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Butterflies
Laube, Lukáš ; Skupnik, Jaroslav (advisor) ; Vrhel, František (referee)
The present paper is concerned with male prostitutes, whom the author calls "butterflies". Its aim is to portray this groups' everyday reality and life on the streets, however, the name of the city and their specific meeting points are to remain unrevealed. According to their age, "butterflies" can be divided into three groups, the oldest ending at the age of thirty, when "butterflies" become literally unsellable. The social origin of "butterflies" consists of several factors which are the cause of their ending up on the streets and selling their bodies. This "business" is a predominantly seasonal issue, since the number of "butterflies" severely increases during the summer months. As for their ethnic origin we can clearly conclude that above 50 % of the people earning their living as male prostitutes are ethnic Romas. The majority of "butterflies" are heterosexually oriented. It is important to understand that their behavior can be completely explained by financial motivations, that is, they are merely trying to survive on the streets by any means possible. A unanimous community among "butterflies" is non-existent, instead, they form systems of alliances, which occasionally cooperate. Their lack of self-reflection implies that they are often unable or unwilling to cope with their situation and pretend to...
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Particals in moder vietmese language
Slavická, Binh ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Vasiljev, Ivo (referee) ; Strašáková, Mária (referee)
This doctoral thesis is concerned with particles in modern Vietnamese. Although Vietnamese particles form a small group of synsemantic words, they play a very important role in expressing the attitude of the speaker to the hearer/listener and to the message content as well as expressing grammatical and modal relationships within the sentence. The group includes particles positioned at the end of the sentence, particles appearing before a word as well as at the beginning of a phrase or a sentence. Despite their important function, particles in Vietnamese still are a scarcely explored topic. Particles have been explored usually as part of grammar books; so far, there are only few monographs on the topic of particles. Almost all works deal with a small number of particles and focus especially on those appearing at the end of the sentence. This work is concerned with particles at the end of the sentence as well as particles preceding a word, a phrase, or a sentence. It examines whether particles in Vietnamese are a part of speech at all; it sets forth criteria for classification of particles; it performs their analysis based on actual situations where they appear and describes their semantic characteristics; furthermore, it offers a chart of particles including their possible combinations. Besides, the...
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Aspects of Reflecting the Devil in Ancient Iranian Mythology
Zaicová, Darina ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Čierniková, Beáta (referee) ; Šalanda, Bohuslav (referee)
The mythological form creates syntactic symbolic categories within it's own unique functional principles according to the limits of the human mind to create mental representations. But mythological symbols exists far beyond their metaphoric reflection, they are functional categories, involving the ontological, cognitive, semiotic and a narrative level. The mythological figure of the devil is determined by it's function in the story, it exists always in opposition. In Iranian Mazdaism it stays for the opponent of the supreme god and playing a role as an intertextual item, the devil several times metamorphoses itself on the narrative level. And as a cultural item the mythological devil can be seen as structural link in the structure of the culture. Keywords Mental representation, sign, symbolic form, oponent, mazdaism, structuralism
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The Chams: language and cultural implications
Hlavatá, Lucie ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Lomová, Olga (referee) ; Liščák, Vladimír (referee)
This work deals with the lingual and resulting cultural problems of the Cham minority ethnic living in central and southern Vietnam. Between the 2nd and 15th centuries, the Cham people had created their own hinduized state with an original culture in this area. We consider the Cham language the crucial problem for finding the identity and the integration of this ethnic into the contemporary multiethnic society in Vietnam, as well as in greater scope, in the whole region of South-East Asia. The work is divided into two basic parts: the first part considers the characteristics of the Cham language, where our attention is focused especially on the Cham dialects and typological classification. The second part addresses the contemporary position of the Cham language in Vietnam, the official and true approach to these problems, the bilingual Cham names and the Cham literary traditions. The interest in Cham language dates from about mid-19th century. After being first described by John Crawfurd, it has been the concern of the French linguists from EFEO for a long time. On account of these stated investigations, we mention in this work the genealogical classification of the Cham language. We had paid great attention to the Cham dialects, especially in relation to religious problems. ...
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Comparison of Spengler's and Kroeber's Visions of Culture.
Hájek, Daniel ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Korecká, Zuzana (referee)
The thesis compares the concepts of culture of German historian Oswald Spengler and American anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber. Both authors shared interest in comparative study of civilizations and similar approaches to it, based on an assumption, that culture is a distinct level of reality, nonreductible to its parts, but on the contrary controlling them. This conception is sometimes refered to as superorganic. Each of the scholars compared here hit upon the idea by other ways, hence it carries some different implications for them. The concepts and related methods are analyzed in this work with focus on revealing their assumptions. The explicit comparison is made in the end of the work. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
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Death and the burial rites in the Murasaki Shikibu's novel benji monogatari
Heldenburg, Olga ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Nymburská, Dita (referee) ; Tirala, Martin (referee)
The subject of this dissertation is funeral rites in the Murasaki Shikibu's novel, The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari). The analysis of the text seeks to explore the author's depiction of the end of life, the afterlife, communication with spirits or souls of dead and to summarize the notes and descriptions of the proceedings of funeral rituals including 'before burial' and memorial ceremonies. The purpose of this dissertation is to create an overview of funeral rituals and ideas of death described in the text of Genji Monogatari. The Tale of Genji is considered a document which reflects contemporary thinking and can therefore be relied on for a study of funeral and memorial rituals. The main method used to develop the topic is a detailed analysis of theoretical, practical and aesthetic aspects of death described in the Genji Monogatari novel. The ideas of the Heian Court about death and the afterlife were mainly affecting the cult of ancestors, Shinto, Taoism, Buddhism and Shamanism, which also participated in the creation of the funeral cult. Ideas of the afterlife were also very diverse. The world of the living and the world of the dead, in the concept of old Japanese, were not strictly divided and spirits had access to all spheres of life. Communication with spirits of the living and the souls...
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Jago and preman - controversial heroes of Indonesian history
Petrů, Tomáš ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Šalanda, Bohuslav (referee) ; Dubovská, Zorica (referee)
The dissertation deals with the historical development of banditry and gangsterism in Indonesia against the background of its relationship with the ruling elite. The author argues that bandits, called jago, or modern gangsters, known as preman, represented the basic pillar of power of all ruling regimes in Java from the classical Javanese kingdoms and the 163 Netherlands East Indies' colonial state to the Suharto's New Order. This pattern changed, however, with the onset of decentralisation and democratization of Indonesian politics - thugs for hire ceased to be agents of state and became a power tool of political parties and other competing interest groups. The author also shows that the regimes tried to eliminate the thugs' criminal activities by integrating them into their respective repressive systems. The general consequence of these intergrational attempts was criminalization of security forces and the state administration. The author further proves the existence of a direct historical and cultural connection between the jago and the preman. These controversial figures also share, despite a substantial time span, three essential features: cooperation with the patron on an ambivalent basis; criminal activities on the side outside this relationship, which secured profit for the elite in return for...
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Ethnology and historical anthropology
Náhlovský, Michal ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Skupnik, Jaroslav (referee)
Historical anthropology as a relatively independent science discipline has been found quite not a long time ago. However, its foundations can be observed much farther away to the past. One of the most important moments there was an application of the anthropological procedures onto historical research. Nevertheless, Historical anthropology is still pursued by historians rather than anthropologists. This work (studies) is interested in how Ethnology as an anthropological discipline may be of assistance to the Historical anthropology. It is trying to evaluate previous procedures in Historical anthropology which should now on result from an ethnological perspective.
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Iranian Diaspora in the United States
Havlů, Veronika ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Veselý, Rudolf (referee) ; Šatava, Leoš (referee)
This dissertation seeks to explore the social reality of Iranians living in the United States. The main objective is to find out how Iranians (Iranian Americans) maintain, construct and perceive their Iranian identity and to identify factors that could intervene in this process. Another aim is to examine intra-diasporic social relations, social interactions with American society and stance towards Iran. To fulfill the purpose of this dissertation, a qualitative research method was applied. The selected qualitative data consisted of thirty-one in-depth interviews with Iranians in New York City and Los Angeles. The results of the research indicated a strong sense of Iranian pride among all respondents, regardless their religious, inner ethnic or generational affiliation. This pride stems from ancient Iranian cultural heritage (and from Pahlavi era that adopted ancient symbolism into its ideological repertoire) and is still kept alive through pre-Islamic symbols and religiously indifferent traditions. It is obvious that the "pure Iranian identity" belongs to the first generation Iranians only, while the 1.5 and second generations, in their self-concept, proved to be rather hyphenated or torn between three spaces (typically young Iranian Jews). Research revealed their identity is oftentimes chosen,...
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Forms and mechanisms of Romas community marginalisation in the Estearn Slovakia
Mušinka, Alexander ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Skupnik, Jaroslav (referee) ; Uherek, Zdeněk (referee)
In my work I focus on the ways and mechanisms of marginalisation of Romas, especially from the viewpoint of habitation. From the territorial viewpoint, the work is based on data from the Presov Region in the Slovak Republic. This work monitors the issue at three levels. The first level is a general level, where I present the conditions of Romas in the Presov Region from the territorial viewpoint. I point out at territorial and spatial distribution of Roma communities in the region. The prior goal is to monitor the extent and variabilites of the marginalisation, i.e. where are Roma communities located in the region and whether they are integrated, separated or segregated communities. The second level is monitoring efforts for integration of the Roma community to the majority society, in the form of analyses of four national programmes where I indicated their levels of success/failure. The third level is a presentation of selected forms and mechanisms applied by the majority society to marginalise Romas in the field of habitation. I have performed monitoring of this aspect in selected locations of the Presov District, in the form of case studies. The first part of the work has been compiled on the basis of data obtained during performance of the overview of Roma communities in the Presov Region, which was...
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