Zdeněk R Nešpor
Biographic Data
| ID | 75048 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zdeněk R Nešpor |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zdeněk R |
| FAMILY NAME | Nešpor |
| SIGNATURE | NEŠPOR Z R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5047-5790 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Obřadní síně na židovských hřbitovech – výraz emancipace i asimilace českých, moravských a slezských židů
Od poloviny 19. století byly márnice na židovských hřbitovech nahrazovány honosnějšími obřadními síněmi. Autor systematicky zkoumá všech 131 obřadních síní postavených na území dnešní České republiky a ukazuje jejich charakteristiky a vývoj. Jejich výstavbu lze chápat jako výraz emancipace židovské menšiny, ale také jako projev její asimilace a přijetí pohřebních zvyků většinového obyvatelstva, což v průběhu 20. století dále zintenzivnilo. Nacist…
Ohrazení a brány židovských hřbitovů
Based on field research conducted between 2023 and 2025, the author documents the boundary walls and entrance gates of all 326 preserved Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Republic. The dominant type of enclosure consists of stone (and later stone-brick and brick) walls. Many of these were damaged during World War II and under the communist regime but have been repaired or newly rebuilt since the 1990s. Other types of fencing are marginal, typically …
Osudy českých, moravských a slezských židovských hřbitovů ve 20. století
The article presents a quantitative analysis of the development and basic characteristics of all Jewish cemeteries in the Czech Lands that existed after the First World War (399 sites) or were established during the “short” 20th century (15 sites). While in the interwar period older development tendencies continued largely uninterrupted and burying Jews outside their own cemeteries started, the periods of Nazi and Communist rule halted the develo…
Václav Matoušek – David Vávra – Martin Mlynarič – Jan Matoušek: ReKreace. Z historie a současnosti rekreačních vilových a vilochatových kolonií v okolí Prahy
Recenze knihy Václav Matoušek – David Vávra – Martin Mlynarič – Jan Matoušek: ReKreace. Z historie a současnosti rekreačních vilových a vilochatových kolonií v okolí Prahy
Recenzenti statí v roce 2024
Recenzenti statí v roce 2024
Juraj Buzalka: Postsedliaci. Slovenský ľudový protest
A review of the book by Zdeněk R. Nešpor
Československá sociologická společnost při ČSAV v zrcadle svých Zpráv (1964–69): (K 60. výročí České sociologické společnosti)
The Czechoslovak Sociological Society, which was founded sixty years ago in 1964, was an important player in the re-establishment of Czech (Czechoslovak) sociology in that era. The society gradually took over the academic management of the field and its international representation, commencing the application of democratic and meritocratic principles. Through its activities, it became both a pioneer and a witness of the Prague Spring. However, th…
Dvojí život historické antropologie: Interdisciplinární (ne)porozumění mezi historiky, sociology a sociálními antropology
Since 1989 modern western methodological approaches, including historical anthropology, have been adopted in Czech academic circles, both spontaneously (among historians) and in institutionalised form (the case of ethnology). Very often, however, historical anthropology has been taken up only as an external label that has not meant any real change in research methods. This has simply encouraged the replication of the formal and informal ties and …
Odešla silná a laskavá osobnost PhDr. Mirjam Moravcová, DrSc
Krátce před svými dvaadevadesátými narozeninami, 10. března 2023, nás navždy opustila legenda české etnologie a sociální antropologie Mirjam Moravcová. Dožít se tak vysokého věku je přitom krásné, dožít se jej v plné duševní svěžesti a s přiměřeným zvládáním tělesných neduhů je báječné, avšak smět až do konce svých dní i v akademické sféře dělat, co člověka těší, to je vpravdě úžasné. Silné osobnosti nadto blaží, řídí-li svůj život samy a mohou-l…
Povstání z pokleku: Pražské bohoslužby v šedesátých letech 20. století IV
The last part of academic edition of an exceptional source depicting (records from) observations of Prague Christian churches’ services in the mid-1960s, supplemented with a contextualizing introduction and historico-religious footnotes by the editor. The specificity of the material is that the original source takes the form of (commented) participatory observation, it is very open and at the same time it contains material from (almost) all exist…
Meziválečná americká sociologie v obrazech: Fotoalbum Otakara Machotky
The author presents fifteen photographs from the private album of Otakar Machotka (1899–1970), taken of prominent American sociologists and social scientists hailing from the interwar era. Machotka was one of the key personalities of Czech sociology in the given period, striving for its empiricization and internationalization, while at the same time he was an excellent expert on American and French sociology. He published a study on American soci…
Bez slávy i bez diskuse, aneb ordinace žen v českých církvích
Ordination of women as ministers is an important issue of gender equality and social stratification. The liberally-oriented non-Catholic Czech churches introduced the ordination of females rather early – the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in 1947, and the Protestant Church of the Czech Brethren in 1953. In both cases, however, these were quite problematic steps, and female members of the clergy were long handicapped in comparison to their male colle…
Povstání z pokleku: Pražské bohoslužby v šedesátých letech 20. století I
This text provides an academic edition of the exceptional source representing (records from) observations of services in Prague Christian churches in the mid-1960s, supplemented with a contextualizing introduction and historical-religious footnotes by the editor. The specificity of the mate¬rial is that the original source takes the form of (commented) participatory observation, it is very open, and at the same time, it contains material from (al…
The Czech(oslovak) model? Secular last rites in Central Europe under the communists and beyond
The popularity and character of secular last rites in Czechoslovakia were admired by many other Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe, at least in the 1950s and 1960s. The author questions this adulation through an analysis of the origins and development of secular funerals (and cremation) in the country, exposing its much earlier roots, misuse by the Communists and its dysfunctions following the fall of Communism. He maintains that t…
(Un)willing fellow or enemy: The public discourse on religion in Czechoslovakia in the first two decades of communist rule and the divergent responses of the churches
Cremation in modern Scotland: History, architecture and the law
Several prominent death scholars cooperated in this pioneering study of the history of cremation in Scotland. They acted in concert in an effort to illuminate the developing story of the ideology o
'If You Leave Me, You Will Die…' The Academic Trajectories of Otakar Machotka and other Émigré Czech Sociologists after February 1948
This article focuses on Czech sociologists who left Czechoslovakia immediately after the communist coup in February 1948 and their subsequent academic and personal fates in exile. Attention is devoted principally to Otakar Machotka (1899-1970), a prominent figure in both Czech political life and pre-Marxist Czech sociology with strong personal and methodological ties to the Chicago School; this article's research draws on his correspondence and o…
Batov 1940 - The First Empirically-Grounded Czech Research in the Sociology of Work
There is a forgotten chapter in (history of) the Czech sociology of work. In the early 1940s, an empirical study was conducted by Otakar Machotka among employees of the Bata company in Batov (today Otrokovice). One of the leading figures of early Czech sociology, Machotka saw the closure of Czech universities during the Second World War as an opportunity to carry out original empirical research devoted to the sociological analysis of the workforc…
Miloslav Petrusek and the Samizdat Sociologický obzor: (New) Insight into a Sociological Thinker
The late Miloslav Petrusek (1936-2012) was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of Czech sociology. He was one of a few sociologists who revived the discipline in the 1960s and was a talented organiser and a co-founder of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in the 1990s. He was also a gifted teacher. However, owing to his busy organisational role, extensive teaching activities, and the publishing ban and r…
The House of Technology in Pardubice: The 'Grey Zone' between Official and Dissident Sociology in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s
The Marxist-Leninist 'ideological supervision' of Czech sociology in the 1970s and 1980s led to the de facto academic impotence of 'official' institutions at universities and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. However, sociological inquiry and discussion found a home, at least temporarily, in various less regulated departmental, regional and technical institutes, which came to represent the 'grey zone' of contemporary Czech sociology, i.e. the…
Fifty Years of Czech Sociology of Religion in the Pages of Sociologický časopis
The fiftieth anniversary of SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis (since 2001 SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis / Czech Sociological Review) provides an ideal opportunity to discuss the presence and achievements of the sociology of religion in the most important Czech sociological journal and to contribute to the historical, theoretical, and methodological analysis of Czech sociology of religion itself. The author provides a summary of all the articles, reviews, and inf…
Olga Fejtová, „Já pevně věřím a vyznávám…“ Rekatolizace na Novém Městě pražském v době pobělohorské: Praha 2012, Scriptorium (Documenta Pragensia Monographia 28), 326 s
Recenze
Co chybí české (historické) vědě: Odpověď na "manifest" čtyř mladých historiků
Autor se ve své úvaze vymezuje vůči názorům, publikovaným v kritické úvaze PAVEL BALOUN, JAN GRUBER, JAN MAREŠ, VÍT STROBACH, O výuce historie za kapitalismu a o mluvících hlavách, Dějiny – teorie – kritika 8/2012, s. 121–144. Ve svém textu Z. R. Nešpor objasňuje především způsob fungování Grantové agentury ČR, vůči jehož hodnotícím mechanismům se autoři příspěvku vymezili. Spolu s tím se zamýšlí nad limity kritizovatelnosti vědecky ukotvených čl…
Sociologist Jan Mertl: Quisling or a Victim of Circumstances
The article analyses the life and academic contribution of one of the most prominent interwar Czech sociologists, Jan Mertl (1904-1978), whose studies in political sociology studies were highly innovative in his day, in both the Czech and the international context. Mertl was a follower of Max Weber and focused on the comparative historical-sociological analysis of political partisanship and party systems. He also devoted extensive study to change…
Sociologist/s between the Clerical Collar, the Swastika and the Red Star: Jaroslav Šíma in the History of Czech Sociology
The article analyses the life story and works of a significant, but today sadly almost unknown, Czech sociologist, Jaroslav Ĺ Ăma (1914-1955). It draws on all the published sources available on him as well as a large number of to date unknown and unexploited archive materials. Ĺ Ăma became a member of the somewhat "thin on the ground" national sociological academia of the interwar period and specialised in the sociology of sexuality, religion, …
Three-Quarters of a Century Ago: A Quantified Essay on Czech Sociological Journals in the Pre-Marxist Era and Today
This article focuses on Czech pre-Marxist sociological journals -Sociologická revue (established in 1930, published until 1940, and again in 1946-49) and Sociální problémy (established 1931, published 1931-1938/39 and 1947/48) -and compares how they functioned with the work of the contemporary Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review (analysed volumes 32 (1996) to 41 ( 2005)).Although the internal situation of the branch and its public eval…
Religion: An Unsolved Problem for the Modern Czech Nation
The Czech Republic is widely known as 'the least religious' country in the world and most Czechs are quite proud of that fact. The authors, however, challenge both of these characteristics. Czechs might better be considered unchurched than atheist, with various forms of modern New Age spirituality steadily gaining in popularity. Moreover, their reputation for irreligiosity is somewhat questionable, since it is most often based upon communist (and…
Religious Processes in Contemporary Czech Society
Regardless of the role religion plays in the contemporary world, and the fact that there has occurred a massive de-privatisation of religions and desecularisation of societies, in the Czech Republic the state of religion remains considerably understudied. This paper attempts to fill in this lack of knowledge. The subject is analysed with special regard to the values that are based on culture, symbolic representations and socio-economic institutio…
The Disappointed and Disgruntled: A Study of the Return in the 1990s of Czech Emigrants from Communist Era
Any in-depth research on Czech emigration to the West in the communist era, and on the return of these emigrants in the 1990s, has until now been almost nonexistent, although it could provide a deeper comprehension of present Czech society and its cultural values. The article provides a strong theoretical basis for this kind of study, which starts out from P. Berger's and T. Luckmann's theory of socialisation, and compares it with the socio-econo…
Sociologist Jan Mertl: Quisling or a Victim of Circumstances
The article analyses the life and academic contribution of one of the most prominent interwar Czech sociologists, Jan Mertl (1904-1978), whose studies in political sociology studies were highly innovative in his day, in both the Czech and the international context. Mertl was a follower of Max Weber and focused on the comparative historical-sociological analysis of political partisanship and party systems. He also devoted extensive study to change…
Batov 1940 - The First Empirically-Grounded Czech Research in the Sociology of Work
There is a forgotten chapter in (history of) the Czech sociology of work. In the early 1940s, an empirical study was conducted by Otakar Machotka among employees of the Bata company in Batov (today Otrokovice). One of the leading figures of early Czech sociology, Machotka saw the closure of Czech universities during the Second World War as an opportunity to carry out original empirical research devoted to the sociological analysis of the workforc…
The House of Technology in Pardubice: The 'Grey Zone' between Official and Dissident Sociology in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s
The Marxist-Leninist 'ideological supervision' of Czech sociology in the 1970s and 1980s led to the de facto academic impotence of 'official' institutions at universities and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. However, sociological inquiry and discussion found a home, at least temporarily, in various less regulated departmental, regional and technical institutes, which came to represent the 'grey zone' of contemporary Czech sociology, i.e. the…
Fifty Years of Czech Sociology of Religion in the Pages of Sociologický časopis
The fiftieth anniversary of SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis (since 2001 SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis / Czech Sociological Review) provides an ideal opportunity to discuss the presence and achievements of the sociology of religion in the most important Czech sociological journal and to contribute to the historical, theoretical, and methodological analysis of Czech sociology of religion itself. The author provides a summary of all the articles, reviews, and inf…
Three European Sociologies of Religion: Beyond the Usual Agenda of the Discipline
The contemporary boom in the popularity of religion(s) and religiosity has led to new interest in their sociological study that has returned the socio logy of religion to the heart of sociological research. In secular Europe alone, three new overviews of the discipline have appeared in 2006 and 2007, written by Grace Davie, I. Furseth and P. Repstad, and Z. R. Nepor and D. Lun, all of which attempt to go beyond the traditional agenda of the disci…
The Son Has Ploughed', But a Foreign Son. Five Case Studies on Transformation Strategies in Czech Agriculture after 1989
European agriculture has recently undergone important changes con-nected with the reorientation of EU policy towards regional, recreational, and land-use subsidies, and owing to the internal divergence in agriculture itself, which has led to large ‘industrial ’ farming companies on the one hand and small, ecological farms on the other. During the period of transformation, the Czech agricultural sector has been forced to confront these changes and…
The Re-emigration of Czech Western Emigrants in the 1990s from the Perspective of Economic Sociology
In this article the author discusses qualitative economic sociology and its connections to social-constructionist sociology of knowledge, cultural institutions and economic culture, and he applies this theoretical background to his survey on Czech Western re-emigrants in the 1990s and their perceptions of contemporary Czech society, economic-cultural institutions, and business/entrepreneurial behaviour. He concludes that fundamental differences b…
Two Traditions of Czech Sociology of Religion
Regardless of the role religion plays in the world today, i.e. despite the significant de-privatisation of faith in the socio-cultural space and in politics, contemporary Czech sociology of religion is in rather poor shape. The author presents a number of factors to explain this, including the legacy of the communist regime, and low levels of church attendance in the Czech Republic, the latter having been erroneously interpreted as non-religiosit…
Czech Folk Music in the 1960s-80s from the Point of View of the Sociology of Religion
The article provides an in-depth functional analysis of Czech folk music from the 1960s to the 1980s from the viewpoint of the sociology of religion. In this period folk music played an important ideological and socio-political role in Czechoslovakia due to the values it embodied which made it strongly critical of the communist regime. The author attempts to explain that a significant part of these values were of religious (usually Christian, but…
The Issue of the Subjective Justification of Actions in the Works of Max Weber, Clifford Geertz and Rudolf Bultmann
Bultmann are often cited by anthropologists and sociologists who are trying to determine the essence of human sciences through a deep analysis of the subjective meanings that the actor sets to his/her behaviour. This article provides an analysis of theoretical and epistemological conceptions of the three thinkers mentioned above, and the author concludes that each of them uses the construction of subjective justification in a different way. Weber…
The Disappointed and Disgruntled: A Study of the Return in the 1990s of Czech Emigrants from Communist Era
Any in-depth research on Czech emigration to the West in the communist era, and on the return of these emigrants in the 1990s, has until now been almost nonexistent, although it could provide a deeper comprehension of present Czech society and its cultural values. The article provides a strong theoretical basis for this kind of study, which starts out from P. Berger's and T. Luckmann's theory of socialisation, and compares it with the socio-econo…
Czech Folk Music in the 1960s-80s from the Point of View of the Sociology of Religion
The article provides an in-depth functional analysis of Czech folk music from the 1960s to the 1980s from the viewpoint of the sociology of religion. In this period folk music played an important ideological and socio-political role in Czechoslovakia due to the values it embodied which made it strongly critical of the communist regime. The author attempts to explain that a significant part of these values were of religious (usually Christian, but…
Two Traditions of Czech Sociology of Religion
Regardless of the role religion plays in the world today, i.e. despite the significant de-privatisation of faith in the socio-cultural space and in politics, contemporary Czech sociology of religion is in rather poor shape. The author presents a number of factors to explain this, including the legacy of the communist regime, and low levels of church attendance in the Czech Republic, the latter having been erroneously interpreted as non-religiosit…
Religious Processes in Contemporary Czech Society
Regardless of the role religion plays in the contemporary world, and the fact that there has occurred a massive de-privatisation of religions and desecularisation of societies, in the Czech Republic the state of religion remains considerably understudied. This paper attempts to fill in this lack of knowledge. The subject is analysed with special regard to the values that are based on culture, symbolic representations and socio-economic institutio…
The Re-emigration of Czech Western Emigrants in the 1990s from the Perspective of Economic Sociology
In this article the author discusses qualitative economic sociology and its connections to social-constructionist sociology of knowledge, cultural institutions and economic culture, and he applies this theoretical background to his survey on Czech Western re-emigrants in the 1990s and their perceptions of contemporary Czech society, economic-cultural institutions, and business/entrepreneurial behaviour. He concludes that fundamental differences b…
The Son Has Ploughed', But a Foreign Son. Five Case Studies on Transformation Strategies in Czech Agriculture after 1989
European agriculture has recently undergone important changes con-nected with the reorientation of EU policy towards regional, recreational, and land-use subsidies, and owing to the internal divergence in agriculture itself, which has led to large ‘industrial ’ farming companies on the one hand and small, ecological farms on the other. During the period of transformation, the Czech agricultural sector has been forced to confront these changes and…
Czech Sociology of Religion in the Period between 1948 and 1989
The article examines the theoretical development of Czech sociology of religion during the period of communist rule, which widely affected the social sciences in general and research on religion in particular. The author divides the period into three different stages. First, from the very end of the 1940s to the beginning of the 1960s sociology as a whole was abolished as a 'bourgeois pseudo-science', and any discourse on religion was possible on…
Three-Quarters of a Century Ago: A Quantified Essay on Czech Sociological Journals in the Pre-Marxist Era and Today
This article focuses on Czech pre-Marxist sociological journals -Sociologická revue (established in 1930, published until 1940, and again in 1946-49) and Sociální problémy (established 1931, published 1931-1938/39 and 1947/48) -and compares how they functioned with the work of the contemporary Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review (analysed volumes 32 (1996) to 41 ( 2005)).Although the internal situation of the branch and its public eval…
Three European Sociologies of Religion: Beyond the Usual Agenda of the Discipline
The contemporary boom in the popularity of religion(s) and religiosity has led to new interest in their sociological study that has returned the socio logy of religion to the heart of sociological research. In secular Europe alone, three new overviews of the discipline have appeared in 2006 and 2007, written by Grace Davie, I. Furseth and P. Repstad, and Z. R. Nepor and D. Lun, all of which attempt to go beyond the traditional agenda of the disci…
Tvrzení o vymírání náboženství jest terminologický sebeklam: Příspěvek k české sociologii náboženství v podání Emanuela Chalupného
Článek popisuje život a dílo významného českého sociologa meziválečného období, Emanuela Chalupného (1879-1958). I z letmého náhledu je zřejmé, že šlo o osobnost vysoce kontroverzní, urputnou, až nepříjemnou, která se odmítala komukoli či čemukoli vzdát, což mu přineslo mnoho nepřátel. Jeho neobyčejně rozsáhlé sociologické dílo je dnes překonáno, ale obsahuje mnoho originálních myšlenek, které doboví kritici často přehlíželi. Jedna z oblastí, do …
Invisible Religion in a “Non-believing” Country: The Case of the Czech Republic
The authors analyse contemporary ir/religiosity and spirituality in the Czech Republic using data from national censuses, international surveys and a specialized national survey on the de-traditionalization and individualization of religion from 2006. The authors conclude that the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on a respondent’s religiosity, both traditional and alternative, is weak; a more important factor in the determination of…
Religion: An Unsolved Problem for the Modern Czech Nation
The Czech Republic is widely known as 'the least religious' country in the world and most Czechs are quite proud of that fact. The authors, however, challenge both of these characteristics. Czechs might better be considered unchurched than atheist, with various forms of modern New Age spirituality steadily gaining in popularity. Moreover, their reputation for irreligiosity is somewhat questionable, since it is most often based upon communist (and…
Attitudes towards Religion(s) in a 'Non-believing' Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is widely known as 'the least religious' country in the world. However, Czechs might be considered unchurched rather than nonreligious, with various forms of modern New Age spirituality steadily gaining in popularity. The question is, therefore, what is the position of religion - both 'traditional' and 'new' - within a 'non-believing' society? The article commences with a presentation of data taken from two recent sociological …
L'amnésie de la remémoration dans la société tchèque
L'article traite de la position de la religion dans la société tchèque actuelle, montrant un taux élevé d'athéisme déclaré, dont la vrai cause se trouve, selon l'auteur, dans une aversion envers les Églises et dans la propagation de formes religieuses/spirituelles privatisées. Dans le cas tchèque, l'« amnésie » religieuse n'est pas une conséquence de la diminution de l'intérêt pour la religion ni d'un « analphabétisme religieux » de l'époque mode…
Sociologist/s between the Clerical Collar, the Swastika and the Red Star: Jaroslav Šíma in the History of Czech Sociology
The article analyses the life story and works of a significant, but today sadly almost unknown, Czech sociologist, Jaroslav Ĺ Ăma (1914-1955). It draws on all the published sources available on him as well as a large number of to date unknown and unexploited archive materials. Ĺ Ăma became a member of the somewhat "thin on the ground" national sociological academia of the interwar period and specialised in the sociology of sexuality, religion, …
Co chybí české (historické) vědě: Odpověď na "manifest" čtyř mladých historiků
Autor se ve své úvaze vymezuje vůči názorům, publikovaným v kritické úvaze PAVEL BALOUN, JAN GRUBER, JAN MAREŠ, VÍT STROBACH, O výuce historie za kapitalismu a o mluvících hlavách, Dějiny – teorie – kritika 8/2012, s. 121–144. Ve svém textu Z. R. Nešpor objasňuje především způsob fungování Grantové agentury ČR, vůči jehož hodnotícím mechanismům se autoři příspěvku vymezili. Spolu s tím se zamýšlí nad limity kritizovatelnosti vědecky ukotvených čl…
Sociologist Jan Mertl: Quisling or a Victim of Circumstances
The article analyses the life and academic contribution of one of the most prominent interwar Czech sociologists, Jan Mertl (1904-1978), whose studies in political sociology studies were highly innovative in his day, in both the Czech and the international context. Mertl was a follower of Max Weber and focused on the comparative historical-sociological analysis of political partisanship and party systems. He also devoted extensive study to change…
Olga Fejtová, „Já pevně věřím a vyznávám…“ Rekatolizace na Novém Městě pražském v době pobělohorské: Praha 2012, Scriptorium (Documenta Pragensia Monographia 28), 326 s
Recenze
Miloslav Petrusek and the Samizdat Sociologický obzor: (New) Insight into a Sociological Thinker
The late Miloslav Petrusek (1936-2012) was undoubtedly one of the most important figures in the history of Czech sociology. He was one of a few sociologists who revived the discipline in the 1960s and was a talented organiser and a co-founder of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Charles University in the 1990s. He was also a gifted teacher. However, owing to his busy organisational role, extensive teaching activities, and the publishing ban and r…
The House of Technology in Pardubice: The 'Grey Zone' between Official and Dissident Sociology in Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s
The Marxist-Leninist 'ideological supervision' of Czech sociology in the 1970s and 1980s led to the de facto academic impotence of 'official' institutions at universities and the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. However, sociological inquiry and discussion found a home, at least temporarily, in various less regulated departmental, regional and technical institutes, which came to represent the 'grey zone' of contemporary Czech sociology, i.e. the…
Fifty Years of Czech Sociology of Religion in the Pages of Sociologický časopis
The fiftieth anniversary of SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis (since 2001 SociologickĂ ̋ Ä asopis / Czech Sociological Review) provides an ideal opportunity to discuss the presence and achievements of the sociology of religion in the most important Czech sociological journal and to contribute to the historical, theoretical, and methodological analysis of Czech sociology of religion itself. The author provides a summary of all the articles, reviews, and inf…
Batov 1940 - The First Empirically-Grounded Czech Research in the Sociology of Work
There is a forgotten chapter in (history of) the Czech sociology of work. In the early 1940s, an empirical study was conducted by Otakar Machotka among employees of the Bata company in Batov (today Otrokovice). One of the leading figures of early Czech sociology, Machotka saw the closure of Czech universities during the Second World War as an opportunity to carry out original empirical research devoted to the sociological analysis of the workforc…
'If You Leave Me, You Will Die…' The Academic Trajectories of Otakar Machotka and other Émigré Czech Sociologists after February 1948
This article focuses on Czech sociologists who left Czechoslovakia immediately after the communist coup in February 1948 and their subsequent academic and personal fates in exile. Attention is devoted principally to Otakar Machotka (1899-1970), a prominent figure in both Czech political life and pre-Marxist Czech sociology with strong personal and methodological ties to the Chicago School; this article's research draws on his correspondence and o…
Cremation in modern Scotland: History, architecture and the law
Several prominent death scholars cooperated in this pioneering study of the history of cremation in Scotland. They acted in concert in an effort to illuminate the developing story of the ideology o
Philosophy (26 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Czech (22 works) · Political science (21 works) · Law (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Social science (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Eastern European Communism and Reforms (10 works)