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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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Historical Sociology of the Romani Nationalism: Foundations, Development and Challenges
Sambati, Douglas Neander ; Maslowski, Nicolas (advisor) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee) ; Marushiakova, Elena (referee)
in English Douglas Neander Sambati Abstract This work develops a historical-sociological approach analysing the general practices, the strategies, the actions and the discourses of Romani and Romani-Friendly organizations through the lenses of the theories about nationalism. It focuses on the overlapping and the contradictions found among the different actors of the Romani Nationalism. This research defines the Romani Nationalism as a movement which does not have a clear forerunner and does not have a uniform perspective and inclinations, notwithstanding the common agreement not to aim for the establishment of a Romani state. In order to understand such dynamics, the research questions and chapters were divided in three main areas. In the first part, it is discussed if the framework of the Romani and Romani-Friendly organizations can be seen as nationalist, basing the discussion in authors as Gellner (1983), Smith (2008) and others. The comparison with Hroch's (2000) model of analysis about nationalism indicated the existence of a structure which is not (only) a nationalist movement, but also an anti-racist mobilization which employs nationalist tools. The second part analyses the Roma Nation along a set of representations which can be analytically divided in Pan-Romani and Social- Political: the...
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Cortijeros en La Alpujarra: From the Lifestyle migration to Thinking about a Positive Anthropology
Varhaník Wildová, Kateřina ; Halbich, Marek (advisor) ; Kapusta, Jan (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
Lifestyle migrants from the affluent North move to the Mediterranean region intensively from the 80's. Lifestyle migration to Spain takes different forms: here we meet rich yacht owners in Marbella, retired people in the housing complexes in Almuñecar, or surfers in Tarifa. This work focused on people, who chose their new place in the region of La Alpujarra. They live in the remote houses called cortijos, which gave name to their inhabitants - cortijeros. Their lifestyles are the subject of this work, together with more general strategies practiced in lifestyle migration, the skills needed in such a move, and values they pursue. Ten years of research enabled to get together both, opinions and plans of the newcomers in the region, and their activities, stories, and imprints in the real world. I try to present different perspectives: the lens of lifestyle migration, counter-urbanization, material culture anthropology, history, positive psychology. At the end, I propose to think a positive anthropology that would focus on studying such practices that seemed to work towards understanding "the good life"; that work towards both individual well-being, and creating social structures considerate to humans and the environment.
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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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Zionist without Zeal: Imagination and Performance of Transnational Belonging
Pokorná, Anna ; Ezzeddine, Petra (advisor) ; Halbich, Marek (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
This dissertation based on a fieldwork conducted among Czech Jewish youth during a ten-days educational touristic program Taglit-Birthright explores production of transnational space of mutual belonging. The transnational belonging to Jewish collective is produced through particular physical space of Israel through practice of tourism in collective constructed by the programme as a collective of common origin based on "blood ties". I examine participants' tourist bodily experience, performances, emotions and attitudes as a site of production and reproduction of transnational space using a concept of embodiment as ways in which the individual grasps the world around him/her and makes sense of it in ways that engage both body and mind. Transnational space created throughout the programme becomes socially constructed emotional category of "ahavat Israel", "love for Israel" that might conceal its political implications. Keywords: Transnationalism, diaspora, tourism, embodiment, Jewish youth, Taglit-Birthright, Czech Republic, Israel
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Historical Sociology of the Romani Nationalism: Foundations, Development and Challenges
Sambati, Douglas Neander ; Maslowski, Nicolas (advisor) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee) ; Marushiakova, Elena (referee)
in English Douglas Neander Sambati Abstract This work develops a historical-sociological approach analysing the general practices, the strategies, the actions and the discourses of Romani and Romani-Friendly organizations through the lenses of the theories about nationalism. It focuses on the overlapping and the contradictions found among the different actors of the Romani Nationalism. This research defines the Romani Nationalism as a movement which does not have a clear forerunner and does not have a uniform perspective and inclinations, notwithstanding the common agreement not to aim for the establishment of a Romani state. In order to understand such dynamics, the research questions and chapters were divided in three main areas. In the first part, it is discussed if the framework of the Romani and Romani-Friendly organizations can be seen as nationalist, basing the discussion in authors as Gellner (1983), Smith (2008) and others. The comparison with Hroch's (2000) model of analysis about nationalism indicated the existence of a structure which is not (only) a nationalist movement, but also an anti-racist mobilization which employs nationalist tools. The second part analyses the Roma Nation along a set of representations which can be analytically divided in Pan-Romani and Social- Political: the...
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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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Cortijeros en La Alpujarra: From the Lifestyle migration to Thinking about a Positive Anthropology
Varhaník Wildová, Kateřina ; Halbich, Marek (advisor) ; Kapusta, Jan (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
Lifestyle migrants from the affluent North move to the Mediterranean region intensively from the 80's. Lifestyle migration to Spain takes different forms: here we meet rich yacht owners in Marbella, retired people in the housing complexes in Almuñecar, or surfers in Tarifa. This work focused on people, who chose their new place in the region of La Alpujarra. They live in the remote houses called cortijos, which gave name to their inhabitants - cortijeros. Their lifestyles are the subject of this work, together with more general strategies practiced in lifestyle migration, the skills needed in such a move, and values they pursue. Ten years of research enabled to get together both, opinions and plans of the newcomers in the region, and their activities, stories, and imprints in the real world. I try to present different perspectives: the lens of lifestyle migration, counter-urbanization, material culture anthropology, history, positive psychology. At the end, I propose to think a positive anthropology that would focus on studying such practices that seemed to work towards understanding "the good life"; that work towards both individual well-being, and creating social structures considerate to humans and the environment.
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J.C. Alexander's symbolic code of civil society: the problem of rationalization
Frantová, Veronika ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Alieva, Dilbar (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
This thesis elaborates on the concept of a binary symbolic code of civil society by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith and through this narrowly-focused analysis intends to contribute to a wider debate on the role of emotionality and rationality in the public space. Alexander is one of the few who has managed to make a breakthrough with the new paradigm in the last decades of social theory development. However, institutionalization of a "Strong Program in Cultural Sociology" without adequate reflection on its epistemological foundations bears the risk of cultural sociology becoming a hidden representative of functionalist ideology instead of a critical discipline. I identify and elaborate several key theoretical questions regarding the concept of a binary symbolic code: systemic diferentiation and relative autonomy of civil sphere; relative autonomy of culture and actor-structure dilemma; the question of a position of symbolic code among other interpretive tools of cultural sociology; universality of symbolic code; normativity and the role of power relations. Following Marek Skovajsa, I try to test the possibilities of the code in the Czech public sphere. In two case studies - of dissident discourse and the discourse of local referendums - I show that the structure of Czech civil society agree with...
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Zionist without Zeal: Imagination and Performance of Transnational Belonging
Pokorná, Anna ; Ezzeddine, Petra (advisor) ; Halbich, Marek (referee) ; Szaló, Csaba (referee)
This dissertation based on a fieldwork conducted among Czech Jewish youth during a ten-days educational touristic program Taglit-Birthright explores production of transnational space of mutual belonging. The transnational belonging to Jewish collective is produced through particular physical space of Israel through practice of tourism in collective constructed by the programme as a collective of common origin based on "blood ties". I examine participants' tourist bodily experience, performances, emotions and attitudes as a site of production and reproduction of transnational space using a concept of embodiment as ways in which the individual grasps the world around him/her and makes sense of it in ways that engage both body and mind. Transnational space created throughout the programme becomes socially constructed emotional category of "ahavat Israel", "love for Israel" that might conceal its political implications. Keywords: Transnationalism, diaspora, tourism, embodiment, Jewish youth, Taglit-Birthright, Czech Republic, Israel
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