Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard
Date and Time
Location
Constitutional Scholarship as Diffuse Expertise: A Dialogue between Law and STS
Speaker
- Jan Komárek, Donatio Universitatis Carolinae Chair, Faculty of Law, Charles University, Prague.
Chair
- Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
Contact
Tenzin Dadak
tdadak@hks.harvard.edu
Abstract
Across history, nonhuman animals have not only sustained human societies but also advanced projects of conquest and colonization. This study draws on ethnographic and archival methodologies to trace how Israeli settlers deploy sheep as agents of expansion in the occupied West Bank. Developing the concepts ecopastoralism and sheepwashing, I explore how large-scale land appropriation and violence through seemingly benevolent acts of sheep grazing have enabled settlers to simultaneously cast themselves as the just ecological and spiritual stewards of this land. By analyzing sheep (as well as dogs, donkeys, and crocodiles) as instruments of both conquest and care in Palestine-Israel, the study illuminates how nonhuman life and death are evaluated and mobilized within settler colonial regimes of belonging and elimination.
Bio
Jan Komárek is a Donatio Universitatis Carolinae Chair at the Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague, where he also serves as the Vice-Dean for Research and works as a Professor of European Law. He holds a doctorate (D.Phil.) from the University of Oxford and other degrees and diplomas from Charles University in Prague, the University of Stockholm, the Central European University, the European University Institute in Florence, and the University of Cambridge. Before returning to Prague in 2025, he worked at the LSE (Assistant and later Associate Professor) and the University of Copenhagen (Professor of EU Law). In 2009–2010, Jan also worked as a legal clerk to the President of the Czech Constitutional Court.