Suchergebnisse

The article describes the role of the Chicago School of Sociology in the development of empirical social research. It traces the increase in the significance of the education of doctoral students on American universities at the turn of the 20th century, and the role of philanthropic foundations. It focuses on the contribution of prominent individuals: W. R. Harper, rector and founder of the University of Chicago, obtained top figures and founded journals in some major fields. A. W. Small was the first chair of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, founded the American Journal of Sociology and wrote the first two textbooks of sociology. W. I. Thomas was responsible for the famous study Polish Peasant in Europe and America and for the theoretical foundations passed on to his successors. In 1916 R. E. Park published a project in which Chicago became a social laboratory and he inspired and was an advisor for numerous doctoral projects that later were published as sociological monographs. The methodologist E. W. Burgess organized empirical research for the school of doctoral studies that emerged in Chicago and successfully worked there for twenty years. It is beyond the scope of one article to discuss also the monographs by doctoral students at the University of Chicago. Paper examines in detail only the monograph by Park, Burgess and McKenzie titled The City.

This article considers the position of sociology in a nonsociological context, that is, the Czech Agricultural U in Prague. The substance of the paper is a consideration of the role of sociology in relation to rural issues, including their practical dimension as relates to rural development. The background of the paper is constituted by both discussions in the Czech lands & abroad, which address the role & position of sociology & its relation to the lay public, & the question of how (& also if) it is possible to cope with the skepticism of lay people (a skepticism that the authors have experienced in the exercise of their professional activities) in relation to the findings & information provided by sociology. The authors suggest that the possibility exists of presenting non-trivial findings & information for lay people. Sociologists have at their disposal many instruments for mapping the actions & ideas of specific people when investigating such issues. If the results of sociological research are embedded within specific practical measures addressing rural issues, then the chance for social acceptance increases & the project is more likely to be sustainable. In such a situation, sociology is both related to concrete practices & circumstances (the doubts of lay persons about its meaninglessness disappear), yet it also retains its academic discourse, as a part of sociology, as a science. As a reflection of the latter, the article demonstrates the interconnections between general sociology & rural sociology, because of the centrality of the countryside & agriculture in contemporary society.

For all 60 years of the existence of the University of Economics, Prague (UEP) was statistics one of the taught compulsory course, and here also took place the specialized studies of statistics, which predecessor was Statistical and Actuarial engineering at the University of Special Sciences (within the Czech Technical University). The article focuses on the 50's, when at the UEP existed the independent Faculty of Statistics and when the lessons of statistics were difficulty exempted from the Stalinist dogmatism. Between the personalities is mentioned prof. Benedikt Korda (1914- 2010), who was the most famous person in the first period of Faculty, (there will be mentioned his remarkable CV), prof. Lubomir Cyhelsky (*1929), who was the head of the department in 1962-1990, and prof. Jiri Likes (1929-1994) as well, who was internationally acclaimed scientists in the theory of probability and mathematical statistics, whose name is used for one of the greatest lecture hall at the University. Since 1991 there exist at the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics the Department of Statistics and Probability (17 internal teachers and 13 internal PhD students), the Department of Economic Statistics (6 + 3) and the Department of Demography (6 + 4). Adapted from the source document.