The Czech Republic is comprised of different regions at the sub-national level. These are the historical lands of Bohemia, Moravia, and (part of) Silesia, small ethnographic regions, and administrative units. Their objective hierarchy derives from their former historical role, from their administrative function today, and their regional importance. In this article the authors attempt to describe the subjective hierarchy of these regions in the minds of their inhabitants, drawing on a survey of 1203 respondents from throughout the Czech Republic conducted in 2003 by the Centre for Public Opinion Research. The historical lands of Bohemia and Moravia are two regions whose existence Czechs recognise without question, while Silesia is in a weaker position and garners only two-thirds of the level of recognition accorded the other two historical lands. The cultural or ethnographic regions and the administrative units are on an approximately equal level, which is distinctively lower than that of the three Czech historical lands. More of these small regions are located in Moravia than in Bohemia or Silesia. The best known Czech regions are: Wallachia, Moravian Slovakia, Hana (all of which are in Moravia) and the Region of Khods (Bohemia). The best known region that is neither ethnographical nor one of the administrative units is the former industrial region of Ostrava.
The study dealt with the problem of the other European identity as reflected in the English travel writing of the seventeenth century. The crucial question was if any coherent whole, in cultural terms, was distinguished on the mental map of the 17th century English traveller in the area of “Trans-Rhenic Europe”. The mental map was understood here as a sort of image which is not related to sensory experience. It is considered as Creative construction of unknown based on what was read, what was heard, and on past experience. The viewpoints defining units and drawing borders were of cultural character. Firstly, it was interested in traveller’s division of known and unknown Europe. Secondly, it was looking for the borders of learned part of Europe drawn on the traveller’s mental map. Thirdly, it was focused on characteristics of people given by travellers. Finally, the borders of “civilization” and “barbarism” on the mental map of a 17th century traveller were questioned.
The perception of danger represents a crucial component of everyday life (not only) in the city. The recording of the development of perception of danger in diachronic perspective of the twentieth century, as it reflected in the memory of the female inhabitants of Pilsen, enables to ascertain some changes that reflect the historical development. In its concrete parts, the research focused on the modes of „making“ of the urban space through the perception of danger (mental topography of danger), the perception of danger in general, as wall as the impact of the danger on the everyday life of the inhabitants. The qualitative methodology of the research included the making of mental maps and the half-structured interviews. The informers were nine women of age 80–91 years. For the purpose of presentation of the results of the research that aimed at ascertaining the ways of perceiving danger by the oldest generation of female inhabitants of Pilsen, the twentieth century was divided into several periods that to great degree reflected the political-historical development: the period before the Second World War; the period of the war; after-war period (1945–1960), the 1960s to 1980s and finally the period after the year 1990 up to the present. In the memory of the informers, these periods were characterized partly by differing types of danger (if danger at all) and their varying intensity. The perception of danger (or the absence of danger) was also influenced by the different development of life cycles in cases of concrete women. Besides individual differences, there was crucial influence of the general social development, the development of the city and the technological development, especially the increase of automobile transport and the media of communication.