Suchergebnisse

Based on a systematic study of Polish sociological literature produced in the period stretching between the elevation of Wladyslaw Gomulka to the post of the Party's first secretary in October 1956 to the first free elections in Poland in June 1989, the author of this article offers an account of the main dilemmas & the varieties of pluralism in Polish sociology during the state socialist era. The author claims that, with the exception of the Stalinist period, Polish sociologists always occupied diverse positions on 'government' & 'society', but this diversity yielded to change in response to a particular time. Generally, in 1956-1989 Polish sociology was something unique in comparison with sociology in other so-called people's democracies, as it had a considerably high status in the country & in the world, including the West. The author argues that Polish sociology did not have to undergo a revolution in 1989 & make the move from Marxist to bourgeois sociology, as since 1956 (or even earlier, since 1945) it had been undergoing continuous change & constant reform (in theoretical domain & concerning its division into sub-disciplines) & maintained a consistent level of diversity in various respects.

This article focuses on Czech pre-Marxist sociological journals - Sociologicka revue (established in 1930, published until 1940, and again in 1946-49) and Socialni problemy (established 1931, published 1931-1938/39 and 1947/48) - and compares how they functioned with the work of the contemporary Sociologicky casopis/ Czech Sociological Review (analyzed volumes 32 (1996) to 41 (2005)). Although the internal situation of the branch & its public evaluation were rather different during each of the two periods, the author believes that looking back at the well-established earlier period of Czech sociology can provide some comparative data for a better understanding of the current situation and its imperfections. First, the author quantitatively analyses the 'genre' composition of the old and new journals and concludes that in the earlier publications reviews and scientific polemics were more strongly represented, whilst the papers - especially those in Sociologicka revue - were less likely to be connected with any empirical research. Conversely, the old sociologists were highly involved in the public sphere, which included student education and active participation in policy making. Nowadays, Czech sociologists tend to be wrapped up in themselves; they produce better theoretical and empirical papers, but the number produced per person has decreased, and their reception is probably weaker. In the article the author also analyses the means of recruitment of the journals' editorial boards, relations within the Czech sociological community itself and its relations abroad, and other issues of the sociology of Czech sociology, past and present.

Using data from the representative survey Housing Attitudes 2001 the author analyses the opinions of the Czech population on the situation in the housing market & general attitudes towards housing-related issues & housing policy. The article focuses on uncovering the connections between attitudes towards various aspects of housing policy & the respondents' positions in the housing market. On the basis of the results of the analyses the usefulness of the theory of 'housing classes' in the Czech context is discussed.

The article offers a brief account of the history of Hungarian sociology during four decades of communist rule in Hungary. Beginning with the brief existence of the first department of sociology in Hungary (the 'Szalai Institute', 1946-1948) the author describes the field in the 1950s, when for political reasons sociology was marginalized to the point of extinction. The revival of sociology in Hungary during the 1960s is devoted considerable attention from an institutional, a personal & a doctrinal point of view. The author analyses the main branches of study in Hungarian sociology at the time, including critical sociology & the study of social stratification, which overcame the rigidity of official Marxist-Leninist doctrine. She characterizes the last two decades of state socialism in Hungary as a period when sociology both suffered from increased political repression (stronger in the early 1970s than later) & at the same time became more & more professional. She argues that a determining feature of the history of Hungarian sociology between 1948 & 1989 was its strong connection to politics. However, sociology & politics had a mutual influence on one another during this period, as sociology also had an impact on the way Communist Party officials approached the structure of Hungarian society. In the process, sociology evolved & was professionalized, enabling its existence as an autonomous discipline today.

Regardless of the role religion plays in the world today, ie despite the significant deprivatization of faith in the sociocultural space & in politics, contemporary Czech sociology of religion is in rather poor shape. The author presents a number of factors to explain this, including the legacy of the communist regime, & low levels of church attendance in the Czech Republic, the latter having been erroneously interpreted as non-religiosity. But the author focuses mainly one other reason: the discordant legacy of Czech pre-communist sociology of religion & the neighboring field of social studies. Two different traditions of the subject are identified - the 'profane' sociology of religion, founded by T. G. Masaryk, & Catholic religious sociology. Although the former legacy declared itself non-religious & even anti-clerical, in the case of many of its followers this claim was only partially true. In the 1930s & 1940s, when they (especially Prague's sociological school, which formed a certain opposition to Masaryk) turned more toward Durkheimian attitudes, they emphasized, for example, their own religious experience as a necessary tool for understanding piety. On the other hand, Catholic religious sociology was closely related to church activism, policy, & contemporary social work, ie, strictly conservative & anti-modern. Its way of understanding modern society was discounted by the former group of scholars, though to at least some degree, the two legacies shared similar methodological approaches. Both certainly seem outdated today, but their theoretical & methodological discussions & their findings remain of importance. Consequently, a re-thinking of these legacies & their theoretical backgrounds is still significant for the sociology of religion today.

The article describes the development of Czech social policy & the issues that have surrounded it since 1989. The author begins by describing the character of the communist welfare state & outlining its theoretical alternatives. Despite the introduction of energetic changes during the early years of transition, since the mid-1990s the area of social policy has been dominated by stagnation, & instead of any real & specific efforts in this area there are only debates. Despite all the problems that plague the current social policy, at present the system performs satisfactorily, as is evident in the very low rate of poverty. However, in the long run, concerns may arise over inadequate family situations, a frozen pension system, & poor work motivation. The 'reform' year of 2005 has seen the emergence of many different efforts relating to social policy, but it has not heralded any substantial changes aimed at a more efficient functioning of the system.

This article explores the spatial influences that shape the contemporary Czech party system & their consequences for the institutionalization of the party system. First, the regionalization of the party system is measured to identify the specific regional clusters of votes for individual parties. Second, after controlling for the impact of social cleavages, the independent effect of two macro- regions on the differences in voting decisions is analyzed. In the case of Moravia, no such independent effect is evident. Conversely, in the formerly German- inhabited Sudetenland there is an effect on the vote in the case of two parties (KSCM & ODS). The historical reasons for this spatial regime are briefly discussed. Finally, the relative insignificance of spatial regimes in the Czech party system is explained with reference to its high degree of nationalization (the level of spatial heterogeneity in regional voting results). The author employs spatial analytical techniques in the article, such as measures of spatial autocorrelation, the spatial regression model, & the Gini Index. The findings suggest that there is a high degree of spatial institutionalization of the Czech party system & relatively insignificant contextual effects at the macro- regional level.

In the article, issues relating to the sociopolitical measures aimed at increasing flexibility in managing the relationship between the spheres of work & family on the individual level of life strategies are examined within the framework of the gender theories of organization. The environment of management is described as a gender regime in which an organizational masculinity functions. This a priori establishes unequal conditions for the formation of women's career patterns. On the basis of a case study of the life strategies of women in managerial positions & other results drawn from research on the management environment from a gender perspective, the author identifies strategies employed toward women, who in the management environment are in the position of tokens, by the gender regime & its actors in the highest positions of the organizational hierarchy, & identifies the strategies that in connection with these conditions are created by women who desire to succeed in an environment set up in this way. The certain degree of flexibility that on the individual level can be achieved in the management environment is founded on a gender contract, which in the end continues to disadvantage women because it emerges in connection with the given structure of set rules of the environment. If flexibility is to be introduced as a nondiscriminatory mechanism, organizational masculinity as such must be called into question.