Martin Hájek
Biographic Data
| ID | 121475 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin Hájek |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin |
| FAMILY NAME | Hájek |
| SIGNATURE | HÁJEK M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Charles University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9213-6404 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 42 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Sustainable Tilting at Windmills: The Management of Failure in Project-Based Czech Environmental Education
The use of institutionalised and embodied cultural capital in platform-mediated care work
Cultural capital (CC) is often seen as losing relevance in platform work, where job distribution depends on algorithmic rankings and ratings. This study shows that care platform workers actively engage in cultural labour to leverage their CC and improve their chances of securing jobs. The platform itself creates opportunities for such valorisation, reflecting mutual demands for compatibility in intimate care services. Drawing on semi-structured i…
The neglected organisation of failure: Activities, infrastructures and subjectivities
The aim of this article is to explore a neglected issue - the organisation of failure in projects. The existing literature has primarily focused on explaining the causes, factors and circumstances that lead to failure, and how organisations account for and make sense of failure. However, this is only a partial explanation, particularly for organisations where decisions about project success and failure are routinely made. Drawing on a pragmatic a…
Negotiating Common Goals Among Diverse Stakeholders: An Ethnography of the Czech Environmental Education’s Organisational Field
The development of environmental education (EE) goals has rarely been problematised. To shed light on this process, we focused on EE in the Czech Republic. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a key role there, facilitating the process in coordination with government institutions, schools and for-profit companies. Drawing on three theoretical perspectives that explain the formation of organisational goals (consensus building, community of d…
Deserved. Economic memories after the fall of the Iron Curtain
The Well-Informed Critique of the Economy: A Study of Lay Economic Reasoning in Ukraine
This article provides insight into the lay economic reasoning process through a qualitative gamification-method study conducted in Ukraine. Rather than economically naive individuals, laypeople in the study present themselves as SchĂźtzean well-informed citizens who are aware of expert knowledge and capable of using a metapragmatic register of critique in the discussion of the economic reality at hand. The doxic elements of lay economic knowledge…
Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe
Making Public Shame Bearable and Entertaining: Ritualised Shaming in Reality Television
In modern liberal society, a person is considered a ‘sacred’ entity and any violation of their dignity should produce embarrassment not only on the side of the ashamed individual but in those co-present as well. In our research, we studied public shaming in reality television (RTV), a recent popular culture product, in order to understand the mechanism that transforms otherwise degrading shaming into popular entertainment. The analysis drew on th…
Uneasy Neoliberal Governance in a Low-Trust Society: Barriers to Responsibilisation in the Czech Republic
In our research, we examined how, if at all, a neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals is under way in the Czech Republic - a society characterised by low trust in its institutional system. Drawing on Giesler and Veresiu's model of three-step consumer responsibilisation, we carried out a qualitative analysis of data generated primarily through an originally designed card-matching game and individual interviews, further complemented with fiel…
Application of Agent-based Modelling for Estimation of Norm-based Dynamics of Housing Systems
Housing systems are mainly defined by the housing tenure structure in a particular society. We assume that choice of housing tenure is determined by economic factors, the life course and social interactions that reproduce and/or weaken the social norm that deems one housing tenure – homeownership – is superior to another housing tenure – renting. By applying agent-based modelling, we show that strong adherence to the social norm (and the transmis…
Reasoning behind choices: Rationality and social norms in the housing market behaviour of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic
The main objective of this paper is to draw attention to the influence of social norms on housing market behaviour. The research is based on an in-depth qualitative study of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic. We found systemic deviations from economically rational behaviour (as defined by mainstream housing economic theory) that stem from the influence of a dominant housing social norm about what constitutes the ‘right’ housing tenure. We s…
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…
Introduction to the Special Section: Discourses of Economic Behaviour in Times of Instability
Gendered Biographies: The Czech State-Socialist Gender Order in Oral History Interviews
A large collection of autobiographical life story material available in oral-history data is used to examine how women and men of different socio-political groups (workers, intelligentsia, dissidents, and communist functionaries) narrate their lives in the time of state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Of particular interest is what these narratives imply for an understanding of the state-socialist gender order. The analysis combines quantitative (the f…
Watch out for politics’: Exit, voice and other strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism
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…
The Problem of Relevance in Thematically Oriented Biographical Interview: The Case of Oral History Interviews
The thematically oriented biographical interview (TOBI) is a research tool used frequently in contemporary qualitative research. Compared to other interviewing techniques, its main advantage is its combination of a thematic focus and sensitivity to the perspective of the interviewee. The authors demonstrate that TOBI is made up of several constituents: first, it is a speech infrastructure (comprising a conversational and a narrative component), a…
Interpretative cooperation with biographical texts: A semiotic approach to analyzing collective memory
This article reports on research into the little-known process of how documents of memory, in this case biographical narratives of life under the communist regime, are received by members of the community of memory. The research is based on an experiment in which three generations of family members (two generations of eyewitnesses of communism and one postcommunist generation) were asked to infer the political identity of narrators from very shor…
MtDNA haplotype identification of aurochs remains originating from the Czech Republic (Central Europe)
This study presents the results of the analysis of mtDNA bone samples morphologically determined to be aurochs (Bos primigenius) from four various archaeological finds in the Czech Republic (Central Europe). The results from two of them - the Pleistocene sample from Praha-Řeporyje and the Neolithic sample from Vedrovice - probably represent contamination by modern DNA. Sequences identified in the Eneolithic Kutná Hora-Denemark site (~5 thousand B…
Narrative Analysis in Sociological Research: Main Approaches and a Unifying Frame
Against the backdrop of the current popularity of the concept of narrative in the social sciences the authors analyse the uses of narrative analysis in empirical social research and provide a unifying frame based on Paul Ricoeur's notion of narrative mimesis. To begin they situate 'narrative' in the context of the social research tradition. Using both a simple and an elaborated definition of narrative they outline the main approaches to narrative…
Dual Discursive Patterns in Czech Activists’ Internet Media Communication
This article studies the internet media communication of 12 organizations representing Czech trade union, feminist, human rights and environmental movements. Drawing on Foucault’s concept that discourse has a formative influence resulting in a specific system of statement allocation, the study investigates the discursive characteristics of activists’ communication. The research is methodologically based on a quantitative exploration of co-occurre…
Out of Arabia—The settlement of Island Soqotra as revealed by mitochondrial and Y chromosome genetic diversity
The Soqotra archipelago is one of the most isolated landmasses in the world, situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden between the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia. The main island of Soqotra lies not far from the proposed southern migration route of anatomically modern humans out of Africa ∼60,000 years ago (kya), suggesting the island may harbor traces of that first dispersal. Nothing is known about the timing and origin of the first Soqotri …
Mitochondrial DNA and craniofacial covariability of Chad Basin females indicate past population events
The Chad Basin lies in the middle of the Sudanic African belt between the Sahara and the tropical rain forests. Its present-day settlement is a result of Holocene climatic changes and human immigrations from different parts of Africa. This study presents a statistical analysis of the relationships of physical features (stature and five main craniofacial measurements) and mitochondrial (mtDNA) haplogroup classifications in a sample of 282 adult in…
Regional differences in the distribution of the sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian mtDNA lineages in Yemen
Despite its key location for population movements out of and back into Africa, Yemen has not yet been sampled on a regional level for an investigation of sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian genetic contributions. In this study, we present mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data for regionally distinct Yemeni populations that reveal different distributions of mtDNA lineages. An extensive database of mtDNA sequences from North and East African, Midd…
Two cases of leprosy from Žatec (Bohemia), dated to the turn of the 12th century and confirmed by DNA analysis for Mycobacterium leprae
The 'Background' and 'Battlefield' in the Struggle for Justice: Text Analysis of Trade Union, Feminist, and Human Rights Media Communications
The study is a computer-assisted text analysis of corpora obtained from the web pages of nine volunteer, non-governmental organisations and interest groups. The analysis encompasses three areas of justice claims: trade unions (the relationship between employers and employees), feminism (the relationship between men and women), and human rights (the relationship between citizens, foreign nationals, and the state). The aim of the study, based on Fo…
MtDNA of Fulani Nomads and Their Genetic Relationships to Neighboring Sedentary Populations
Despite the large size of the contemporary nomadic Fulani population (roughly 13 million people), the genetic diversity and degree of differentiation of Fulanis compared to other sub-Saharan populations remain unknown. We sampled four Fulani nomad populations (n = 186) in three countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Chad, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso) and analyzed sequences of the first hypervariable segment of the mitochondrial DNA. Most of the haplotyp…
Regional differences in the distribution of the sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian mtDNA lineages in Yemen
Despite its key location for population movements out of and back into Africa, Yemen has not yet been sampled on a regional level for an investigation of sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian genetic contributions. In this study, we present mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data for regionally distinct Yemeni populations that reveal different distributions of mtDNA lineages. An extensive database of mtDNA sequences from North and East African, Midd…
Out of Arabia—The settlement of Island Soqotra as revealed by mitochondrial and Y chromosome genetic diversity
The Soqotra archipelago is one of the most isolated landmasses in the world, situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden between the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia. The main island of Soqotra lies not far from the proposed southern migration route of anatomically modern humans out of Africa ∼60,000 years ago (kya), suggesting the island may harbor traces of that first dispersal. Nothing is known about the timing and origin of the first Soqotri …
Reasoning behind choices: Rationality and social norms in the housing market behaviour of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic
The main objective of this paper is to draw attention to the influence of social norms on housing market behaviour. The research is based on an in-depth qualitative study of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic. We found systemic deviations from economically rational behaviour (as defined by mainstream housing economic theory) that stem from the influence of a dominant housing social norm about what constitutes the ‘right’ housing tenure. We s…
Application of Agent-based Modelling for Estimation of Norm-based Dynamics of Housing Systems
Housing systems are mainly defined by the housing tenure structure in a particular society. We assume that choice of housing tenure is determined by economic factors, the life course and social interactions that reproduce and/or weaken the social norm that deems one housing tenure – homeownership – is superior to another housing tenure – renting. By applying agent-based modelling, we show that strong adherence to the social norm (and the transmis…
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…
Gendered Biographies: The Czech State-Socialist Gender Order in Oral History Interviews
A large collection of autobiographical life story material available in oral-history data is used to examine how women and men of different socio-political groups (workers, intelligentsia, dissidents, and communist functionaries) narrate their lives in the time of state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Of particular interest is what these narratives imply for an understanding of the state-socialist gender order. The analysis combines quantitative (the f…
Narrative Analysis in Sociological Research: Main Approaches and a Unifying Frame
Against the backdrop of the current popularity of the concept of narrative in the social sciences the authors analyse the uses of narrative analysis in empirical social research and provide a unifying frame based on Paul Ricoeur's notion of narrative mimesis. To begin they situate 'narrative' in the context of the social research tradition. Using both a simple and an elaborated definition of narrative they outline the main approaches to narrative…
MtDNA sequences of Chadic-speaking populations from northern Cameroon suggest their affinities with eastern Africa
The observation that the Chadic group reveals some affinities to East Africans is extremely surprising giving the present-day geographical distance (around 2000 km) between them. These observations complement recent linguistic and archaeological findings, which consider the Chadic branch in the Afro-Asiatic phylum to be of eastern origin. A continuous, well-defined, geographic sampling strategy of the different genetic polymorphisms of the native…
Two cases of leprosy from Žatec (Bohemia), dated to the turn of the 12th century and confirmed by DNA analysis for Mycobacterium leprae
The 'Background' and 'Battlefield' in the Struggle for Justice: Text Analysis of Trade Union, Feminist, and Human Rights Media Communications
The study is a computer-assisted text analysis of corpora obtained from the web pages of nine volunteer, non-governmental organisations and interest groups. The analysis encompasses three areas of justice claims: trade unions (the relationship between employers and employees), feminism (the relationship between men and women), and human rights (the relationship between citizens, foreign nationals, and the state). The aim of the study, based on Fo…
MtDNA of Fulani Nomads and Their Genetic Relationships to Neighboring Sedentary Populations
Despite the large size of the contemporary nomadic Fulani population (roughly 13 million people), the genetic diversity and degree of differentiation of Fulanis compared to other sub-Saharan populations remain unknown. We sampled four Fulani nomad populations (n = 186) in three countries of sub-Saharan Africa (Chad, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso) and analyzed sequences of the first hypervariable segment of the mitochondrial DNA. Most of the haplotyp…
Mitochondrial DNA and craniofacial covariability of Chad Basin females indicate past population events
The Chad Basin lies in the middle of the Sudanic African belt between the Sahara and the tropical rain forests. Its present-day settlement is a result of Holocene climatic changes and human immigrations from different parts of Africa. This study presents a statistical analysis of the relationships of physical features (stature and five main craniofacial measurements) and mitochondrial (mtDNA) haplogroup classifications in a sample of 282 adult in…
Regional differences in the distribution of the sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian mtDNA lineages in Yemen
Despite its key location for population movements out of and back into Africa, Yemen has not yet been sampled on a regional level for an investigation of sub‐Saharan, West Eurasian, and South Asian genetic contributions. In this study, we present mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data for regionally distinct Yemeni populations that reveal different distributions of mtDNA lineages. An extensive database of mtDNA sequences from North and East African, Midd…
Out of Arabia—The settlement of Island Soqotra as revealed by mitochondrial and Y chromosome genetic diversity
The Soqotra archipelago is one of the most isolated landmasses in the world, situated at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden between the Horn of Africa and southern Arabia. The main island of Soqotra lies not far from the proposed southern migration route of anatomically modern humans out of Africa ∼60,000 years ago (kya), suggesting the island may harbor traces of that first dispersal. Nothing is known about the timing and origin of the first Soqotri …
Dual Discursive Patterns in Czech Activists’ Internet Media Communication
This article studies the internet media communication of 12 organizations representing Czech trade union, feminist, human rights and environmental movements. Drawing on Foucault’s concept that discourse has a formative influence resulting in a specific system of statement allocation, the study investigates the discursive characteristics of activists’ communication. The research is methodologically based on a quantitative exploration of co-occurre…
MtDNA haplotype identification of aurochs remains originating from the Czech Republic (Central Europe)
This study presents the results of the analysis of mtDNA bone samples morphologically determined to be aurochs (Bos primigenius) from four various archaeological finds in the Czech Republic (Central Europe). The results from two of them - the Pleistocene sample from Praha-Řeporyje and the Neolithic sample from Vedrovice - probably represent contamination by modern DNA. Sequences identified in the Eneolithic Kutná Hora-Denemark site (~5 thousand B…
Narrative Analysis in Sociological Research: Main Approaches and a Unifying Frame
Against the backdrop of the current popularity of the concept of narrative in the social sciences the authors analyse the uses of narrative analysis in empirical social research and provide a unifying frame based on Paul Ricoeur's notion of narrative mimesis. To begin they situate 'narrative' in the context of the social research tradition. Using both a simple and an elaborated definition of narrative they outline the main approaches to narrative…
Interpretative cooperation with biographical texts: A semiotic approach to analyzing collective memory
This article reports on research into the little-known process of how documents of memory, in this case biographical narratives of life under the communist regime, are received by members of the community of memory. The research is based on an experiment in which three generations of family members (two generations of eyewitnesses of communism and one postcommunist generation) were asked to infer the political identity of narrators from very shor…
Watch out for politics’: Exit, voice and other strategies of discontent in late Czech socialism
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…
The Problem of Relevance in Thematically Oriented Biographical Interview: The Case of Oral History Interviews
The thematically oriented biographical interview (TOBI) is a research tool used frequently in contemporary qualitative research. Compared to other interviewing techniques, its main advantage is its combination of a thematic focus and sensitivity to the perspective of the interviewee. The authors demonstrate that TOBI is made up of several constituents: first, it is a speech infrastructure (comprising a conversational and a narrative component), a…
Gendered Biographies: The Czech State-Socialist Gender Order in Oral History Interviews
A large collection of autobiographical life story material available in oral-history data is used to examine how women and men of different socio-political groups (workers, intelligentsia, dissidents, and communist functionaries) narrate their lives in the time of state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Of particular interest is what these narratives imply for an understanding of the state-socialist gender order. The analysis combines quantitative (the f…
Application of Agent-based Modelling for Estimation of Norm-based Dynamics of Housing Systems
Housing systems are mainly defined by the housing tenure structure in a particular society. We assume that choice of housing tenure is determined by economic factors, the life course and social interactions that reproduce and/or weaken the social norm that deems one housing tenure – homeownership – is superior to another housing tenure – renting. By applying agent-based modelling, we show that strong adherence to the social norm (and the transmis…
Reasoning behind choices: Rationality and social norms in the housing market behaviour of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic
The main objective of this paper is to draw attention to the influence of social norms on housing market behaviour. The research is based on an in-depth qualitative study of first-time buyers in the Czech Republic. We found systemic deviations from economically rational behaviour (as defined by mainstream housing economic theory) that stem from the influence of a dominant housing social norm about what constitutes the ‘right’ housing tenure. We s…
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…
Introduction to the Special Section: Discourses of Economic Behaviour in Times of Instability
Uneasy Neoliberal Governance in a Low-Trust Society: Barriers to Responsibilisation in the Czech Republic
In our research, we examined how, if at all, a neoliberal responsibilisation of individuals is under way in the Czech Republic - a society characterised by low trust in its institutional system. Drawing on Giesler and Veresiu's model of three-step consumer responsibilisation, we carried out a qualitative analysis of data generated primarily through an originally designed card-matching game and individual interviews, further complemented with fiel…
Mediated Shame of Class and Poverty Across Europe
Making Public Shame Bearable and Entertaining: Ritualised Shaming in Reality Television
In modern liberal society, a person is considered a ‘sacred’ entity and any violation of their dignity should produce embarrassment not only on the side of the ashamed individual but in those co-present as well. In our research, we studied public shaming in reality television (RTV), a recent popular culture product, in order to understand the mechanism that transforms otherwise degrading shaming into popular entertainment. The analysis drew on th…
Negotiating Common Goals Among Diverse Stakeholders: An Ethnography of the Czech Environmental Education’s Organisational Field
The development of environmental education (EE) goals has rarely been problematised. To shed light on this process, we focused on EE in the Czech Republic. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) play a key role there, facilitating the process in coordination with government institutions, schools and for-profit companies. Drawing on three theoretical perspectives that explain the formation of organisational goals (consensus building, community of d…
Deserved. Economic memories after the fall of the Iron Curtain
The Well-Informed Critique of the Economy: A Study of Lay Economic Reasoning in Ukraine
This article provides insight into the lay economic reasoning process through a qualitative gamification-method study conducted in Ukraine. Rather than economically naive individuals, laypeople in the study present themselves as SchĂźtzean well-informed citizens who are aware of expert knowledge and capable of using a metapragmatic register of critique in the discussion of the economic reality at hand. The doxic elements of lay economic knowledge…
Sustainable Tilting at Windmills: The Management of Failure in Project-Based Czech Environmental Education
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (11 works) · Czech (8 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Biology (7 works) · Demography (7 works) · Geography (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works)