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Social meaning of physical exercise presented by some of the Czech women's magazines
Semotánová, Adéla ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Řezáčová, Vendula (referee)
The subject of the thesis is meanings of the physical exercising presented in the Czech women magazines, which I explored through qualitative content analysis of the articles focused on exercising. Three relevant frames or research areas emerged from foreign literature, which became the frames of the analysis: value of the exercise related to the body, the exercise as possible social field and gender level of these practices. I was specifically interested, if the exercise is presented as activity that helps to create socially disciplined body or individually restituted body for personal needs. Or if the exercise creates specific social field - sphere with specific relationship, rules and capital and if the gender is an important factor, connected to the presentation of the exercises in magazines, focused on women. The results show that the exercise is activity that creates the restituted body so as the disciplined body. It is not possible to define, if it is specific social field. The articles content so positive indications as those, which do not comply with the social field definition. Ideal femininity and ideal woman body should be reached by exercising. This ideal woman identity varies from reader's identity, which magazines define as "common" woman. The gender is an important factor that has...
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Memory on borderland. A comparative study of collective memory in the former East Prussiaregion in Poland and the Sudetes in the Czech Republic
Wladyniak, Ludmila Maria ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Olechnicki, Krzysztof (referee) ; Oláh, Gábor (referee)
Collective memory has recently become one of the most explored topics in the social sciences and has led to the emergence of a separate and independent subdiscipline called memory studies. The thesis investigates the awakening of collective memory in two borderlands of Central Europe: the former Sudetes region in the Czech Republic and the southern part of former East Prussia in Poland. The thesis provides an overview of the current theories about collective memory with a focus on the interactional and visual character of the studied phenomenon. In line with this, the thesis presents, discusses, and elaborates on research conducted in the two borderlands in 2016 and 2017. The aim of the research was to study the role and form of collective memory (shared remembrance) in ethnic, cultural, and historical borderlands. The contributions of the thesis are both methodological and theoretical. Firstly, the discussed research revealed that between particularly family-based communicative memory and official, institution-generated cultural memory, there is ritualised communicative memory, maintained through interactions among members of the borderland community (community of memory). Secondly, the thesis contributes to various studies within the interactionist paradigm and proves the usability of Goffman's...
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Securing cities: 'Urban resilience' as a technology of government
Svitková, Katarína ; Hynek, Nikola (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee) ; Chandler, David (referee)
Svitková, K. 2019. Securing cities: 'Urban resilience' as a technology of government, 282 pp. Doctoral thesis (PhD) Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies. Department of Security Studies. Academic supervisor: doc. PhDr. PNDr. Nikola Hynek, M. A., PgDip Res, PhD Abstract Resilience has become a buzzword in policy and practice of 'securing' and 'developing' cities and urban populations. This study discusses the use of this concept in the context of governance of subjectivities. More specifically, reflecting its empirical focus, it poses critical questions about constructing and promoting 'urban resilience subjects', and scrutinizes the process of internalization of resilience as a self-governance technique, self-imposed on and by citizens for their own good. The purpose is to problematize resilience as a universal tool or strategy to govern cities and their inhabitants, be it in ordinary or extreme circumstances. The study ventures beyond the traditional critique of neoliberalism to ask questions about what resilience does in terms of a performative governance, exploring the disciplinary and biopolitical nature of this process. Keywords resilience, governmentality, urban, cities, power, biopolitics
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Discursive construction and materiality of debt in context of housing
Samec, Tomáš ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee) ; Pospěch, Pavel (referee)
Housing debts have become fuel for the global economy, having been turned into tradable commodities on the financial markets. However, housing debts also have a profound relevance in the everyday life of those who have become indebted, enabling the dream of homeownership, but also leading to foreclosures and evictions. This thesis aims to take a rather under-researched perspective on formal and informal housing debts (i.e., mortgages and familial loans) by exploring the role of public and domestic discourses in, what is termed, the financialisation of housing. The financialisation of housing refers to the process of real estate being turned into assets and commodities and to the spread of individualised financial products being used to secure housing. The thesis uses the Czech Republic as a case through which to examine how discourse may enable this transition and how contribute to a specific financial governmentality. The thesis raises questions: How is it possible that mortgages come to be perceived as a normal and natural solution to housing issues? How do they become part of the debtors' lives through certain discourses? These questions are explored through an innovative framework of layered performativity, encompassing rhetoric, sociotechnical devices, and references to practices that reveal three main...
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The Channel of Influence? YouTube Advertising and the Hipster Phenomenon
Horáková, Zuzana ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
This research seeks to address the topic of the influence of the YouTube advertising on society as seen by the members of hipster subculture. This work aims to explore the attitude of hipsters towards the YouTube thanks to an analysis of the interviews and also with the help of a theoretical framework of core concepts such as subculture, hipster, lifestyle or advertising practices. The reason I address hipster attitudes is the fact, that hipster phenomenon has become widespread nowadays. Moreover, those individuals are associated with skeptical stance towards the mainstream trends. Therefore, I have decided to confront the ostensibly distrustful view of hipsters towards YouTube as a representative of modern mainstream and then analyze self-proclaimed attitudes of hipsters as such.
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Immersion in video games: a relationship between player and avatar
Hejret, Vojtěch ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Buchtík, Martin (referee)
This thesis is exploring a new approach to the little known and conceptually diversified subject of immersion in video games. Immersion is defined here as a complex approach to a state induced by a long term exposure of the player to a video game. In the beginning we explore different approaches to the study of video games and presenting our own basic typology of games. In the next part we present different understandings of the concept of immersion. Empirical part of this thesis explores different elements influencing the level of immersion. On the background of this concept we are also trying to suggest possible forms of player- avatar relationship. The main suggested elements influencing the immersion and creation of player-avatar relationship are game genre specifics, user strategies/motivations towards gaming, in-game story, avatar creation, quality of gameplay and audio-visual quality.
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Medico ergo sum. Construction of symbolic inequalities and boundaries between physicians and healers /and their professional identity
Dostálová, Lenka ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Grygar, Jakub (referee)
My diploma thesis deals with the relationship and more specifically with the boundaries and inequalities between scientific medicine and alternative medicine from the constructionistic and interactionistic point of view. It explores how the boundaries are constructed by the representatives of biomedicine on one side and the representatives of alternative medicine on the other side. This thesis is based on a qualitative research - semi-standardised interviews with members of both systems of medicine. The state and the role of alternative medicine in czech setting is presented to the reader and the construction of boundaries in this context is explored. The thesis shows that the representatives of biomedicine build boundaries mainly based on moral aspects, while the representatives of alternative medicine have larger and more varied repertoire of boundaries. The fact is probably given by structural conditions and the role of alternative medicine - while the representatives of biomedicine "only" want to maintain the status quo, the representatives of alternative medicine struggle to change their situation, which requires bigger effort.
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Analysis of biographical narratives using computer-assisted text analysis
Čepelák, Václav ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Soukup, Petr (referee)
Besides the social survey data, texts have been an important source of sociological data since the beginning of the development of sociological methodology. Text analysis methods contain two main branches of development: Bernard Berelson's content analysis and Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutic analysis. Both these methodological branches have been influenced by the development of information technologies in the last twenty years. The thesis presented here deals with one of the methods of computer text analysis (CATA), which stands on the border between these two methodological streams, a method of analyzing words' collocations in texts. The thesis presents the method in the context of other methods of text analysis, and mentions sources of inspiration for further development of these methods - corpus linguistics and text mining. The second part discusses the different steps of words' collocation analysis: building a text corpus, dictionary compilation, calculation of data matrix and visualisation of words' distances using multidimensional scaling (MDS). The method is also applied to a specific data, two text corpora compiled from transcripts of biographical interviews with actors of Czechoslovak normalization - with dissidents and Communist functionaries. Quality of the models is assessed, depending...
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The Experience of Gender Stereotypes at Technical Universities - Case of Selected Faculties of Czech Technical University in Prague
Truong, Phuong Thi ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Cidlinská, Kateřina (referee)
This thesis deals with gender stereotypes occurring at technical universities. These are the fields of study that are traditionally associated with men. Female students in technical fields form a minority of these schools and may encounter during their studies prejudiced behaviour of male students and teachers because of their gender. It is surveyed by qualitative methods which specific gender-stereotyped patterns occur on the faculties of Czech Technical University which was chosen as the representative technical university. Furthermore, this thesis deals with attitude of female students to these stereotypes and majority male group in these fields. It was found that although male students and teachers treat girls mostly helpful and positive, stereotypical opinions about women as less technically capable still persist. Some students or teachers show prejudice in their behaviour. Female students do not consider these prejudices as a problem. During studies, they met with prejudicial behaviour, but do not consider it as a barrier that could not be overcome. Often these young women are those who are more compatible with young men, they respect that men dominate in technical field and they act accordingly. This thesis describes in detail the students' experiences with gender stereotypes at technical...
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