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A comparison of selected anthropological theories in view of their pragmatic value
Hájek, Daniel ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Jakoubek, Marek (referee)
The study deals with the problem of applicability of two anthropological theories, structural functionalism and interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. By applicability is meant what concrete difference using of one or the other theory brings about in ethnography. Each of the theories is at first thoroughly examined with emphasis on its possible aims, assumptions, and consequences for an ethnographer. Then each theory is put to test in examination of one particular ethnography associated with the theory. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer serves as an instance of structural functionalism. Clifford Geertz's Negara as an example of interpretative analysis. Structural functionalism is shown to provide an ethnographer with a much more definite guidance which contributes to better possibilities of verification and comparability of the results than interpretive anthropology. Apart from the main subject, the study is concerned with more general questions, especially related to non-existence of a paradigm in anthropology and some of its causes.
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A comparison of selected anthropological theories in view of their pragmatic value
Hájek, Daniel ; Vrhel, František (advisor) ; Jakoubek, Marek (referee)
The study deals with the problem of applicability of two anthropological theories, structural functionalism and interpretive anthropology of Clifford Geertz. By applicability is meant what concrete difference using of one or the other theory brings about in ethnography. Each of the theories is at first thoroughly examined with emphasis on its possible aims, assumptions, and consequences for an ethnographer. Then each theory is put to test in examination of one particular ethnography associated with the theory. Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer serves as an instance of structural functionalism. Clifford Geertz's Negara as an example of interpretative analysis. Structural functionalism is shown to provide an ethnographer with a much more definite guidance which contributes to better possibilities of verification and comparability of the results than interpretive anthropology. Apart from the main subject, the study is concerned with more general questions, especially related to non-existence of a paradigm in anthropology and some of its causes.
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Written Voice: Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855) and Miller's Tropic of Cancer
Skovajsa, Ondřej ; Vojvodík, Josef (advisor) ; Bílek, Petr (referee) ; Pokorný, Martin (referee)
The PhD. dissertation Written Voice examines how Walt Whitman and Henry Miller through books, confined textual products of modernity, strive to awaken the reader to a more perceptive and courageous life, provided that the reader is willing to suspend hermeneutics of suspicion and approach Leaves of Grass and Tropic of Cancer with hermeneutics of hunger. This is examined from linguistic, anthropological and theological vantage point of oral theory (M. Jousse, M. Parry, A. Lord, W. Ong, E. Havelock, J. Assmann, D. Abram, C. Geertz, T. Pettitt, J. Nohrnberg, D. Sölle, etc.). This work thus compares Leaves (1855) and Tropic of Cancer examining their paratextual, stylistic features, their genesis, the phenomenology of their I's, their ethos and story across the compositions. By "voluntary" usage of means of oral mnemonics such as parallelism/bilateralism (Jousse) - along with present tense, imitatio Christi and pedagogical usage of obscenity - both authors in their compositions attack the textual modern discourse, the posteriority, nostalgia and confinement of literature, restore the body, and aim for futurality of biblical kinetics. It is the reader's task, then, to hermeneutically resurrect the dead printed words of the compositions into their own "flesh" and action. The third part of the thesis...
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: The Interpretation of Funeral Rituals in Czechoslovakia in 1950s
Tesař, Jan ; Randák, Jan (advisor) ; Kopeček, Michal (referee)
(in English) The main topic of this thesis is both analysis and interpretation of the relationship between funeral rites, political power and society. Funeral rites are understood as a complex of performative, symbolic social acts, which are themselves comprised of various distinctive phases and signs. The meaning of these acts and signs is important because it can change the features and practice of the collective it is assigned to. The main purpose of this thesis is not only to perform a thick description of different kinds of communist funeral rite in the given time period but to interprate it in the wider social and cultural context as well. The concept of political religion as a heuristic tool was used in the thesis in order to distinguish an ambivalent nature of communist ideology which manifested itself in funeral rites. Funeral rites are analyzed as models for human behavior, which represent key values and norms of communist ideology. At the same time, funeral rites are analyzed as forms of cultural management. That is the reason, why are put under scrutiny not only the rites which are significant for society as a whole but also the funeral rites of individual actors.
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