Tomáš Samec
Biographic Data
| ID | 212967 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tomáš Samec |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tomáš |
| FAMILY NAME | Samec |
| SIGNATURE | SAMEC T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4378-0732 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Autoethnography of Affective Patterns of Emotional Attachment to Collaborative Housing (Research) in Times of Crises
Affects and emotions are receiving increased attention in housing studies as conceptual and empirical tools for comprehending housing situations and conditions. Through an autoethnography of collaborative housing in the Czech Republic and Tucson, Arizona, United States, involving participatory workshops, interviews and casual encounters, we document the relevance and ambivalent character of affects and emotions in housing (research). We contribut…
I'm not going to feed the bailiffs
The article uses the formal instrument of personal bankruptcy proceedings as an illuminating context to contribute to the scholarship on the lived experience of overindebtedness. Through the analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with heavy debtors living in Czechia, we provide a focus on debtor agency, exploring how bankruptcy interrelates with how struggling debtors narratively approach debt and construct their capacity to act. We show that first-h…
Dual responsibilization for housing in a housing crisis
Young adults in various countries are experiencing deteriorating access to homeownership and affordable rental housing. Whereas many studies have focused on the shift of responsibility for housing from the state to individuals related to a meritocratic ideology, only recently have certain studies identified the ambiguity and incoherence as a significant principle in housing discourses. Responding to these, we analysed 31 narrative interviews and …
Financialisation and contested citizenship of 'failed' debtors
Centring in attention on overindebted people, the article examines ‘practices of claim-making’ from the perspective of ‘failed citizens’, insiders who lose their rights within constitutional democracies because they are perceived as failing to live up to its norms. We examined these practices in the context of the Czech debt collection system, which gives excessive power to lending institutions and bailiffs and severely limits debtors’ social, la…
Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance
Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, …
Participatory Housing
In recent years, in response to the increasing unaffordability of housing, many European countries have seen a renewed interest in forms of housing that emphasise elements of cooperation, self-organisation, and sharing (of space, organisation, or ownership between households). In the Czech Republic, we recently identified the first efforts of some municipalities and smaller groups of citizens to transpose this 'housing innovation' into the Czech …
"The pace of "the good life
This article focuses on the topic of the young adult's cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult's relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent pr…
Normalization of Mortgages in Media Discourse through Affects and Instructions
Mortgage loans have become one of the main instruments of becoming a homeowner in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This article brings into question how media discourse performs the normalization of mortgages. An analysis of newspapers, websites and television news broadcasting transcripts from 1996 to 2016 in the Czech Republic identified a production of affects which can be articulated through specific emotions as the main mod…
Urban Political Ecology of Worth and Value
In this article, we propose to expand the field of urban political ecology (UPE) by analyzing the role of discourse in the production of urban nature. We exemplify our case by analyzing media discourses and exploring discursive modes of justification and hierarchies of worth mobilized in socialist and postsocialist struggles over allotments in what is now the Czech Republic. We unravel particular discursive strategies and arguments used to depoli…
Who actually decides? Parental influence on the housing tenure choice of their children
We focus on the role of within-family socialisation and the relationship between socialisation and resource transfers in the intergenerational transmission of housing preferences, the formation of familial housing attitudes and thus the reproduction of a normative housing tenure ladder across generations in Czech society. We show that resource transfers and the within-family socialisation of housing preferences, including preferences concerning h…
Performing housing debt attachments
This article contributes to the understanding of how first-time buyers and their parents form attachments to housing debt. Interviews, carried out in the Czech Republic, with 40 first-time homebuyers and 10 with their parents were used to identify multiple layers of debt performativity. These layers consist of statements expressing moral evaluations and emotions; calculative and cognitive devices; and references to practices. Two arguments are ad…
Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society
The article examines how notions of thrift, saving, and frugality were present and active in the state-socialist discourses of economic behaviour and what meaning these notions carried. The research is based on three kinds of data: the official state-socialist public discourse of economic behaviour as presented in transcripts of parliamentary speeches, household guides and manuals, and eyewitness accounts of the state-socialist era recollected in…
Watch out for politics’
The manner in which mass loyalty in socialist and other post-totalitarian societies is maintained is still a matter of discussion. To contribute to the debate this article studies strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism as described in 60 oral history narratives of three groups of narrators (communist functionaries, dissidents and ordinary people). Drawing on a modified version of Hirsch's exit–voice–loyalty model, the study reveals an i…
Who actually decides? Parental influence on the housing tenure choice of their children
We focus on the role of within-family socialisation and the relationship between socialisation and resource transfers in the intergenerational transmission of housing preferences, the formation of familial housing attitudes and thus the reproduction of a normative housing tenure ladder across generations in Czech society. We show that resource transfers and the within-family socialisation of housing preferences, including preferences concerning h…
Performing housing debt attachments
This article contributes to the understanding of how first-time buyers and their parents form attachments to housing debt. Interviews, carried out in the Czech Republic, with 40 first-time homebuyers and 10 with their parents were used to identify multiple layers of debt performativity. These layers consist of statements expressing moral evaluations and emotions; calculative and cognitive devices; and references to practices. Two arguments are ad…
Normalization of Mortgages in Media Discourse through Affects and Instructions
Mortgage loans have become one of the main instruments of becoming a homeowner in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This article brings into question how media discourse performs the normalization of mortgages. An analysis of newspapers, websites and television news broadcasting transcripts from 1996 to 2016 in the Czech Republic identified a production of affects which can be articulated through specific emotions as the main mod…
"The pace of "the good life
This article focuses on the topic of the young adult's cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult's relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent pr…
Urban Political Ecology of Worth and Value
In this article, we propose to expand the field of urban political ecology (UPE) by analyzing the role of discourse in the production of urban nature. We exemplify our case by analyzing media discourses and exploring discursive modes of justification and hierarchies of worth mobilized in socialist and postsocialist struggles over allotments in what is now the Czech Republic. We unravel particular discursive strategies and arguments used to depoli…
Dual responsibilization for housing in a housing crisis
Young adults in various countries are experiencing deteriorating access to homeownership and affordable rental housing. Whereas many studies have focused on the shift of responsibility for housing from the state to individuals related to a meritocratic ideology, only recently have certain studies identified the ambiguity and incoherence as a significant principle in housing discourses. Responding to these, we analysed 31 narrative interviews and …
Participatory Housing
In recent years, in response to the increasing unaffordability of housing, many European countries have seen a renewed interest in forms of housing that emphasise elements of cooperation, self-organisation, and sharing (of space, organisation, or ownership between households). In the Czech Republic, we recently identified the first efforts of some municipalities and smaller groups of citizens to transpose this 'housing innovation' into the Czech …
I'm not going to feed the bailiffs
The article uses the formal instrument of personal bankruptcy proceedings as an illuminating context to contribute to the scholarship on the lived experience of overindebtedness. Through the analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with heavy debtors living in Czechia, we provide a focus on debtor agency, exploring how bankruptcy interrelates with how struggling debtors narratively approach debt and construct their capacity to act. We show that first-h…
Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance
Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, …
Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society
The article examines how notions of thrift, saving, and frugality were present and active in the state-socialist discourses of economic behaviour and what meaning these notions carried. The research is based on three kinds of data: the official state-socialist public discourse of economic behaviour as presented in transcripts of parliamentary speeches, household guides and manuals, and eyewitness accounts of the state-socialist era recollected in…
Watch out for politics’
The manner in which mass loyalty in socialist and other post-totalitarian societies is maintained is still a matter of discussion. To contribute to the debate this article studies strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism as described in 60 oral history narratives of three groups of narrators (communist functionaries, dissidents and ordinary people). Drawing on a modified version of Hirsch's exit–voice–loyalty model, the study reveals an i…
Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society
The article examines how notions of thrift, saving, and frugality were present and active in the state-socialist discourses of economic behaviour and what meaning these notions carried. The research is based on three kinds of data: the official state-socialist public discourse of economic behaviour as presented in transcripts of parliamentary speeches, household guides and manuals, and eyewitness accounts of the state-socialist era recollected in…
Urban Political Ecology of Worth and Value
In this article, we propose to expand the field of urban political ecology (UPE) by analyzing the role of discourse in the production of urban nature. We exemplify our case by analyzing media discourses and exploring discursive modes of justification and hierarchies of worth mobilized in socialist and postsocialist struggles over allotments in what is now the Czech Republic. We unravel particular discursive strategies and arguments used to depoli…
Who actually decides? Parental influence on the housing tenure choice of their children
We focus on the role of within-family socialisation and the relationship between socialisation and resource transfers in the intergenerational transmission of housing preferences, the formation of familial housing attitudes and thus the reproduction of a normative housing tenure ladder across generations in Czech society. We show that resource transfers and the within-family socialisation of housing preferences, including preferences concerning h…
Performing housing debt attachments
This article contributes to the understanding of how first-time buyers and their parents form attachments to housing debt. Interviews, carried out in the Czech Republic, with 40 first-time homebuyers and 10 with their parents were used to identify multiple layers of debt performativity. These layers consist of statements expressing moral evaluations and emotions; calculative and cognitive devices; and references to practices. Two arguments are ad…
Normalization of Mortgages in Media Discourse through Affects and Instructions
Mortgage loans have become one of the main instruments of becoming a homeowner in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). This article brings into question how media discourse performs the normalization of mortgages. An analysis of newspapers, websites and television news broadcasting transcripts from 1996 to 2016 in the Czech Republic identified a production of affects which can be articulated through specific emotions as the main mod…
"The pace of "the good life
This article focuses on the topic of the young adult's cleft habitus influenced by a housing affordability crisis in the Czech Republic and examines how this situation affects the young adult's relation to the imagination of a temporally structured life course and synchronization of life spheres (housing, family, and work). This article is based on qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the four cities most affected by the house and rent pr…
Protect or punish debtors? Policymaker discourse on the state’s role in personal debt governance
Personal debt is a device increasing one’s agency but embedded within moral and legal frameworks that constructs people as individualised financial subjects. This article aims to enrich research on the state role in (subject) financialisation through a focus on personal debt governance modes as constructed in policymaker discourse on the state role in personal debt regulation. Our argument is contextualised in the Czech Republic, where, in 2021, …
Participatory Housing
In recent years, in response to the increasing unaffordability of housing, many European countries have seen a renewed interest in forms of housing that emphasise elements of cooperation, self-organisation, and sharing (of space, organisation, or ownership between households). In the Czech Republic, we recently identified the first efforts of some municipalities and smaller groups of citizens to transpose this 'housing innovation' into the Czech …
Dual responsibilization for housing in a housing crisis
Young adults in various countries are experiencing deteriorating access to homeownership and affordable rental housing. Whereas many studies have focused on the shift of responsibility for housing from the state to individuals related to a meritocratic ideology, only recently have certain studies identified the ambiguity and incoherence as a significant principle in housing discourses. Responding to these, we analysed 31 narrative interviews and …
Financialisation and contested citizenship of 'failed' debtors
Centring in attention on overindebted people, the article examines ‘practices of claim-making’ from the perspective of ‘failed citizens’, insiders who lose their rights within constitutional democracies because they are perceived as failing to live up to its norms. We examined these practices in the context of the Czech debt collection system, which gives excessive power to lending institutions and bailiffs and severely limits debtors’ social, la…
I'm not going to feed the bailiffs
The article uses the formal instrument of personal bankruptcy proceedings as an illuminating context to contribute to the scholarship on the lived experience of overindebtedness. Through the analysis of 29 in-depth interviews with heavy debtors living in Czechia, we provide a focus on debtor agency, exploring how bankruptcy interrelates with how struggling debtors narratively approach debt and construct their capacity to act. We show that first-h…
Autoethnography of Affective Patterns of Emotional Attachment to Collaborative Housing (Research) in Times of Crises
Affects and emotions are receiving increased attention in housing studies as conceptual and empirical tools for comprehending housing situations and conditions. Through an autoethnography of collaborative housing in the Czech Republic and Tucson, Arizona, United States, involving participatory workshops, interviews and casual encounters, we document the relevance and ambivalent character of affects and emotions in housing (research). We contribut…
Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Czech (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Social science (5 works) · Finance (4 works)