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Return of Baťa Lost: Post-socialist Transformation of Czech Cultural Memory
Babička, Martin ; Činátl, Kamil (advisor) ; Randák, Jan (referee)
After 1989, Czechoslovakia, or the Czech Republic, undergoes a transformation not only political or economic, but also a broader cultural or semiotic one. Collective remembering processes are entered by multiple agents who compete with, pass, complement or contradict each other. They further differ in the extent of their institutionalization, motivation, or way of representation. Legitimizing role of the past becomes an issue of negotiation, linked to the search for different collective identities and arrival of different ideologies. The case of Baťa can well render this process: at the beginning of the 1990s, Baťa's historical significance is changing; he starts to be used by diverse actors in diverse representations (news articles, memoirs, non-fiction and popularizing books, documentary films, public space) for diverse purposes; at the same time, Baťa is a synecdoche of remembering interwar Czechoslovakia and can thus become an instrument of constructed continuity. Mapping the forms of Baťa's representations in Czech historical culture after 1989 will point to broader changes and consequences of the transformation of Czech collective remembering in its heterogeneity. The paper proceeds primarily from memory studies concepts approaches of contemporary history to the study of post-socialism. Key...
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Representation, process, experience: (post)industrial landscape in anthropological-geographical perspective
Gibas, Petr ; Uherek, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Siwek, Tadeusz (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
Representation, process, experience: (post)industrial landscape in anthropological-geographical perspective Abstract The main topic of the dissertation is the (post)industrial landscape of what is today the Czech Republic. In particular, the dissertation presents three case studies of three (post)industrial landscapes: that of Ostrava, Kladno and Most. The aim of the dissertation is twofold - thematic as well as theoretical. As far as the thematic focus of the dissertation goes, the author employs the concept of landscape as a prism through which it is possible to explore large societal shifts and changes as they are mirrored in landscape. The question is what has happened to industrial landscape after the fall of socialism and how industrial landscape has turned into what it is now. On the theoretical level, the (post)industrial landscape of contemporary Czechia is used as a means of exploring the complexity of the concept of landscape and developing a conceptualization of landscape that comes to terms with its complexity, ambiguity and elusiveness. In terms of theory, the dissertation engages with three ways of conceptualising landscape prevalent in contemporary anthropology and (new cultural) geography: landscape as representation, process and experience. To explore them in depth and reveal any...
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Crisis and the construction of home: Narrative accounts of the Financial crisis on the Czech housing market
Samec, Tomáš ; Grygar, Jakub (advisor) ; Čada, Karel (referee)
This text deals with the Financial crises from the perspective of everyday lived experience. It presents the analysis of narrative accounts of lay people who were active on the Czech housing market during or after the Crises. Theoretically rooted in the in the framework of narrative analysis, the text widens the mainstream economical perceptions of Crises bringing the concepts of emotions, ethos and symbolic boundaries into account. On the behalf of the narratives of Crises, the narratives of the process of social construction of home proved to be significant for the narrator's identity construction and presentation. Text presents three main findings a) Crises is trope, which is used as such in the narratives b) moral evaluation, which might be coined as the bourgeois morality ethos prove their significance in the narratives c) housing choices being based both on "rational" and "irrational" factors i. e. emotions, moral evaluations. The main interpretation of the narrative accounts suggests the crucial importance of the narratives of social construction of home for the expression of being independent, capable, responsible and thus successful person. The ability to express the capability of securing what is culturally regarded as "good and ideal housing" to the family, represents ones ability to...
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"The other" geography of alternative food networks: farmers' markets as a travelling concept
Fendrychová, Lenka ; Chromý, Pavel (advisor) ; Kostelecký, Tomáš (referee) ; Pauknerová, Karolína (referee)
Boom of the farmers' markets in 2010 represented a brand new phenomenon in the so far rather calm development of the Czech alternative food networks (AFNs). Unprecedented was the extent of political support at the local and state level as well as the interest of media and consumers. My PhD project originates in the desire to understand this phenomenon. I realized qualitative research of practice and discourse of the farmers' markets in the territory of Prague metropolitan area (PMA) during the years 2011 and 2012. The main research methods included interviews with organizers, observation at the markets, and the content analysis of the mass media. In the course of the research it became obvious that the current academic discourse, rooted primarily in the Anglo-American context, cannot be applied to the Czech reality. Also, the specific features of the farmers' markets in the PMA could only partially be explained by the differences between the Czech post-socialist context and "the West". An interpretation of the boom of farmers' markets in the PMA, consistent with the results of my research, was only enabled by an innovative approach which combines the concept of the travelling theory, postcolonial sensitivity to the mutual relations between source and target contexts, and the findings of the studies...
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