Journal Czech Society Archive

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. 
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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.

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 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.

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.

Book Review: Ivan Chorvát, Roman Džambazovič (eds.). 2015. Rodina na Slovensku v teórii a vo výskume. Bratislava: Stimul, 181 s.

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.