Journal Czech Society Archive

Čermák, Daniel. 2013. „Změny voličského chování ve volbách do krajských zastupitelstev 2012." Naše společnost 11 (1): 15-24, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.2

This paper presents findings about changes in voting behaviour that occurred between elections into Regional Councils 2008 and 2012 in the Czech Republic. The analysis deals with comparison of real outcomes of elections 2012 and the outcomes of elections 2012 estimated by a statistical model called LOCCONTINGENCY. The estimation is based on regional structure of votes for political parties in the previous elections into Regional Councils 2008. The main objective of these analyses is to find out and to explain differences between reality and model estimation. The results help us explain the rise and decline of votes for political parties, especially for regional ones, between elections 2008 and 2012.

The aim of the study is to explore the valence theory’s account of voter turnout using open-ended questions which measured the main reason given by voters for electoral abstention. The focus was on the claim of the valence theory concerning the respondent’s expected benefit from participating in an election. Data from five post-election studies undertaken between 2004 and 2010 are analysed. The empirical results reveal that electoral abstention is explained by four key factors.

The article focuses on the description of the Czech religiosity. It shows that Czech society is not as secularized as it is often argued. First part of the article analyzes the traditional measures of religiosity: church affiliation and church attendance. Using data from the Census and ISSP 2008, we show that the level of church attendance is relatively stable in the Czech society but the self-declared church affiliation is decreasing.

The article concern on the prison system. In the first part are described attitudes of public opinion towards crime and prison system. Not only in the terms of causes of criminal behavior. It also brings an evaluation of particular conditions and facilities which are available or which would be hypothetically available for prisoners in contemporary Czech prison system. The second part brings information about prison from prisoners point of view. It sums up the particular needs and problems resulting from imprisonment. And the third part comes with a comparison of prisoners and public opinion attitudes on some moral dilemmas of chosen kinds of human behavior.

This article uses empirical data to evaluate Czech perceptions of lexical borrowing, based on a nationwide poll conducted in November 2005 by the Public Opinion Research Centre of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy ofSciences of the Czech Republic. The survey combines synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and is the first major studyof its kind since Tejnor, October 1970. It broadly concludes that most Czechs accept functionally necessary loanwords, but feel that their language contains a surfeit of peripheral foreign terms, which are used too frequently and somewhat inappropriately.

Červinková, Monika, Lucie Kulhavá. 2013. „Karel Schwarzenberg a Miloš Zeman: Pozitivní a negativní kampaň k prezidentským volbám." Naše společnost 11 (2): 16-29, 

The article discusses the official presentations of the two most successful candidates of the first round of the presidential elections in the Czech Republic 2013, Karel Schwarzenberg and Miloš Zeman, from the perspective of the concepts of positive and negative political advertisement and the reflection of the election campaigns by Czech citizens. By the means of the framework and content analyses the topics and the most frequent words of the official (created by campaigns teams) materials are identified. The results are interpreted with regard to the attributes of positive and negative campaign. Using the statistical analysis of the data from public opinion survey by CVVM the Czech public’s reflection of the election campaigns is described. The results of the study indicate that we can denote Zeman’s campaign after the first round of the elections as a negative one. Zeman’s campaign has also proved to be more specific and memorable - by both, subjective evaluation of the respondents and the associations, connected with the candidates after the elections.

The aim of the study is to provide basic summary of the factors that influence the involvement of grandparents in the care for young children in the Czech families and to introduce a typology of the patterns of grandparent role. The paper presents results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The first part of the paper uses the data from the second wave of SHARE 1) to outline the typology of grandparents’ involvement with respect to different forms and intensity of contacts with grandchildren and the geographical proximity of family members and 2) to map how the socio-demographic factors influence the forms and intensity of involvement in the care for grandchildren. The second part of the paper focuses on the subjective experience of Czech mothers and grandmothers. 18 mothers and 12 grandmothers of children younger than 10 years were interviewed. The paper points out the existence of various conceptions of grandmothers’ role in the Czech families.

The article focuses on the development of terms which were used in antiquity and Middle Age Europe to denote public opinion (fama, existimatio, opinio in Ancient Rome, fama publica, communis opinio in the Middle Ages etc.). Particular attention is paid to the distinction made in Roman public life between a fama, which represented common opinion, and a rumor, which meant undervalued and unreliable opinion of the plebs. The medieval term fama, more often fama publica, referred to a local information network or mechanism of collective evaluation of individuals' esteem. It was also an important part of court proceedings. Both historic eras were concerned with rumor in today's sense of the word, which often comprised or underlaid common opinion.

Techniques using visual stimuli have existed in social research since the late 19th century. However, the methodological framework in which they are embedded remains limited in scope, especially with respect to quantitative research. In this article, the author focuses on the methodological aspects of various types of visual techniques. Subsequently, he proposes some recommendations for methodological design. After a brief historical review, the main part of the article discusses psychological projective methods, photo-elicitation techniques and the application of visual stimuli in in-depth interviewing and quantitativquestionnaire surveys. Final discussion focuses on the methodological specifics of visual methods, design recommendations and the problem of validity.

>> Full text is available in Czech only <<

Since the beginning of the 1990's there have been relatively large changes in the reproductive behaviour of the population of the Czech Republic, including a significant increase in the proportion of children born out of wedlock. The paper describes the development of fertility rates among unmarried and married women in the years 1989–2014 in detail. Attention is paid to three main influences which are responsible for the proportion of children born out of wedlock, and obviously above all to the rates of nonmarital and marital fertility (by age and by birth order). The analysis shows that although there has been a convergence of the rates of fertility of married and unmarried women since the beginning of the 21st century, the reproductive behaviour of these women is still significantly different (average age of mother at birth of (first) child, distribution of birth order).

Relations with neighbouring countries are undoubtedly a significant determinant as well as a key indicator of stability of international political embedding of each state. Regional cooperation is therefore logically alpha and omega of the international politics of the Czech Republic. One of the priority objectives of the country is to extend and strengthen central European cooperation with other countries of the so-called Viszegrad Four as well as with the two neighbouring EU countries, that is, with Germany and Austria.

The increased influx of refugees and migrants to the EU in 2015 has been followed by a noticeable presence of online hate speech against migrants in many countries across Europe.  The article presents the results of a study of hate speech proliferation on Facebook in the Czech Republic during the summer of 2015. Its goal is to identify the producers of hate speech and determine their social background, explore the main channels of hate speech proliferation, determine the specific groups of migrants targeted by hate speech, put the hate speech in the context of online political communication, and discuss the role of media and politicians in the process of hate speech proliferation.

With regard to the works of Castells, Skocpol or Bennett and Segerberg, online hate speech can be perceived as an extreme variety of new, rapidly evolving modes of political communication as such. Social and political activism has been shifting from membership-based organizations and parties towards flexible movements and initiatives with strong emphasis on the logic of identity politics. People may or may not engage in hate speech production as lone independent actors, but they still perceive their actions as part of larger collective efforts. When we focus on hate speech as a form of civic activism or networking, new interesting patterns can emerge.

Even though many sociological texts deal with the issue of values, contemporary sociology has no unified theoretical conception of values. According to Strmiska, Lautman counted 180 various definitions of the notion “value” in 1981, when he tried to identify the perception of values in social sciences [Strmiska 1996: 375]. The notion of values is not only theoretically unanchored. The methodology is not unified either.

The initial empirical background for this study (and a springboard for analysis of supplementary data and for further interpretation and hypothetic conclusions) is based on the results of a public opinion survey carried out by the Centre for Public Opinion Research between 17 and 24 January 2005. The inquired group consisted of 1037 people over 15 years of age, and a sub-group of 813 people eligible to participate in regional elections.

Nowadays, painless connection of professional and family life is an ideal desired virtually by all parents in the Czech society. It is certainly difficult to be engaged at work and in the family life as well. All parents face the problem of how to divide their attention and time. Whether this decision happens knowingly or rather intuitively, in the end, the parents have to find a certain compromise between their professional and family life.

Causes of fertility rate decline present one of the most burning questions of our time. In principle there are two main theories accounting for this change. The first one regards the cause mainly in economical factors, that is, in the fact that young people are not provided for economically and they can’t afford to establish a family (or to have other children), even if they want to. The other theory claims that younger generations have a completely different value system as opposed to their parents.

Undoubtedly, party preferences are an indicator (and, from the point of view of media discourse, the most rewarding one) of political moods in the public. Why is it precisely party “popularity” that lays in focus of attention of laymen and expert public alike? Without the need to plunge into theoretical enumerations of functional lists of political parties, it is beyond discussions that political parties represent – along law-making bodies, government, and bureaucracy – the main structural component of the political system and create its institutional and relational environment.

The electronic version of the second number of the seventh edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The electronic version of the first number of the eighth edition of the review Czech Society (Naše společnost). Czech Society issues Center for Public Opinion Research, Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

The fact that recent demographic data have been pointing to gradual but consistent dying out of Europe has become the key point of strong filosophic, political and other clashes in the last years. Most discussions focus especially on the issues related to the causes of this situation, thus rather omitting the real consequences on everyday lives of Europeans in the upcoming decades. Namely the economic and sociological impacts. 
The structure of population change in terms of nationality is the second important process in today’s Europe: The majority population comprising original nationalities on whose basis the state composition of Europe had been formed is gradually losing its dominance. Conversely, immigrants (particularly Muslims) and their children are gaining more and more influence on the structure of society. 
Various kinds of economic pressure are related to these processes, which in the future will inevitably grow into the shape of events completely changing the society and its economic systém. I assume that in order to maintain its economic power, traditional European population will go through a process, during which some usual democratic principles and traditions will be put aside, for example the attitude towards the right to vote will change. 
That is because despite many complications, traditional European society will behave quite economically by keeping its political power as a guarantee of its economic power, and particularly as a guarantee that the standards of living and thus the possibility of satisfying one’s needs – manifesting itself through life style, among other things – will be preserved. 
>> Fulltext is available in Czech only <<

Parliamentary elections in May 2010 ended with unexpected and somewhat revolutionary results: they brought heavy losses to all traditional established parties within the Czech party system, which appeared to be relatively stable since the second half of 1990s, two lesser parliamentary parties were eliminated from the Chamber of Deputies, and two new political parties emerged among successful subjects surpassing quite easily the existing electoral clause of five percent. The text analyzes these results, as well as some attitudes of Czech public identified by exit poll and other sociological surveys and post-election development, and it tries to answer the question, whether the elections in 2010 meant any deep and lasting shift in long-term development of the party system in the Czech Republic or whether it was rather an incidental anomaly without persistent impact on the party system, which will gradually restore itself more or less in the shape that characterized it for one and half of decade before the elections in 2010. 
>> Full text is available in Czech only <<

The article examines the Czech educational praxis toward integration of immigrant children. Although the number of immigrant children increased during past several years, Czech national educational policy still lacks specific measures which would systematically promote inclusive education and integration of immigrant children. The article aims to describe the experience of schools with integration of immigrant children at schools, and to identify the most important barriers that prevent full participation of immigrant children according to accounts of interviewees. Based on 21 in-depth interviews with representatives of school staff in 11 Prague public-sector základní škola (ISCED 1+2) with higher share of immigrant children (5-20 %), the paper provides insight into diverse into the ways how schools deal with immigrant children, families´ acculturation strategies and inclusive educational policy. The article concludes with a discussion of “immigrant paradox”, highly achieving minorities (particularly Vietnamese students).

The article pursue how the concept of „social cohesion“ is understood by the Czech public. Firstly, the respondents predominantly do not know the concept; in addition spontaneous answers to the open-ended questions show that different meanings are associated with this concept. The second part analyses the battery of statements “what creates a cohesive society”. Three latent dimensions were identified: values of reciprocity and equality, collective identity and European liberalism.