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 Both certainly seem outdated today, but their theoretical & methodological discussions & their findings remain of importance.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.

Offers four strategies of deconstructing gender symbolism, one of the methods & goals of contemporary feminist theory & practice - politics. (1) Lesbianism denaturalizes the institutions of 'compulsory heterosexuality.' (2) One can question the belief that sexual violence is the natural expression of male aggression, & women are men's victims. A better strategy seems to be to take the violence as a discursive matter that can be redescribed. If the narrative about successful resistance prevails over the narrative of woman as a natural victim, the aggressor's expectations can be changed. (3) Beauty discourses lead women to be weak, unable to resist violence, & susceptible to mental diseases like anorexia. (4) Maternity discourses associate women with maternity & see a woman's body as the subject of necessary control by the psychomedical sciences. They form an idea of woman's nature that is invariable & unchangeable. This notion is questioned by feminism as a serious limit on women's agency.

The author, a Czech social anthropologist who returned home from exile in order to help in the introduction of his discipline, writes a field report in which he describes in relative detail the vicissitudes of Czech social anthropology during the last thirteen postcommunist years. Even though lecturing on social anthropology became common in Czech universities, the institutionalization of the discipline encounters stiff resistance from the conservative academic establishment. Social anthropology gets support in new provincial universities (Pardubice, Plzen) & only very reluctantly in Prague (Charles U). As a result, Czech protagonists of social anthropology are scattered throughout various institutions. Nevertheless, the author concludes, social anthropology has become known in the Czech Republic as a dynamic part of the social sciences. Grant agencies have given support to fieldwork projects on minorities, political culture, & identity problems during the transformation process. If the momentum gained during the recent years were to be sustained, social anthropology has a bright future on the Czech academic scene.

The article is based on the first sociological study of the attitudes and preferences of Czech men who identify themselves as gay towards (gay) fatherhood, family, and parenthood. The main arguments of the study evolve around the themes of the (overwhelmingly positive) parental desires of the gay men participating in the study; their internalised moral dilemmas connected to gay fatherhood; the reproductive choices and limits that structure the attitudes of gay men towards parenthood and family; and gender stereotypes about family/parenting models and the roles these men occupy. The article is divided into two main parts. The fi rst part introduces the context and current state of sociological scholarship and research on gay fatherhood and homoparentality. The second part of the article discusses results, an interpretation, and an analysis of the empirical findings of the study.

The widest framework available for the treatment of language problems is offered by sociolinguistics. The author of the article begins by introducing sociolinguistics, & claims that one of its four basic thematic clusters, which he calls 'Sociolinguistics IV,' is fully devoted to language problems. Mainstream Sociolinguistics, a US-based social network that has made a fundamental contribution to sociolinguistics since the 1960s, developed a version of 'Sociolinguistics IV' that is known as Language Planning. It is in confrontation with Language Planning that the theory of Language Management grew in the 1980s & 1990s. This paper briefly discusses the contribution & problems characteristic of Language Planning & outlines the main features of the Language Management theory. Among these, special attention is paid to the process of language management, which develops out of deviations from norms, whereby some of the deviations are noted, some of the noted deviations are evaluated, & certain adjustment plans are considered & implemented. Finally, the paper suggests that the Language Management theory could perhaps make a valid contribution to other social science disciplines, such as sociology or political science.

Since they appeared, the studies of Science, Technology & Society (STS) have been interested in education as the key to help the citizens of tomorrow to participate in the discussions dealing with the future of technoscience. In Spain, the STS subjects became part of the secondary school programs since the educational reform. Nevertheless, the analysis of the textbooks used in Catalonia shows that a deterministic vision of science & technology - both of them thought as entities with their own logic of development, independent from social reality - coexists with a neutralistic conception, which considers technoscience as a basic tool that can be used by humanity either in a correct or an incorrect way. The student has the perception that science & technology shape the social reality, but that are somehow independent from society.

First, the author examines European & world lessons for the study of Czech transformation. Then, he describes legacies of the (mostly communist) past & the risks of transformation: atomization, demoralization, & materialization. The main topic is the failure of the social sciences, which isolated themselves instead of engaging in the reform process, verbally governed by mainstream neoclassical economics. In particular, sociology failed to show the moral dimension & embeddedness of economic processes in the social structure. Most tasks have thus remained for the future, which will stream transformation research towards (1) multidisciplinarity & complexity, (2) the replacement of unidimensional & static conceptual apparatus with a multidimensional & dynamic one, & (3) the understanding of endogeneity of social research & the explicit acknowledgment of its policy dimension.

This contribution is dealing with an evaluation of tourism position in the Czech society in the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th century. Tourism depending on social and economic state of society is examined as one of the attributes of modern society. The attention is preliminary paid to tourism development trends in the 19th century and to its position in the modernizing Czech society. The main part analyses tourism importance for individual social strata of the Czech society in the period under consideration. Analysis of tourism form from individual tourists' view and their preferences didn't stay out of attention.