The article presents the results of the social-anthropological field research realized in the town of Tachov and several adjacent villages (especially Lesná, Mýto). It focuses on the mapping of the so called small history, identified through the biographical method, that is, stories related to the lives of the interviewed persons. It analyzes the situation during and after the return migration and final settlement of the region, as it is presented in the memories of the participants of the provesses of settlement, as well as their descendants. The article is structured into several blocks according to the priorities of the narratives, ascertained during the field research. These priorities are: memories of the industry of the pre-war era, the theme of return migrants and settlers, their integration and mutual relations with other ethnic groups. At the same time, it was possible to create an image of the spontaneous tale-telling repertoire. The main purpose of the research was to follow-up with the researches of the region realized in the 1970s and 1980s and to supplement them with new data.
In this article the author examines the coexistence of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and the Communist regime in the fi rst several years after the Communist takeover, 1948–56. The first part of his analysis, inspired by French and German research on the social history of power by Sandrine Kott and Thomas Lindenberger, outlines the points of contact as well as ideological and political affinities between Protestants and Communists before the February 1948 takeover. These were particularly clear in the Protestant weekly Kostnické jiskry (Sparksfrom Constance) after the Second World War. Owing to this rapprochement andalso to their refl exes developed for survival in the unfavourable circumstances the Protestant minority adapted with relative success to conditions in the Communist dictatorship. To consolidate themselves, they skilfully used instruments offered by the regime, such as “voluntary” work groups (brigády), while the regime relied on Protestants (particularly ministers) in some of its important political strategies such as collectivization and elections. The author pays particular attention to the theologian and philosopher Josef Lukl Hromádka (1889–1969), who was, in his day, a central figure amongst Czechoslovak Protestants. His “instrumentalization” also operated in two directions: in the West, as a representative of Christian peace activities, he helped to create the illusion of religious freedom in Communist Czechoslovakia, but he also served Protestants as a “shield” and mediator enabling them to establish and maintain contacts with Western theologians. In the article the author also seeks to demonstrate that assiduous analysis of archive records of State, Party, and Church provenance reveals the inner contradictions in the Communist apparat regarding relations with the churches and its own powers as well as links of alliance amongst some of its organs and the churches.
Th e article presents the Marxist feminist perspective on primitive accumulation and early capitalist history put forward by Silvia Federici in her work, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. According to Federici and other Marxist feminists, Marx’s description of the origins of capitalism lacks an important diff erentiation. Whereas in Capital the main focus is placed on the male, waged proletariat, Federici focuses more on the changes in gender relations and status of women that accompany the process of primitive accumulation. Th e article fi rstly situates the origins of feminist perspectives on primitive accumulation into their historical context and links them with their preceding debates. Th e following sections then present a comparison of Marx’s and Federici’s account of primitive accumulation and the early history of capitalism. Th e article mainly focuses on the forms of primitive accumulation that are absent in Capital. Th ese forms include, above all, a new division of labour, subjugation of reproduction to the needs of capital, and an economical, legal, cultural, and symbolical degradation of women.
‘Carantanian / Köttlach’ jewellery from southwest Slovakia and from the other parts of the Carpathian Basin. In the Slovak and Hungarian archaeological literature, a small group of early medieval jewellery from southwest Slovakia was labelled as being of ‘Carantanian / Köttlach’ provenance, meaning that it originated from Eastern Alps region (today’s Austria and Slovenia). The goal of the article is a revision of the issue of provenance in the context of analogous finds from Moravia and the Carpathian Basin (i.e. today’s Hungary, western Romania and northeastern Croatia). The provenenace from the Eastern Alps region can be confirmed in the case of several Slovak finds only, the others are of local origin. Also, from the point of view of chronology, we are dealing with a relatively heterogenous group of jewellery, with a date-range from the turn of the 8th-9th centuries to the 11th century. The author tries to demonstrate that the argument in the middle of the 20th century and later about the ‘influences from the Eastern Alps region’ was dependent on the state of archaeological research at that time. It was a viewpoint that over-emphasised the importance of early medieval ‘Köttlach culture’ in Eastern Alps region, especially for the spreading of some jewellery types to other regions of middle and southeastern Europe., Šimon Ungerman., and Obsahuje seznam literatury
The issue of migration among the rural population living on the lands of the Czech Crown in the early modern age continues to attract only marginal attention in Czech historiography. Therefore, those people who lived on the very edge of that society remain outside the scope of research interest. The Romany Gypsies who were bom without homes, lie also outside the traditional focus of attention. In the early modern age, anyone could kill a Romany Gypsy without punishment; people were meant to despise them and were even supposed to persecute them. The Romany Gypsies were therefore forced to develop a specific strategy of action, which was intended to help them survive, and a significant role in this strategy was played by migration. A condition for survival was not only the need to maintain a strong internal structure within the Romany Gypsy group, but also the need to create ties with a settled society. These ties ensured, in the case of a threat, at least some form of a rudimentary protective social network. Such ties were probably passed down from generation to generation and the Romany Gypsies therefore, as much as was possible, restricted their movements to only well-known areas. On their travels through the landscape they tried to obtain food not only through begging and theft, but also by telling fortunes and reading palms, skilfully taking advantage of the fact that in the eyes of the settled population their lives were cloaked in mystery. However, they never forgot to emphasise their ties to the land in which they were bom and the impossibility of leaving it for another land. A question remains for further research as to whether they were persecuted for their ethnic origin or whether it was because of their nomadic lifestyle, which enabled them to evade the mechanisms of social control.
Studie se věnuje problematice podnikového managementu a úskalím „socialistické kontroly“ v československých podnicích v období pozdního socialismu. S využitím pramenů Komunistické strany Československa a Státní bezpečnosti, dobových textů a odborných publikací ukazuje, jak se stranické a státní orgány neúspěšně snažily učinit z kontroly funkční nástroj realizace hospodářské politiky státostrany. Autor analyzuje používané kontrolní mechanismy a nastiňuje základní příčiny až fatálního selhání kontrolní činnosti systému, jenž byl svým způsobem kontrolou doslova posedlý. Vysvětluje systémovou podmíněnost kontroly, kterou socialističtí manažeři dokázali v mnoha ohledech přizpůsobit potřebám svěřených hospodářských jednotek, což přirozeně nekorespondovalo s celospolečenskými zájmy. Na příkladech řady konkrétních kauz studie názorně ukazuje, že si československý podnikový management v osmdesátých letech dvacátého století plně uvědomoval systémové, politické i společenské limity kontrolní činnosti, kterou vcelku úspěšně dokázal přizpůsobit vnitropodnikovým podmínkám. Výsledkem byl stav, kdy stranické vedení reagovalo na stále očividnější symptomy „agonie centrálně plánované ekonomiky“ přijímáním rozmanitých směrnic a direktiv pro zefektivnění kontroly a důsledné prosazování zásady „kdo řídí - kontroluje“. Očekávaný efekt ovšem nenastal a nefunkčnost kontroly přispěla nakonec nemalou měrou ke zhroucení komunistického režimu v Československu., The study deals with issues of corporate management and pitfalls of the "socialist supervision" in Czechoslovak enterprises in the period of late socialism. Using documents of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and the State Security, period texts and specalized publications, it shows how party organs and state authorities were unsuccessfully trying to make supervisory mechanisms and audits a functional tool of the implementation of the ruling party´s economic policy. The author analyzes the supervisory and audit mechanisms that were used, and outlines basic reasons of the almost fatal failure of supervisory activities of the system which was, in a way obsessed with supervison and control. He explains the systemic conditionality of the supervisory system which socialist managers often and in many respects bent to suit the needs of the enterprises they were in charge of; such situation naturally did not match the needs of the society as a whole. Using many specific cases as an example, the study graphically shows that members of the Czechoslovak corporate management community in the 1980s were fully aware of systemic political and social limitations of the supervisory system which they managed to modify, fairly successfully, to suit intra-corporate conditions. The result was a situation in which the party leadership was reacting to increasingly obvious symptoms of the "agony of the centrally planned economy" by adopting various directives and guidelines to make the supervisory process more effective and to consistently promote the "whoever manages - supervises" principle. However, the anticipated effect did not materialize and, at the end of the day, the non-functional supervisory mechanisms made a substantial contribution to the collapse of the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia., Tomáš Vilímek., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
The Grounds of Concrete Logic (Základové konkretné logiky) is often taken to be a work in which Masaryk attempts to outline, in a methodical way, his conception of philosophy as “a real scientific metaphysics”. Nevertheless, we often hear from the Masaryk’s critics, and even from his followers, that the book appears to be no more than a transcription of Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive. Even if the classification of the
sciences was one of the main philosophical and scientific problems with which Masaryk was engaged throughout his life, in the emphasis on concrete sciences, and in the working out of the relations between particular sciences and categories, Masaryk goes beyond Comte. This point is supported, at the same time, by the many critical notes concerning the inadequacy of Comte’s epistemological grounding, which Masaryk links, above all, to a critique of Comte’s phenomenalism. The specific quality and the critical reference of the book for future generations of Czech philosophers consists in its principled status and realist aim. Concrete logic should bring us to the ultimate ontological points of departure – to things themselves. In his prioritising of the need to seek the sense of things, Masaryk belongs to the modern thinkers who showed to Czech philosophy new possibilities and ways of approach to reality in a strictly scientific spirit.