Journal Czech Society Archive

Moravcová, Eva. „Jaká je ochota občanů spolupracovat s policií a co ji ovlivňuje?“ Naše společnost 11 (1): 47-56, http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/1214-438X.2013.11.1.5

The majority of crime is not detected by the police itself. Its work, if it is to be effective, depends heavily on the people’s willingness to cooperate with the police. The paper compares the degree of such cooperation between the Czech Republic and other European countries that participated on the ESS R 5 research and focuses on factors influencing the cooperation. Education, feelings of safety when walking alone in local areas after dark and satisfaction with police officers´ treatment all play an important role in explaining people’s willingness to cooperate with the police.  Further, results of the analyses show that the Czech Republic and other post-communist countries alike suffer from relatively low legitimacy of the police as well as low degree of public cooperation with this institution. Moreover, the data suggest that perceived legitimacy of the police is considerably influenced by public trust in it and perception of its transparency. However, these seem to be still relatively low in the Czech Republic.

Horák, Vít. 2013. „Kampaň před prvním kolem české prezidentské volby v roce 2013 z perspektivy Alexanderovy performativní teorie." Naše společnost 11 (2): 30-40,

The presented paper tries to interpret the campaign before the presidential election in Czech 2013 from the perspective of Jeffrey Alexander´s performative theory. It argues that the process of preference formation cannot be completely explained on the basis of rational interests of the voters, media or socioeconomic strata. On the contrary, the paper based in durkheimian paradigm argues for the importance of collective emotions. The campaign is understood here as a sequence of performative acts in which the candidates, understood as collective representations, try to associate themselves with emotions of the voters. The performance in Alexander’s perspective takes place in the civil sphere formed by the cultural code with binary structure of the democratic and antidemocratic side. In this perspective the case of Czech presidential campaign will be shown with the focus on the unexpected advancement of Karel Schwarzenberg to the second round of the election.

The aim of this article is to explain the role of educational and training programmes that represent both the key labour market policy tool increasing labour force employability and the lifelong learning policy tool contributing to the lifelong learning concept. On the basis of the exploration of wide range of related literature, statistics and research studies we describe existing types and goals of educational and training programmes which are used as key measures of public policy in different countries. At the same time we reflect the role of these programmes in current changing economic and social conditions and their link to the principles of flexicurity policy.

Assessment of people's views with an emphasis on sociological aspects is mainly associated with the tradition of the European public opinion research. American authors introduced empirical and socio-psychological approaches to this field of study. Hadley Cantril was one of those who pioneered "scientific" public opinion research inspired by George Gallup. This paper reviews Cantril´s work, recalling some of his most important theoretical and methodological findings and empirical projects, to conclude that his studies remain a rich source of knowledge for all present-day and future public opinion researchers.

The CVVM public opinion polls focus, among other themes, on media. We chose three areas of questions from their continuous research – 1) level of trust in media, television, newspaper and radios, 2) opinions on accuracy and inaccuracy of information provided by specific media, 3) choice of news programmes, frequency of watching news and respondents’ assessment of the news programmes that they follow.

In every democratic system, the position of the head of state has a specific meaning and various administrative and constitutional embedment. It is an institutional as well as symbolic expression of the state’s sovereignty, of its “unity in diversity” in the context of pluralistic democracy. Conceptual arrangements are very diverse within modern democratic constitutionality: in some states, the head of state is only a symbol of constitutionality and his/her powers are either entirely formal (Great Britain) or very restricted (Federal Republic of Germany, Austria).

On a regular basis, the Centrum pro výzkum veřejného mínění (Public Opinion Research Centre) asks questions relating to the environment several times a year. A part of the questions focuses on the behaviour of respondents and their households, to what degree they themselves try to do well to the environment and whether at all they think that such efforts may have any meaning. Other questions deal with assessing activities of various institutions active in environmental protection and, in general, the behaviour of companies, residents and legislation.

Presented results stem from a research realized by the CVVM (Public Opinion Research Center) as a part of a project ”Our society 2004” in March 2004, on the sample of 1056 respondents representing the population of the Czech Republic aged over 15. The research focused mainly on identification of people’s contentment with the environment and some of its aspects. It further tried to specify public awareness of environmental issues, i.

Czech political parties have existed for more than one decade. Their position in the political system seems to be stable and is seldom put to doubt. When this occurs after all, a solution only seemingly dissimilar to political parties is offered. This was the case, for example, with the “Thank You, Leave” (Děkujeme, odejděte) civil initiative. Its representatives were thinking of transforming it into a political party after the initiative succeeded with the public.

On the threshold of the twenty-first century science is becoming more and more a public domain. Times, when scientists researched independently of the social demand, ended already in the middle of the last century with state financing of extensive space and nuclear programs. Subsequent development of science financing aimed at supporting projects, whose results could be put into practice as fast as possible and thus improve the living standard of citizens.

Using the concept of subjective social distance we focus on perceptions of occupational categories. First, the theoretical concept of social distance is introduced as a tool for measuring social stratification. Second, subjective hypothetical interactional distances to 22 occupational stimuli are analyzed with data from the Social Distances 2007 survey. People rate the stimuli hierarchically analogous to occupational prestige and socioeconomic status; however some minor divergence can be detected.

Review of the book Miloš Brunclík, Miroslav Novák et al.: Internetové volby. Budoucnost, nebo slepá ulička demokracie?

The relationship of the Czechs towards beer is not a trivial one. Even though we can ostentatiously simplify it to “beer drinkers’ nation,” “pub culture” and so on, relations between the Czechs, beer and pubs are really far more complex and differentiated. The last issue of the Bulletin focused in detail on the institute of pub in the Czech society. This time we will try to focus on beer and primarily on the phenomenon of Czech beer patriotism.

Occupational reputation as viewed by the general public is among interesting topics immediately related to labour issues and, indirectly, to other problem areas such as value orientation or modernization. At the end of last year, occupational reputation was analysed as part of one of the ongoing investigations of the Centre for Public Opinion Research (CVVM) of the Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.

We will not diverge too far from the truth if we assume that most reserachers taking part in social research consider the period of field data collection as a sort of unwelcome pause between two important acts: preparation and evaluation. As if their work stopped at that moment, as if the raging mountain river of current research hid somewhere in the rocks and underground caverns in order to reappear after a time quietly burbling somewhere down in the valley.

The question of equal opportunities for men and women has not been a political issue in the Czech Republic for a long time. The situation has changed significantly, however, since our government pledged to deal with unequal position of men and women in many spheres within the process of deepening European integration. Yet we still have to note that the issue of equal opportunities has only marginal place in Czech politics.

In the region of Central Europe, the KSČM (the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia) represents a certain unique phenomenon – in none of the post-communist countries does a communist (communist-party based) and only little reformed party play an analogous role within the party system, in none of them does it have such a high (and what is more: even growing) electorate support. In Poland, Hungary (but for example also in Slovenia) the local post-communist parties took over the politics of their reformist wings, deepened it and continued in it consistently.

This article will not deal with public opinion as a social phenomenon. Many questions about what is public opinion, who are its bearers, what is its content and how does it appear were asked in the past and it seems that many of them still haven’t been answered sufficiently.

The trivial and most easily accessible definition is that “Public opinion is the opinion of the public”. However, it is far from solving the problem: What does it mean “public?” Who constitutes the public? Do all people belong to public, or only some of them? And possibly who? Isn’t it actually the other way round? Doesn’t public opinion comprise rather of opinions and thoughts that are expressed publicly, no matter who expresses them and who listens to them? And in this case, what does it mean “publicly expressed”? Does it concern publication in media, quarrel in a pub or an argument of a married couple? When discussing public opinion, one easily comes across such problems and circular definitions.

Many significant findings were obtained from a number of surveys conducted by the Public Opinion Research Centre (Centrum pro výzkum veřejného mínění – CVVM) of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in connection with the integration process of the Czech Republic into the European structures . But because even these findings are subject to the general tendency to sink into fast oblivion, I will try to mention especially the attitudes, opinions, and expectations, forming the basis for the relationship of the public towards the European Union, a body whose part we will become next year and in which we are to build our position.

Paul Lazarsfeld is known as an author and a great promoter of analytical methods of research. He is often connected with quantitative methodology – with methods of statistical processing of data, with mathematical modelling. No less important part of his contribution to methodology was his emphasis on cooperation of various approaches within the complex social sciences research.

One example of such cooperation was a research of the Marienthal community of the unemployed – a working class colony near Vienna, Austria - at the time of great economic crisis in the thirties of the twentieth century.