The study deals with the policy towards the Jewish minority in Slovakia during the first years of the interwar Czechoslovak Republic. In particular it examines the attitudes, semantics and everyday praxis of the members of the new political establishment. Whilst they attempted to solve the "Jewish question" as soon as on the turn of the 19th and 20th century by establishing cooperatives, after the World War I they used their new governmental authority for revising the so-called "liquor licenses" which were seen as a "Jewish privilege". This emphasis on the "practical" or "humanitarian" antisemitism - significant for the Czech and Slovak populism since the late 19th century - merged in the postwar period with the aggressive campaign against the "Judeo-Bolshevism" which was alleged as a threat for the new Czechoslovak state. and Článek zahrnuje poznámkový aparát pod čarou
Studie zkoumá reprezentaci korejské války jakožto zásadní události v tištěných médiích a literatuře československého stalinismu v letech 1950 až 1952. Zaměřuje se na specifika mechanismu produkování obrazu „nepřítele“ a „nepřátelského“ prostoru, analyzuje i vzájemnou interakci dobové publicistiky a poezie. Rozebírá klíčové fenomény, které tvoří pilíř dobového obrazu korejské války (figura vůdce, mytologie původu „nepřítele“) a usouvztažňuje je s obecnějšími mechanismy vytváření skutečnosti v první polovině padesátých let dvacátého století. Poukazuje přitom na vzájemné propojení a ovlivňování vyhrocené propagandistické rétoriky a básnické obraznosti. Studie materiálově čerpá z básnických sbírek, které obsahují verše reagující na válku v Koreji, z příležitostných básní, publicistických článků a karikatur publikovaných především na stránkách deníku Rudé právo a týdeníku Tvorba. Metodologicky navazuje na výzkumy ideologie jako systému reprezentace reálných podmínek existence (Louis Althusser, Slavoj Žižek) a na sémiotické analýzy kultury a společnosti období stalinismu (Vladimír Macura), které poukazují na velmi aktivní a produktivní vztah literatury a moci, jenž tvoří samotnou podstatu socialistického realismu jako systému (Katerina Clarková, Jevgenij Dobrenko)., This article explores the representation of the Korean War as a fundamental event in the print media and belles-lettres of Stalinist Czechoslovakia from 1950 to 1952. It focuses on the special features of the mechanism of producing the image of the ‘enemy’ and the ‘hostile’ space, as well as analysing the interaction of period journalism and poetry. The author analyses the central phenomena, which created a cornerstone of the contemporaneous image of the Korean War (the figure of the leader and the mythology of the origin of the ‘enemy’), and correlates them with more general mechanisms of creating reality in the first half of the 1950s. He also points out the interlinkage and mutual influences of the pointed propagandistic rhetoric and poetic imagery. The article draws on collections of verse, which contain poems reacting to the war in Korea, and on occasional poems, journalism, and caricatures published mainly in the daily Rudé právo and the weekly Tvorba. In method, the article is in the tradition of research on ideology as a system of representing the real conditions of existence (as in the work of Louis Althusser and Slavoj Žižek) and the tradition of semiotic analysis of culture and society in the Stalinist period (as in the work of Vladimír Macura), identifying the very active, productive relationship between literature and the powers that be, which creates the very essence of socialist realism as a system (as discussed by Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko)., Vít Schmarc., and Obsahuje bibliografii
In this article, a comparison is made between economic and identity explanations of preferences toward EU membership in the Czech Republic. This research demonstrates that economics rather than identity is a more powerful explanation of public opinion on accession. With regard to economic explanations of public support for integration three models are examined - a winners and losers model, an international trade liberalisation model, and a foreign direct investment model. A comparison of these three models shows that support for accession was primarily based on attitudes toward foreign direct investment. Moreover, contemplating employment opportunities within the EU following accession was also an important factor. Contrary to previous research the empirical evidence presented in this article suggests that being a winner or loser in the post-communist transition process was not the strongest factor explaining popular support for membership. The results presented should not be taken to imply that instrumental rather than ideological or affect-based motivations determine general attitudes toward integration. On the specific question of vote choice in the accession referendum instrumental economic considerations were most important.
A problem in educational attainment research is that measures of association, and not measures of inequality, have been used to observe inequality in the distribution of higher education between classes. While the statistical association between class and education in many countries has been relatively stable, measures of inequality applied to the same data show a marked reduction of inequality in the distribution of higher education over time. This is a result of reduced bias in the allocation mechanisms, most likely facilitated by the increasing provision of higher education. Decreasing inequality means that the conclusion in the literature that egalitarian educational reforms have been ineffective lacks empirical support. One reason why measures of inequality have been overlooked in most educational attainment research may be the firm but unfounded belief in the 'margin insensitivity' of loglinear measures. They are assumed to capture the association net of changes in the marginals of the class-by-education table, thus reflecting the 'true nature' of the allocation mechanism in recruitment to higher education. This notion can be shown to be a logically untenable deduction from the property of loglinear measures of being insensitive in relation to one specific kind of change in the marginals, to the claim that these measures are insensitive to marginal changes in general.
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 deals with the questions of the (in)visibility of women in Slovak political life. The material presents statistical data on women's participation in Slovak national, regional and local politics with the support of qualitative data from interviews with women politicians and activists. The author looks at the reasons for the low political representation of women and the unsuccessful attempts to increase it by introducing positive mechanisms such as quotas. The primary focus is put on the representation of women in municipal politics. The author analyses the main reasons why women are more successful in local politics than in 'high' politics.
The paper discusses the history of the relation between feminist scholarship and cultural anthropology as two ways of thinking about culture and social relationships. It focuses in particular on the feminist critique of the anthropological theory and ethnographic research. In points out the different epistemological and political standpoints of feminism and anthropology as the sources of the tensioned relationship between these two traditions of thinking about culture.