he paper quantitatively analyses a sample of 300 Czech prayer books and other popular religious handwritten material (not including songbooks) from the 18th and 19th centuries. The author maintains that most of the material consisted of (partial) transcriptions of popular printed books and their widespread popularity was influenced by the growth of literacy and the individualization of piety. Their use was by no means limited to the milieu of the secret non-Catholics which were proscribed until 1781; indeed the majority of Catholic writings were not fully orthodox. The character and decoration of the writings in question were not directly related to the confessional nature of their originators and/or users; in fact the general rules of early modern popular culture played a much more important role and in many cases it is difficult to determine whether the source is catholic, protestant or sectarian. Prayer books fully reflected official forms of religion relatively late i.e. from the tum of the 18th and 19th centuries as a result of church domination over popular piety. However, even at this time the process did not result in absolutes: religious writings substituted the non-existence of baroque literature the printing of which was prohibited by the enlightened censorship prevalent at the time. Only a change in religious forms and new opportunities for the printing of pre-enlightenment books in the mid-19th century led to a decline in handwritten prayer books.
European agriculture has recently undergone important changes connected 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 full stability remains a long way in the future. Transformation has thus brought both advantages and disadvantages to all the players involved. The former include the existence of large-scale farms, relatively highly skilled workers, and a cheap labour force, which make Czech agriculture competitive on a European scale. On the other hand, Czech attitudes towards work and respect for the property of others are inadequate; production efficiency and quality are low, whereas the expectations of farmers are high. Czech entrepreneurs have opted for relatively strict, unsocial, win-win strategies and understand their business simply in terms of material profit. Conversely, Western businessmen active in the Czech Republic more highly value the long-term profit, social ties and the symbolic functions of agriculture, though that does not mean they would not prefer 'industrial' forms of farming. The main problem of Czech agriculture is thus the absence of family-type farms rooted in their local, social environment, and there is only limited potential for this to develop. Unfortunately, this fact creates the threat of a 'two-speed' European agriculture: the Western model, combining both small and 'industrial' farms, and the Eastern model, focusing solely on extensive large-scale farming.
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 only in purely negativistic, anti-religious terms. However, some scholars (most notably A. Kolman, E. Kadlecová and I. Sviták) established less ideological attitudes and called for deeper sociological analyses of religion at the end of the 1950s and the start of the 1960s. Their 'revisionism' eventually won out in the 1960s, in the second stage, when Czech sociology of religion achieved international acceptance and Kadlecová became (for a short time) the author of the state's new religious policy. Although these scholars (V. Gardavský and M. Machovec) accepted a wider definition of religiosity and debated with Christian scholars, they remained Marxists. They were convinced religion is doomed to extinction. The last stage began after the violent termination of the Prague Spring in 1968 and lasted throughout the era of the so-called normalisation in the 1970-80s. Progressive scholars were removed from their posts. The official sociology of religion changed its name to 'scientific atheism', but the outcomes of its work were far from any standard of excellence, both in the theoretical and empirical fields. Research from the era of official neo-Stalinism was very poor in quality, but during that time very important unofficial scientific contributions did emerge, written by banned sociologists (E. Kadlecová, J. Šiklová), social theologians (B. Komárková), and Czechs in exile. Unfortunately, since 1989 the reception of these works has been narrow. With the abolition of official Marxist scientific atheism there is an opportunity for the spread of truly modern sociological approaches to religion - if only there were enough students.
The Czech spiritual market is today as developed as that of western European countries. De-traditionalised and individualised holistic milieu has created a demand for spiritual literature and magazines as well as other marketable goods (“magic” stones, amulets, horoscopes, natural drugs etc.). This paper attempts to analyse the character and sources of contemporary best selling spiritual literature and its readership in the Czech Republic. It also provides a case study of a Prague spiritual bookshop and its comparison with five other Czech spiritual outlets (including an Internet outlet). The results clearly show that marketing spirituality has become a mainstream phenomenon with regard to all gender, age and class categories, although there was found to be an over presence of older middle-aged women among the buyers. There is emphasized “churchless” and “nonreligious” character of the buyers and the best selling books, that include predominantly those referring to “modem” and “esoteric” western or “ethnic” spiritualities. The supply side comprises both special and general publishers, the former having been more successful in specialised bookshops and spirituál outlets and the latter in addressing the wider population (including via the Internet).