This article focuses on the long-term trends in the development of social policy between the First World War and the mid-1950s. The author begins by summarising the main ideas of his own previous articles and books. He emphasises the continuity and discontinuity in the general conception of Czechoslovak social policy in this period. He also considers conceptual questions, particularly those that would help to explain how the basic terms are employed in historical analysis. The article moves between the two poles of the construction of causality - structural explanation and voluntaristic explanation. The content of the article can be aptly summed up in a neat metaphor: from Bismarck by way of Beveridge to Stalin. In personifi ed form, this shortcut expresses the long-term development of Czechoslovak social policy: from an emphasis on principles of merit, characteristic of the traditional German and Austrian social insurance schemes, by way of a considerably more egalitarian national insurance from 1948 (strongly infl uenced by the British system), to the Soviet model of social security, which developed from 1951 to 1956. The article also considers important changes in social legislation in the Czechoslovak Republic in this period, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
In the post-Baroque era, science in the developed states of Europe gradually turned from theological scepticism to practical goals. The growing interest in the search for new sources of wealth resulted in the policy of mercantilism that developed in European powers from the Baroque period to the 1830s; this policy directly affected the nature of scholarly research, and in non-colonial states, it focussed, in the form of cameralist system, on the development of state administration and the improvement in and exploitation of economically marginal or directly poor regions. In connection with the Enlightenment ideal of a harmonious society, states aimed at a functional normalisation of relations among individual social strata; the scholarly interest, in the primary pursuit of economic and developmental objectives, focusses for the first time on folk culture, providing valuable reports on it and, last but not least, contributing to the popularization of its selected segments, with which Romantic philosophy as well as anthropology subsequently worked; in the period under study, anthropology was rather a natural science dealing with human evolution, including related cultural expressions. The aforementioned factors brought about the first ethnographic monographs applying the theories and methods that formed the basic building blocks of the future independent discipline; the treatise observes their development up to a noticeable ideological breakthrough in the pre-March period.
This article concentrates on critical responses to the so-called cultural turn in the conceptualization and research of social inequalities, in which we can, inter alia, discern a shift of interest from the problem of distribution to the problem of recognition. In this context, the dispute about the justice of distribution and recognition, led by Fraser and Honneth, is discussed. From the sociological point of view Fraser put forward an analogy of an unsuccessful Lenski’s attempt at synthesis of consensualist and conflictualist accounts of social order, whereas Honneth’s conception resonated with the consensualist account of order, characterized by explicit emphasis on norms and normative consensus. The author of this article suggests that the resolution of this dispute about justice (or inequality) may be indicated in Lockwood’s conception of the incongruence of the status and class order, which is, as is argued, closer to Honneth’s approach to the problem. Lockwood’s conception is extended here and employed in the argument, in which the author demonstrates that behind the increasing number of the so-called “inadaptable” individuals within the societies of the EuroAmerican cultural area, which is endangering the integration of society, we can trace the attempt of the majority to sustain its privileged position through narrowing the definition of performance applicable at the labour market. The author thus, following Honneth’s argument, comes to the conclusion that the threat to the integrity of contemporary society is to be thought of in terms of recognition and regards the cultural turn in the research of social inequalities in this context as valuable., Jadwiga Šanderová., and Obsahuje bibliografii
The study compiled as a part of EU prject ProAct ("Practical Regional Research and Innovation Policy in Action - the Efficient Tools for Regional Catching-up in New Member States" (Regions of Knowledge - FP6). The regional practices of innovation policy in eight EU member states are presented in case studies, elaborated for one region in each country with South Moravia representing the Czech Republic. South Moravian innovation policy is analyzed in three fundamental dimensions: strategy formation, policy deployment, and practices at the programme level. These are the constituent elements of the process that was defined by the ProAct consortium as so called "ProAct policy learning cycle". THe benchmark methodology (The ProAct Benchmarking Framework) was applied in the case studies to explore good pracices in regional innovation and research policy. In the study, the role of South Moravian Innovation Centre (JIC - Jihomoravské innovační centrum) is highlighted., Jiří Loudín, Adolf Filáček, Michal Kostka, Kateřina Tydláčková., and Obsahuje seznam literatury.