The political changes after the Velvet Revolution of 1989 in Czechoslovakia fundamentally affected the life of society, including the form of education. The socialist concept of the unified school was abandoned in connection with the overall desire to decentralise and deregulate the structures created during the period of state socialism. However, the immediate impact on the life of schools can vary locally and be influenced by the nature of the environment. The study focusses on the context in which these changes impacted the everyday life of elementary schools in rural South Moravia, and it traces local specificities by analysing school chronicles and the memories of teachers who experienced the period of transformation in rural schools. It focusses in particular on personnel changes, the transformation of the relationship between schools and municipalities, and the dynamics of the influence of long-term processes of modernisation and political changes on school life.
The study examines religious motivation in the believers’ attitudes. It seeks to identify contexts in which religious motivation is present or accentuated by the influence of believers’ other social characteristics (religion, locality, age, gender). Social aspect of religion determines, to some extent, social relations, ethical norms, and life goals (intentional strategies, unconscious actions). Study seeks to answer the question to what extent a person’s life is determined by his or her religious preferences and to what extent the faith is involved in the of everyday life. The issue has been studied in traditional and new Christian groups present in the Czech Republic and in South Moravian localities with different historical, cultural, and social development. The research shows that several influences play a role in shaping the views and choices of believers.
The paper interconnects studies of everyday life and everyday consumption and research on socialist housing estates. It is based on an ethnographic stydy of Petržalka, the biggest housing estate in Bratislava, located at the south band of the river Danube.