Sociological studies
This study focuses on the development of small rural municipalities, their endogenous developmental potential, and the role of the local authority in setting and achieving development goals. The authors apply a complex approach to examine the issue of local development.
In this volume of Sociological Studies, readers are presented with the results of a number of studies that examined the participation of citizens in the decision-making process at the local level and in the partnership between public administration (the municipal authorities) and NGOs or even businesses.
This study focuses on work and family trajectories between the ages of 18 and 35. It uses sequence analysis, which provides a complex description of trajectories in the holistic way. Based on module on work and family history collected as a part of ISSP 2002 in the Czech Republic, types of early work and family trajectories of cohorts born 1919–1967 are identified and the development of diversity of trajectories across cohorts is explored.
The Czech political system is construed as a parliamentary democracy with a bicameral Parliament; the Parliament’s role is key even with regard to its role in creating other political institutions. The presented study deals successively with the legislative process, the role of political parties in the system of representation, the relationship between parliament and government, characteristics of deputies. The last chapter analyses the role of deputies and its perception by deputies.
Essay examines content of magazine Bravo from the point of view of life style intermediation, inequality reproduction and value orientation. Values that the magazine shows on young celebrities’ stories are success, diligence, independence, physical attraction and traditional family values. In the sections pointed on advices in the field of relationship dominate values as private happiness, personal benefit and self-fulfilment.
The book examines elections to the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic during all its previous existence. The main objective is to analyze the impact of majority electoral system and specifics of the candidates´ support in elections. This also book focuses on electoral success and representation of individual parties. Then we look at long-term record low turnout.
Jakou roli může hrát sociální kapitál v teoriích regionálního rozvoje? Jaké jsou souvislosti sociálního kapitálu v České republice? Jaký vztah je mezi sociálním kapitálem jednotlivců a jejich sociodemografickým, sociokulturním, socioekonomickým a teritoriálním zázemím? A jak si stojí české regiony v úrovni sociálního kapitálu v kontextu evropských regionů?
This study presents an analysis of regeneration policies in the City of Prague, which serves as one out of a series of case studies conducted as a part of a large international comparative study of regeneration policies. Based on the study of documents and interviews with actors involved in regeneration at the city level and in two selected model neighbourhoods more general conclusions are formulated about the spatial policies of regeneration in the City of Prague.
This publication presents a quantitative look at the issue of gender segregation – a statistical image – and a qualitative image of the social reality of women’s labour as portrayed in contemporary Czech television serials. The analysis showed that the Czech labour market continues to be and has long been heavily segregated and the degree of segregation is only decreasing very slowly.
The first Senate elections raised the question of the purpose of electing a representative body, whose existence have not been clearly explained or defended by its creators. The most common reason voters had for not participating in the 1996 Senate elections was their disagreement with the very its existence. These elections were the first experience with the two-round majority system.
The study analyses data from the Czech ISSP 2008. First, we analyze the traditional measures of religiosity. We show that the decline in church membership is typical for small churches with mass membership while smaller churches experience a relatively dynamic growth. Afterwards, we shift our attention from the religious behavior to beliefs.
The objective of the study is to describe two factors that have a significant impact on regional development. One is the level of civil society development and the other is a nature of social network of local development actors. The focus of this study is Orlicko in the Pardubice region. Indicators of political and civic participation, and partnership between sectors are examined on the basis of publicly available sources.
The aim of this work was to identify the trends in the influence of socio-economic, cultural and gender factors in the reproduction of educational inequality in access to tertiary education in the five chosen countries (CR, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany and Poland) between 1955 and 2002. We were eminently interested in seeing whether educational inequality has increased or decreased since 1989, which factor drives the trend and which of the other countries is closest to the Czech context.
The monograph deals with stratification by means of interaction distances: analyses of Bogardus scale for occupational categories / friendship patterns and in-depth interviews. We pursue 1. homophily (like-me) hypothesis, 2. existence of subjective social class boundaries, 3. images of occupations and the society; and using qualitative analysis 4. the perception of social classes and 5. how people distinguish and distance themselves from or identify with these categories/classes.
This text focuses on how Czech people re-construct the divisions and inequalities, how they define social categories and classes in the Czech society, and how people distinguish and distance themselves from or identify with these categories/classes. The qualitative analysis is based on 30 in-depth interviews with men and women with various educational backgrounds and social statuses and on qualitative analysis of the concept of social class in Czech media discourse.
This study explores political awareness of Czech citizens from the point of view of both its distribution within the society, its dimensionality and sources, and its effect on political attitudes and their constraints. The study shows that Czech citizens know most about local and national politics and political players, and are least informed about international affairs.
This study looks at the problem of work-life balance at the employee level and at the mechanisms for negotiating policies for working parents directly at the workplace. The research was based on three case studies of engineering companies, comparing the parent companies in Germany, France, and Sweden with their branches in the Czech Republic.
The objective of this study is to describe the basic discourse of cooperation, participation, and partnership in terms of how it is defined in the process of democratic administration in the Czech Republic and its regions. This basic discourse is determined from a legislative perspective by the laws in effect within the country, but it is also shaped by the results of current research in the Czech social sciences and studies in public administration, and even by the media.
The study therefore aims to answer the question of whether in families where the father is involved in caring for children in the early stage of their lives there is an erosion of gender inequalities in the family, or whether what occurs is just a modification of the given status quo.
The study presents a qualitative analysis of texts on family, partnership, and working life published in men’s and women’s magazines. The objective of the analysis is to examine how family, partnership, and working life are represented in these media.
The study provides systematic overview of the policy tools that are used in various countries to encourage return of scientist and researchers working abroad back to their home country or at least to facilitate the transfer of information, know-how and experience from host countries. The overview of policy tools is supplemented by an attempt to quantify potential target group for such policy – the scientists and researchers of the Czech origin working in abroad.
The objective of this publication is to contrast different ways of looking at the reality of parenting and child care after divorce or separation and show how multifaceted this important social phenomenon truly is.
This study examines the political impact of suburbanisation in five selected localities: three suburban neighbourhoods around the City of Prague and the City of Brno, and two municipalities on the outskirts of Prague.
The project The Adjustment of the Czech Labour Force: Changing Job Structures, Wage Disparities and Work Orientations aimed to use various data sources to describe changes in the field in the last decade. Studies on various topics are collected to provide a multidimensional picture of the changing Czech labour force and its "state of mind", together with identification of some key problems.
The aim of the paper is to assess the effect of education system stratification, its vocational specificity and permeability on the formation of educational aspirations in OECD countries participating in PISA 2003. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of ability, gender, and socioeconomic background.
The study traces the development of Czech sociology to 1948, broken down into several periods: the period during which sociology established itself as an independent academic discipline (G. A. Lindner, T. G. Masaryk, the Catholic sociologists), the period of Masaryk’s students, who while they established departments of sociology only partly engaged in empirical sociology (I. A. Bláha, E. Chalupný, J.
This volume looks at the risks affecting the private life of individuals, risks that have been ushered in by changes in the labour market, and it examines whether the shape of the family is changing in the Czech Republic and what groups are most affected by and who most at risk from these changes. The authors also examine the ways in which work life and the private or intimate sphere interact and how individuals cope with the effects of one sphere on the other.
Based on expert interviews conducted in autumn 2004 we discuss in this publication processes which are currently shaping science and research – the emphasis on economic aspects of knowledge production and commercialization of research results; efforts to preserve the traditional perceptions of science as a sphere of its own controlled only by research communities; the functioning of journalists as mere translators of science to society but not as a critical voice translating or presenting or
This publication is based on the results of project research and is aimed at being more than just a volume of studies by individual authors. The introductory, theoretical chapter, devoted to a discussion of concepts of research on social solidarity (J. Šafr, M. Sedláčková, (with a supplement by P. Machonin)), is followed by a series of empirically based studies that deal successively with how social solidarity is interpreted by the Czech public (J. Šafr), values (O. Špaček) and norms (L.
This study examines whether and in what way parenthood and childlessness are reflected in the gender-specific media targeting men and women in Czech society. The study presents the results of a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of selected women’s magazines and a qualitative study of selected men’s lifestyle magazines published in the Czech Republic after 1989, that is, during a period when important changes in reproductive behaviour have been under way in the population.
This study is the outcome of an analysis of a questionnaire survey that focused on the degree to which Czech parents develop individual and family strategies for combining work and family life, and the objective was to examine the situation and strategies of parents currently living with dependent children.
This study focuses on the relationship between participation and citizenship and their influence on the formation and functioning of effective representative democracy. In the first part of the study the authors introduce the theoretical framework they apply to their study of democracy, participation and citizenship.
The study examines the phenomenon of voluntary and involuntary childlessness, focusing in particular on its occurrence in Czech society.
This volume is devoted to the subject of non-marital fertility in the Czech Republic during the period between 1990 and 2005.
This study describes the socio-demographic structure of the membership base of the Christian Democratic Union – Czechoslovak People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) and the party’s voters. It is based on a questionnaire survey carried out among the party’s membership base in the middle of 2005. Only part of the survey’s results is used in this study. The membership base is examined according to when member-respondents joined the party and where they reside – Bohemia or Moravia.
This study reports on the results of the study “The Image of Science in Czech Public Opinion”, which was conducted by the Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in February 2006 as a part of “Our Society”, a continuous public opinion research project.
This study reports on the results of the study “The Image of Science in Czech Public Opinion”, which was conducted by the Public Opinion Research Centre at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in February 2006 as a part of “Our Society”, a continuous public opinion research project.
The author address two associated issues concerning culture consumption and stratification: hypothesis social classes in the Czech Republic are intensively associated with distinct lifestyles and social sources of cultural omnivorousness. In the introductory part cultural consumption and lifestyle theories along with research agenda related to social stratification are introduced.
The study focuses on minority ethnic groups and populations that have become a recognisable presence in the Czech Republic: Slovaks, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, and Roma. The main objective of the study is to map the situation of these communities or populations in the Czech Republic.
This study examines two processes that public administration went through at the local level beginning in the early 1990s: a process whereby municpalities were broken up into autonomous units, and a process whereby these autonomous municipalities voluntarily came together to form cooperative groups or unions of municipalities.
The volume presents a study of some of the central dimensions of the complex changes Czech
society has experienced in connection with the transformation after 1989 and the country’s accession
to the European Union. It expands on standard mainstream economic, sociological and political
science approaches to also take into account the historical dimensions of these processes.
Based on differentiation between the terms civil society and the third sector the text defines the space of civic participation. The establishment of terminology and theoretical framework appears to be a key component, as the terms civil society and third (non-governmental) sector are often confound. Notwithstanding its long tradition the term, civil society is rather abstract and is today used mainly in theoretical and conceptual context.
The study acquaints readers with two methods of measuring value orientations developed by S.H.Schwartz. Attention is focused especially on the Portrait Values Questionnaire that was used in the European Social Survey in 2002 and 2004.
The presented study deals with the political consequences of the suburbanization process in the four largest metropolitan areas in the Czech Republic after 1989. The aggregate socio-economic data on the level of municipalities are used first for the creation of typology of suburban communes. Then the electoral turnout in suburban municipalities is studied in relations to their socio-economic, cultural and geographical features.
This study presents an analysis of the characteristics, opinions and attitudes of regional elites in the Czech Republic. It is based on an empirical survey conducted in the autumn of 2004, just before the elections to the regional assemblies were held.
The new labour market model that evolved in the Czech Republic after 1989 and the family strategies
of women and men are two spheres that interact and overlap at various levels of society and in the
individual strategies of those involved. The changes to the circumstances surrounding labour market
participation that resulted from the economic, political and cultural changes in Czech society and
This volume is comprised of the papers that were presented at the seminar “Hierarchy as a Strength and Weakness of Communist Rule”, which was held on 11-12 September 2003 at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. The general purpose of the seminar was to reveal and interpret, in so far as possible without misrepresentation or bias, the procedures on which communist rule of society was based at the end of the 1980s.
Text studies life satisfaction and happiness of Czech men and women. It works with ISSP 2002 data. Basic socio-demographic factors are analyzed (sex, age, education, marital status and cohabitation). Satisfaction with family life and satisfaction with work is also included in the analyses. Married people are happier than others. Satisfaction with family life affects happiness more strongly than satisfaction with work.
This study focuses on attitudes towards marriage, unmarried cohabitation, parenthood, and the roles of men and women in the family in Czech society in the past decade. Using data drawn from the ISSP Family and Gender Roles survey conducted in 1994 and 2002, the authors analyse how these attitudes have developed over the past decade and their differentiation according to social group and, especially, age, education, gender, and marital status.
Study is based on the sociology of family, the sociology of work and the sociology of organisation and management, combining these fields from the perspective of the sociology of gender.
The study is dedicated to the Czech national identity in 1995 and 2003. We analyse four elements of national identity ů an image of the nation (culture-nation, state-nation), a territorial identity (local, regional, state and European), a national pride (in performance of a culture and state), and a love for the nation (patriotism, chauvinism).
The objective of this volume of studies is to attain a deeper understanding of the processes behind the formation of group mentalities in the Czech Republic after 1989. This involves identifying the group stereotypes in thought and behaviour that take shape among these groups owing to the growing differentiation of life experiences.
This study analyses the reasons behind the low electoral participation and behind voter mobility, and looks at the consequences these changes hold for the electoral gains of individual parties. Using data for the Czech Republic the author indicates some socio-demographic factors and some political attitudes that can be linked to electoral participation and highlights some of the factors that cause voters to participate less in elections.
This study examines the results of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) in the
Czech Republic and addresses the wider issues of domestic violence in partner relationships. The first
part of the study deals with aspects of domestic violence from a sociological perspective: definitions,
methodology, data sources, and international survey experience to date. It provides a summary of the
This study is based on the first stage of research on political change in metropolitan areas in the Czech Republic, conducted within the framework of the International Metropolitan Observatory Project (IMO). In the first part of the study the authors examine how metropolitan areas are defined.
This study tries to demonstrate the links between the social structure and social policies. Using a socio-economic approach it exhibits four types of socio-economic friction that develop between the middle class and other groups, between the new and the old middle class, between pensioners and the economically active, and between people with employment and the non-working poor.
This volume offers a summary of the most important knowledge in the field of contemporary
qualitative sociology of religion in the Czech Republic, and it describes the state of religiosity/spirituality
in the country after 1989 up to the present in a European context. The majority of Czech sociologists
of religion, based at various academic institutions, contributed to the preparation of the volume.
Abstract
Study deals with relationship between marriage, cohabitation and education. The first part presents a summary of the sociological theories. The second part verifies hypotheses based on these theories with ISSP 2002 data. The connection between education and entry into marriage canbe fully explained by longer school attendance. More educated people study longer.
The purpose of the study is to familiarise readers with the issue of how results of social sample surveys are applied in a democratic society, and to provide an overview of Czech surveys, their types and methodology, and make a critical assessment of Czech survey research in comparison with the internationally recognised criteria for social research.
The sociological study is a qualitative analysis of life conditions and strategies of women in mangerial positions based on a case study of a group of managers at one workplace. the subject of study was the study of strategies aimend at harmonising work and family responsibilities and the values related to these two spheres expressed by these women.
This sociological study focuses on the situation of women in the Czech Republic with a view to their employment position.
The theoretical part of the study explains basic approaches from the field of housing careers. The analytic part of the study is based on an observation of the personal housing histories, in the period between 1960 and 2001, of Czech citizens, who were respondents in the Housing Attitudes in the Czech Republic 2001 survey.
The paper analyses the main factors underlying housing satisfaction in the Czech Republic. The data from the Housing Attitudes 2001 survey are used and the author apply linear, ordinal and logistic regression models.
The main objective of the work is to answer the question of how Czech MPs and PPGs make
decisions. Thus main concerns of the authors are issues of PPG unity, the adopted mechanisms
of internal control and negotiation and, primarily, the factors that influence, structure
and restrict the behaviour of individual MPs and PPGs. The work focuses on the 3rd electoral
term of the Chamber of Deputies (1998–2002); in some cases a comparison with previous
The study summarizes the results of the authors’ nearly decade-long effort (related to the
study of the post-socialist transformation of Czech society) to gain an empirical and theoretical
knowledge of the process of how social elites are created and consolidated. Social
elites are understood primarily as the foremost stratification groupings, which enter into
complicated interactions with the social system, its economic and political institutional
Childbirth, its risks and management of labor are viewed through the social constructivist lens. Manners in which differing childbirth management practices are negotiated are analyzed based on quantitative and qualitative data.
The first part of the study forms the description of housing allowance systems in selected EU countries. A greater burden of rent expenditure by households and higher regional differentiation in rent prices could be expected in the Czech Republic since 1.1.2002.
Wage and income surveys covering the period 1989-1999 are used to display inequality of earnings and main factors of disparities. Increasing differences in the Czech Republic and the decreasing weight of demographic characteristics in wage structure are observed. Introduction of a market economy has led to earnings disparities more similar to those in the West.
The paper provides brief list of changes in rental and ownership housingsector during the transition in the Czech Republic. The complete analysisof housing expenditures of all Czech households as well as analysis of housingexpenditures of different social categories of households is provided.
The study provides the first basic information about the results of the representative
sociological survey „Ten Years of Transformation in the Czech Republic“ related to the
economically active population. It compares social stratification data from 1993 and the end of
1999, showing that the social differentiation deepened and that the status consistency did not
increase any more. This was caused by the problems that slowed down the economic growth in
The paper is based on an empirical survey of religion and religious valuesin the society. It analyses a religious orientation, church attendance,values closely connected with Christianity and a proportion of people whodeclare any religious affiliation. The study pays attention to the religiousrevival in the end of the 20th century and poins out different types of religiosity (occultism, evangelicalism) and their spread in modern societies.
A research work "Attitudes of citizens towards the politics" was carried out in May1968 for an "Interdisciplinary research team "Development of Democracy andPolitican System...". Its task was to identify political orientation of citizens (sample of 3600 respondents) in favour of a demcratic reform. Following the Occupation ofCzechoslovakia the data were not processed any more and tezy were lost. A third of them were found in 1998. The publication presents these data and theirfactor analysis.
The main topic of this study is the research of perception of social and generally any active role of
the state in attitudes of the Czech adult population. The role of the state is analyzed in context of
political thinking of respondents. The importance of the traditional dichotomy between liberal and
conservative politics is stressed, primary attention being paid to conservatism. Theoretical reflection
The study presents the results of a survey of parliamentary deputies which is part of an anticipated
wider analysis of the place and role of Parliament in the transformation of the political system from an
authoritarian regime to a democracy, in the individual stages of this transformation. The survey was
conducted at the beginning and end of the term of office and a comparison of data allowed some
Facebook
Twitter