Suchergebnisse

Premysliden ruled over the Czech countries (Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia) more than three hundred years (ca. 930–1306). They cooperated with the ruling houses of the neighboring states (Hungary, Poland, Saxony, Bavaria, Austria etc.) as their political efforts as their marriage policy. The analysis of the Premysliden marriages indicated the existence of the rule of the exogamy, the rule of the preferential matrilateral cross cousin marriage, the rule of the long time systematic exchange of the women among two ruling houses. Example of the Premysliden marriage practice gives the idea of the search of the marriage rules existing in Europe during the early mediaeval centuries.

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 Both certainly seem outdated today, but their theoretical & methodological discussions & their findings remain of importance.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 breakup of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991 had significant repercussions on Chinese politics, foreign policy, and other aspects. In this book, Jie Li examines the evolution of Chinese intellectual perceptions of the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s, before and after the collapse. Relying on a larger body of updated Chinese sources, Li re-evaluates many key issues in post-Mao Chinese Sovietology, arguing that the Chinese views on the Soviet Union had been influenced and shaped by the ups-and-downs of Sino-Soviet (and later Sino-Russian) relations, China's domestic political climate, and the political developments in Moscow. By researching the country of the Soviet Union, Chinese Soviet-watchers did not focus on the USSR alone, but mostly attempted to confirm and legitimize the Chinese state policies of reform and open door in both decades. By examining the Soviet past, Chinese scholars not only demonstrated concern for the survival of the CCP regime, but also attempted to envision the future direction and position of China in the post-communist world