Journal Czech Society Archive

The paper presents to Czech social scientists an introductory review of the concept of equivalence and the method of blockmodeling in social network analysis (SNA). After introducing the central concepts of SNA such as node and tie, along with their basic metrics such as centrality and cohesion, I present the concepts of role and position. These are treated by SNA as clusters of nodes with similar ties, something I juxtapose to algorithms to identify cohesive subgroups of nodes. Subsequently, I define and compare the two most frequently applied types of equivalence – structural, which is strict but broadly applicable, and regular, which is more liberal but has limited uses.

The goal of this article is to contribute to the study of the history of Czech sociology by examining the journal Acta Universitatis Carolinae Philosophica et Historica – Studia Sociologica (AUC StS), published by the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University. After almost 50 years of its existence, this less-known periodical can be viewed as documentary evidence on the developments and transformations in a part of Czech (or Czechoslovak) sociology. We account for the journal’s main characteristics and discuss its position and role in Czech sociology. In addition to standard procedures of content analysis, we employ the innovative method of citation network analysis. Accordingly, one of the paper’s important goals is to assess the adequacy of the methods applied for addressing research questions of this kind.

This article focuses on methods for measuring corruption, first describing three generations of corruption indicators and then comparing them qualitatively and quantitatively. Corruption is a clandestine activity that is extremely difficult to measure; there are no official statistics on the number of corruption cases. For this reason, corruption can only be measured indirectly, by various proxies, and it is extremely hard to state whether these indicators are reliable and indeed measure the corruption phenomena in a given country. A large number of different indicators have been developed over the years that try to capture and quantify corruption. Some authors measure perceptions of corruption, others try to use “hard data” to explore the level of corruption in a country, and even others combine different measurements, weight them, and then publish composite indicators to capture the overall level of corruption in a country.

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.

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.

Profile of scientist Pavel Machonin.

The article stands as a second part of a series about the question answering process during standardized surveys and elaborates the memory retrieval phase. At the beginning the main psychological conceptions of memory are introduced (structure, traits, information types), which are then used for the analysis of the function of memory during survey answering process. The second part deals with the issue of factual information retrieval: the topic of initial encoding of the information into the memory; the role of cognitive keys in case of further retrieval; and consequences of those for the possibilities of the standardized inquiry. The attention is paid also to the problem of inaccessible information and to the usage of more general parts of autobiographical memory (schemas, scenarios etc.) instead of original entries. The third part elaborates the issues of temporal information retrieval like strategies used by respondents or biases emerging in case of them (e.g. seam eff ect and telescoping).

Old age and aging of individuals are phenomenons that took important place in society as early as former times. During twentieth century the question of aging got new meaning, because it newly started to overreach from individual level to all-society. As a result of improvement of some social conditions (f.e. medical care, lifestyle, hygiene, living standard etc.), that was already initiated approximately at the beginning of the nineteenth century, dying started to be moved to higher age and people live longer. In modern societies this event usually goes with decline of natality and fertility. In final effect combination of these two factors causes the process that is known as demographic aging. In general we have to distinction between two views of problems of aging. The first view is focused on individual aging, the second one on demographic aging of human population. But it is clear that both of these views relate to each other. Similarly this article offers the roundup of problems of demographic aging, but also gives a touch of questions about longevity and quality of life, that gain ground in connection with theme of individual aging.

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.