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Parenting in the context of cultural inequalities: how parents justify their child-rearing strategies
Šulcová, Zuzana ; Frantová, Veronika (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
This thesis is written from the perspective of cultural sociology and focuses on middle-class parents and justification of their child-rearing decisions. It describes how parents choose and evaluate the institutions their children spend time at, how they "other" parents with different values and how they relate to concerted cultivation - a type of parenting style which currently dominates the middle-class context. This parenting style (or ideal) puts a great deal of pressure on middle-class parents and it causes a symbolic war among them: a war for acknowledgment and a certain position in the cultural space. This thesis describes who the participants "other", which child-rearing strategies participants approve of, what values are crucial for them and what problems they deal with. Furthermore, four main differences between the participants' approach and the concerted cultivation approach were identified: emphasis on friendship, emphasis on balance between activities and rest, emphasis on fitting in with the majority and emphasis on approval of certain authoritarian methods such as imposing punishments, applying restrictions and issuing directives.
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Sharing Economy in the Context of Postmaterial Values: The Case of Accommodation Segment in Prague
Svobodová, Tereza ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
This master's thesis is about the success of sharing economy in the accommodation segment in Prague. The thesis is based on theories conceptualizing sharing economy as a result of social and value change, not only as technological one. Using online review data, the user experience of shared accommodation via Airbnb and traditional via Booking are compared. Analysis is conducted with focus on users' satisfied needs and fulfilled values. For processing the data, text mining techniques (topic modelling and sentiment analysis) were employed. The major result is that in Prague the models of sharing economy accommodation meets the growing need in society to fulfil post-material values in the market much better than the models of traditional accommodation (hotels, hostels, boarding houses). In their experiences, Airbnb users reflect social and emotional values more often, even though most sharing economy accommodations in Prague do not involve any physical sharing with the host. The thesis thus brings a unique perspective on the Airbnb phenomenon in the Czech context and contributes to the discussion of why the market share of the sharing economy in the accommodation segment in Prague has been growing, while traditional models stagnated.
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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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On the Relationship Between Metaphor and Technology: a Comparative Study on Nanotechnology
Kotlík, Pavel ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Vincent, Bernadette Bensaude (referee) ; Konrad, Kornelia (referee)
At the turn of the millennium, the most developed countries began to take interest in nanotechnology, that is, technologies defined by their precise nanometer-level functionality, but also by their substantial, realised, or anticipated changes in industry and medicine. At the European policy level, nanotechnology has become part of the pan-national governance principle, accompanied however by low public awareness of the benefits and risks. Nanotechnology engenders gradual, albeit very controversial transformations where actors adopt various communication strategies. The dissertation presents an analysis of the relationship between metaphor and nanotechnology. Neither metaphor nor nanotechnology is a neutral resource to be freely exploited, but both have significant implications for the strategic efforts of actors who use them. The study has the objective of exploring the social representations of nanotechnology in the various local (cultural) contexts of their medialisation and investigating the isomorphism which exists between metaphorical structures and the evolution of nanotechnology controversies. The theoretical part considers the role of metaphors in constructing social representations of nanotechnology and in translating between there and then and here and now. These representations and...
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Hipsters and their Identity: Discursive Manifestations of Hipster Culture in VICE magazine
Horáková, Zuzana ; Balon, Jan (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
This research address the topic of hipster phenomenon and its discursive manifestations in the online magazine VICE. The theoretical part of the thesis submits the basic discursive frameworks which serve as a theoretical anchoring for the practical part based on discursive analysis of the articles. The analysis itself is based on 11 articles mainly from the section Remembering the Hipster, which was chosen as the most appropriate for this study. The aim of the thesis is to explore the main discursive manifestations of hipster culture in those articles and to find out, whether those reproduced manifestations overlap with identified categories from the theoretical part, or whether they differ from each other. The main purpose of this analysis is then to find out what does it mean to be hipster according to VICE magazine contributors.
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Analysis of the Internet Discussions According to Goffman's Theory of Focused Interaction
Čížková, Anna ; Hájek, Martin (advisor) ; Tremčinský, Martin (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the phenomenon of internet discussions on Facebook. The starting theoretical framework for the thesis is Erving Goffman's focused interaction and the principles of fun in games theory in terms of focused interaction. The aim of this study is to find out whether the elements of fun occur in the researched environment and what form they take up. Research units were specified as discussions on the official Facebook websites of chosen online news portals. These discussions are embodied in the comments section below shared political article. 70 research units were subjected to conversation analysis. The results of the analysis show that most of the examined internet discussions can be determined as focused interaction and the elements of the game are strongly present in the discussions. The real situation in a virtual environment, however, differs from the way game elements manifest themselves in the face-to-face interaction, in which Goffman defined the concept of focused interaction originally. This work also deals with the situation of the participants leaving the interaction. In this case, it appeared that not all the characteristics of the internet discussions can be interpreted in terms of fun in games theory. Some aspects of the interaction in a virtual environment...
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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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Agent-Based Modelling and Its Use in Sociology
Kudrnáčová, Michaela ; Soukup, Petr (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
Master thesis elaborates on agent-based modelling (ABM, computer simulation method) founded on the concept of analytical sociology and its use in empirical sociology. The use is demonstrated by creation of a model based on the principal of environmental sociology studying the influence of social factors on the environment. Thesis works with the empirical- theoretical concept New ecological paradigm (NEP) measuring the values and opinions on the environment. The origin of the paper was motivated by the absence of the projects combining the method of empirically calibrated agent-based modelling and sociological grounds, particularly in the Czech context, but also abroad. Based on the environmental module of Czech data ISSP 2010 and research question "How parameters of social network influence the willingness to sort waste?" model was created and analyzed. Relationship between both types of agents (sorting and not sorting waste during the whole simulation) and their neighbourhood was found. The higher the number of neighbours, the more agents with this particular type of behaviour. The likelihood of bond creation with long-distance agent at the expence of bond abolition with close neighbour was without any influence on the number of non/sorting agents. It seems the agents tend to replicate behaviour...
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Digitalization of the Body. how new technologies of self-tracking change Czech students' perception of health and well-being
Kudaieva, Yuliia ; Hrešanová, Ema (advisor) ; Hájek, Martin (referee)
The topic of the work is an impact of digital self-tracking technologies such as wearable fitness trackers and smartphone self-tracking applications on an individual. I used the methodology of semi-structured interviews, conducted with students engaged in self-tracking and comparative discourse analysis, when data received from the interviews were compared with healthy lifestyle discourse, partly manifested in the Czech internet media portals. The research question of "How self-trackers perceive the impact of the technology of self-tracking on their physical activities and lifestyle, respectively differentiated among themselves in terms of impact and usage of self-tracking technology, and to what extent they perceive it similarly to the way self- tracking is presented in Czech internet media portals?" was answered in the following way: the participants were categorized as 'engaged' and 'sportspeople' users, and their relation to discourse was not complete, although they were using the conceptualization of a healthy lifestyle proposed by media. In addition, the work proposes a theoretical overview of the issue of self-tracking and discusses the possibilities for future research.
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