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Anthropological conceptualisations of sexual categories
Prokopík, Petr ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee) ; Skupnik, Jaroslav (referee)
The thesis inquires into the possibilities which anthropological study has in attempting to conceptualise the rich manifestations of human sexuality. It discusses the problems of biological determination and normativity in the study of sexuality as well as its problems in cross-cultural applications. In examples of interpretation of well known phenomena such as "hijra", "two-spirit" and "ritual homosexuality" it demonstrates theoretical concepts of "third sex", "third gender", and "sexual lifeways" as possible tools of cross-cultural categorization. It presents an original field research investigating the formation of a specific new alternative sexual category within gay communities in three language contexts - Czech, English and German. Offering a situational analysis which concerns not only a description of cultural meanings and symbols known by actors, and an analyses of historical development, but also offers an interpretation of actors subjectivity displayed in individual motivations, desires and meanings created and used by actors. It endeavours to give a reflection of relations between sexual category and individual motivations during the process of accepting sexual identity and forming an alternative sexual category.
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Maori culture
Pirunčíková, Libuše ; Soukup, Václav (referee) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (advisor)
This project is trying to get into Maori 's history, culture and conflicts of Maori's population. It describes inhabiting New Zealand by Moari, discovering these islands by Abel Janszoon Tasman and conflicts that came up during the conquering of New Zealand by European colonists, because of the diversity of both cultures. The important part of Maori's history includes war conflicts until mid 20's, when the renesaince of the falling culture started to happened. Since the end of the world war II. the New Zealand goverments are trying to settle down all the harms done to the Maoris in the past and they are slowly trying to get used to these changes.
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Carnival and Schizophreny of the Most Landscape.
Ištvánek, Prokop ; Haluzík, Radovan (advisor) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee)
Resume The goal of my thesis is to familiarize readers with Schizophrenia, a term used by local people to describe a traumatic social phenomenon which is to be found in Most brown coal mining region, northern part of Czech Republic. I start from Sherry Ortner's assumption that history is influenced both by social system and by agency. Therefore, I analyze traumatic face of Most landscape, reorganized by modern technology heavily together with anency of local inhabitants transformed onto collective public events. Readers can find here one of the first attempt to organize rich material, collected durnig my five years long ethnographic field work done in a Strupcice village. By the reasons of socialistic programme to mine the village and thanks to postsocialistic changes in Czech law, Strupcice got stuck and surrounded by two large mines. The village is dynamically developing presently. There are two main chapters from total five in the thesis. In the first one, I find the traumatic part of the surrounding landscape in several kinds of material, nevertheless the most important one is represented by naratives. Another main chapter is focused on collective events. I analyze them using some concepts of several anthropolgists, for example Victor Turner and his Social drama, Richard Schechner and his Performance,...
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Woman's and men's roles in the Iban tribe in Kalimantan
Remešová, Blanka Michaela ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Pargač, Jan (referee) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee)
The doctoral thesis studies woman's and men's roles in the Iban tribe in Kalimantan. As a result of the growing influence of the majority society, these crofters, originally living in the heart of the primeval forest, have undergone many changes in the last 20 years. They have to cope with a different lifestyle and values hectically imposed upon them to a large extent. This process influences the structure of the whole society, and affects also the traditional system of male and female roles. Through deep study and analysis of female and male activities, I have studied penetrability of the assigned roles, which start to appear as impaired or non-functional, and which determine the creation of new structures.
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Europe and the Third world in the postcolonial era (Third world immigration in the European Union)
Hůlová, Petra ; Uherek, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Czumalo, Vladimír (referee) ; Bitušíková, Alexandra (referee)
My PhD. thesis Europe, the Third World and postcolonialism attemps to examine and sum up current European debatě on immigrants from the Third World and set up a a frame for iťs future charakter. The topič is being delt with not only from both political and economical perspective but also as an issue of academie discussion. The thesis emphasises academie discussion as an important part of European immigration policy. While the issue of immigration in a day to day perspective means open borders with clearly defined conditions for those willing to enter, in academie view the debatě is rarely fřee from discourse of postcolonialism with iťs tendency towards victimization. Immigrants are victimized by the academics while demonized by politicians and others. However, the question of guilt seems to be crucial for academie discussion and a way one perceives power relation between Europe and iťs prior colonies. This PhD. thesis tries to avoid mistakes of both sides, politicians and academics, tries to avoid their victimization and self guilt as well as demonization of immigrants. There are two traeks the chapters follow. From obvious to hidden and from Europeans to immigrants. The first one inroduces brief history of European immigration with attention to its particular steps and concludes reflecting academie...
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Minangkabau culture in the mirror of randai theatre plays
Pflegerová, Mariana ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee) ; Šalanda, Bohuslav (referee)
The dissertation thesis is focused on the culture of the ethnic group Minangkabau, whose home territory is situated in the present-day Indonesian province of West Sumatra, yet whose diaspora, reaching its highest density in the islands of Sumatra and Java, recently covers the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, overlapping to the neighbouring countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and beyond. In the thesis, Minangkabau culture is viewed through the looking glass of the Minang folk theatre randai, which traces its origins to the iniciation of young Minang males, yet which has with time transformed into an important means of symbolic expression of the Minang identity. Selected randai plays recorded by the author in their authentic social context are used to provide examples for the explanation of some of the key concepts that form the core of Minang culture, while socio-historical conditions are considered for the influence they have had upon the shaping of these concepts to their present form. Topics that are subject to explanation include the following: the social position and the key social roles performed by women in the context of a system of social organization based on the principals of matrilineal kinship, relative to the position and roles of men; basic principals of Minang ethnopsychology as source of...
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Solemnity of the last decades in the Czech Republic. Solemnity of modern times of the last decades shown on some examples, focusing on the solemnity of the socialist period in Žďár nad Sázavou
Porsch, Josef ; Pargač, Jan (advisor) ; Krupková, Jaroslava (referee) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee)
Zaměření této práce vychází z mého zájmu o obřadnost. Vnímám obřadnost jako velmi důležitou složku života lidské společnosti, a to i dnes, kdy se mi náboženství nebo duchovní život nezdají být převažujícím nositelem společenského významu. Domnívám se, že se přesto v české (nebo v euroamerické) společnosti objevuje i tam. Během mého výzkumu mě zajímalo, jaké jsou formy obřadnosti právě v takovém typu společnosti a jak obřadnost ovlivňuje život jednotlivého člověka. Morris (1997:187), Jung (1999:200), Murphy (1999:170) a další se domnívají, že člověk jako kulturní a společenský tvor nějakou formu obřadnosti potřebuje. Proto podle mého názoru mohou být podoby obřadnosti v moderní, zčásti nenáboženské společnosti, zajímavé zejména pro pochopení jejího současného fungování, zejména pokud se zaměříme na nedávnou minulost. Zvláště patrný se mi tento jev zdá na případě období socialistického režimu, který v Československu existoval od konce čtyřicátých do konce devadesátých let 20. století. Společenský systém, který se prohlašoval za ateistický (Petrov 2000:140), přesto vytvořil celou řadu obřadů a svátků, z nichž některé přetrvaly až do dnešní doby. Proto jsem zvolil toto období za těžiště výzkumu. Jak se ukázalo, podob obřadnosti existovalo za socialismu větší množství. Výběr případových studií byl veden okruhem...
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Critical look at NGOs practices in the regional development. A contribution to the problems of culture change and processes of aculturation
Kobes, Tomáš ; Skupnik, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee) ; Kotalová, Jitka (referee)
The activity of NGOs issue is one of the major topic of Slovakian regional development and Romany issue. Participation of Slovakian NGOs was not a matter of course in the issue of regional development. The growing NGOs participation is based upon assumption of the Strategy of Slovakian government explicitly introducing Romany Issue to the context of regional development, NGO and foreign funds. Within the issue of regional development NGOs activities are not understood as a factor of democratization, but they are conceptualized as an initiator of social and cultural change. In the theoretical view classical conceptualization of change is not sufficient. The major theoretical frameworks that are criticised within these concepts are evolutional patterns, idealistic and materialistic determinism. They classify societies and cultural diversity in the dichotomies of traditional vs. modern, underdeveloped vs. developed. The basic mistake of these dichotomies is the idea about different dynamics of constituted social systems, where someone has to live in modernity and another one has to live in his naturalness or in tradition and superstitions. On the other hand the formal standpoint is too abstract without the reflection of social context. Nominated conceptual solution tries to get over these theoretical...
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The process of Evenk assimilation on the territory of the Evenk Autonomous Okrug (Central Siberia) from the 1930s until the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the beginnings of national rebirth tendencies (until 2001)
Brzáková, Pavlína ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee) ; Pargač, Jan (referee)
In 1990-1991, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, secession tendencies began to emerge in the individual regions and autonomous republics of the Russian Federation. In addition to the economic transformation, which focussed on intensification of mining of mineral deposits, the trend of profiling cultural differences and of greater differentiation from the majority Russian population came to the forefront. The National rebirth, as the phenomenon is often labelled, demonstrated itself especially in the construction of new museums, the activities of collectors and in the establishment of various folk ensembles and organisations. As I have been studying the culture of Siberian ethnicities for a long time, especially the nomadic Evenks living by the tributaries of the Yenisei River, I was able to observe the progress of the changes in the Evenk Autonomous Okrug and I was constantly confronted with the question of whether a real return to the roots is possible. The subject has brought me to the very beginning of the assimilation process that began in the 1930s; it interfered with the tribal structure of the Evenks and has not only led to forced russification, but also to an almost instantaneous shift from the nomadic to the settled way of life. I have attempted to reconstruct the process using the...
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A question of cultural identity of Czech minority group in south Ukraine
Musílek, Martin ; Matějů, Martin (referee) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (advisor)
Object of this work is an effort to reach the understanding of cultural identity phenomenon through the process of its formation and sustentation in a different ethnical background. The phenomenon such as ethnic group, nation or culture are tigtly adherent to conditions they rise from and sink. For that reason also ethnic, national and cultural identity are legally adherent to conditions in which their holders live . Main factors implicating the preservation of the cultural identity at czech minority group in south Ucraine are particularly the positive economic situation, contact with the authentic culture and country of origine and positive valuation of czech culture.
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