulating the inside and outside of the Container. Containers and Waste: Opening the Unruly, Prague, 25 October (online).
2021 Grey Greening: Quiet Sustainability at Auto Salvage Yards. Vox Populi Visegradensis: The Anthropology of East-central Europe, Schloß Ringberg, 14–17 July.
2021 Greening through the grey: quiet sustainability at auto salvage yards. EUGEO 21, Prague, 28 June–1 July.
2021 Searching for ‘Hard Data’: Crooked Ways of Waste Quantification. Waste governance (I): Waste Regimes. Re-opening the Bin 2021, Gothenburg, 10–12 June 2021 (with D. Sosna and B. Stehlíková, online).
2021 Našedlé zelenání: tichá udržitelnost na autovrakovištích. CASA 21, Prague, 17–18 April (online)
Membership in Professional Organisations
2022 – present American Anthropological Association (AAA)
2019 – present Czech Association for Social Anthropology (CASA)
2018 – 2020 European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)
