Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6)
Health And Medicine: Post-socialist Perspectives

Health and Medicine: Post-socialist Perspectives

Amy Speier, Iva Šmídová, Hubert Wierciński

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 815-820  

Disorder and Civilization: The Future(s) of Ukrainian Medicine

Maryna Bazylevych

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 821-838 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.144  

Post-socialist societies are full of uncertainty, fragmentation, and competing discourses on social justice [Steinberg and Wanner 2008; Zigon 2011]. This article focuses on how Ukrainian physicians envision the future, present, and past of the health-care system and make sense of social change in their professional lives and society more broadly. The Ukrainian healthcare system has remained largely untouched by post-socialist reforms, but it is nevertheless undergoing profound changes. These changes are occurring on the level of everyday practice and are shifting responsibility away from the state and onto the individual. The author traces how physicians...

'You Can't Take It Personally': Emotion Management as Part of the Professional Nurse's Role

Olga Šmídová Matoušová, Blanka Tollarová

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 839-874 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.146  

This study looks into the culture of nursing professionals in the present-day Czech health-care system at a time of personal, generational, and educational transitions (reforms), which have driven a change of organisational-cultural means in the relationship between two key professions: doctors and nurses. The article presents the results of a biographical study of nurses, paying detailed attention to their emotional labour in cooperation with doctors in accident and emergency ward settings. The study draws on the concept of organisational culture in practice/action, on a Goffmanian and Garfinkelian ethnomethodology of scripts of interaction (rules,...

The Power of Protocol: Professional Identity Development and Governmentality in Post-socialist Health Care

Heidi Bludau

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 875-896 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.145  

The Czech Republic is experiencing a growing trend of health-care worker emigration. Although some emigrate for long periods of time, many return after a few months or years abroad and re-enter the Czech health system. The nurses' narratives in this study draw on experiences in Czech, British, and Saudi hospitals to explore the role standardised medical policies, procedures, and protocols play in the development and maintenance of a nurse's professional identity in the post-socialist context. The author suggests that performance of protocols versus informality of practice in health-care settings provides a lens through which to view professional identity...

Medical Travels of Polish Female Migrants in Europe

Izabella Main

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 897-918 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.147  

The article discusses the medical travel (medical tourism) of Polish women migrants based on a study conducted between 2008 and 2011 on Polish women who migrated to London, Barcelona, and Berlin. The author argues that the principal reasons for medical travel to Poland are the lower costs of private treatment, the relatively easy access to specialised health care, and personal comfort derived from linguistic and cultural competency. The women in the study who travelled to Poland for medical treatment combined the economic resources acquired while living abroad with their knowledge of the cultural and medical system in Poland to choose the best options...

Beyond Viagra: Sex Therapy in Poland

Agnieszka Kościańska

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 919-938 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.148  

In the 1970s and 1980s, Poland, like most other countries in the region, provided not only unlimited access to abortion and contraceptives, but also a liberal sex education. This period moreover constituted a golden age in sexology in the country. Sexual science developed as a holistic discipline, embracing achievements in medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, and religious studies, providing recourses for sex education and therapy. Sexuality was perceived as multidimensional and embedded in relationships, culture, economy, and society at large. This approach was fundamentally different from the biomedical model, which...

Between Advanced Medical Technology and Prayer: Infertility Treatment in Post-socialist Poland

Magdalena Radkowska-Walkowicz

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 939-960 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.149  

In Poland, invitro fertilisation technology (IVF) has been in use for over 25 years, garnering success and social approval. However, in 2007, a heated debate erupted on the moral, legal and economic aspects of IVF. A growing chorus of emphatic Catholic voices calls for IVF to be banned. This paper focuses on 'naprotechnology', a new actor and a fresh card in Poland's IVF debate. This method of treating infertility in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church is promoted as a cheaper and more effective alternative to IVF. Naprotechnology is primarily based on close observation of the female fertility cycle, but also involves pharmacological...

'Nobody in a Maternity Hospital Really Talks to You': Socialist Legacies and Consumerism in Czech Women's Childbirth Narratives

Ema Hrešanová

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 961-986 | DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2014.50.6.150  

This article aims to show how eight women, most of them with higher education, experienced, perceived, and understood birth care in the context of the post-socialist transformation in the Czech Republic. It is based on narrative interviews and a thematic analysis of them. From a description of women's birth-care experiences the author finds that women are most critical of the behaviour of health-care workers and the lack of communication provided by the system. Discussing the narrators' birth-care requirements she notes the strategies women use to attain the form of care they wished. Finally, the author observes that the women she interviewed exhibit...

Peggy Watson (ed.): Health Care Reform and Globalisation. The US, China and Europe in Comparative Perspective

Andrea Schmidt

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 987-988  

Alessandro Baricco: The Barbarians: An Essay on the Mutation of Culture; Nicholas Carr: The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember

Keith Tester

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 989-993  

Nicole Bolleyer: New Parties in Old Party Systems: Persistence and Decline in Seventeen Democracies

Seán Hanley

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 994-996  

Franz-Xaver Kaufmann: European Foundations of the Welfare State

Sergiu Delcea

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 997-998  

Blanche Le Bihan, Claude Martin and Trudie Knijn (eds.): Work and Care under Pressure: Care Arrangements across Europe

Francesco Barbabella

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 999-1001  

Steven Saxonberg: Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism: Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam

Martin K. Dimitrov

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1002-1003  

David Boromisza-Habashi: Speaking Hatefully. Culture, Communication and Political Action in Hungary

Umut Korkut

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1004-1007  

Bruno Latour: The Making of Law. An Ethnography of the Conseil d'Etat

Tomáš Ledvinka

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1008-1011  

Štěpanka Pfeiferová, Martin Lux, Tomáš Dvořák, Jana Havlíková, Martina Mikeszová and Petr Sunega (eds.): Housing and Social Care for the Elderly in Central Europe

Marianne Feikema

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1012-1014  

Bronisław Malinowski's Concept of Law from the Native's Point of View: A Workshop Held on 12-13 September 2014 in Krakow, Poland

Lenka Kožíšková, Tomáš Ledvinka

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1015-1018  

Reviewers of Articles Decided in 2014

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2014, 50(6): 1019