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 article deals with some key arguments in Pavel Machonin's book Czech Society and Sociological Knowledge, but does not review the whole book. Critical comments focus on four themes. Machonin's conception of sociology as a discipline and a tradition does not do full justice to the inherent pluralism of the sociological imagination. It is useful to link sociological debates to the ideological contest between socialism (more particularly Marxism) and liberalism, but this problematic is more complex than Machonin's analyses tend to suggest; that applies, in particular, to the interpretations of freedom and equality as fundamental modern values. Machonin's attempt to reconstruct modernization theory is open to some criticisms, especially with regard to the debate on „multiple modernities." Finally, the concept of state socialism does not help to grasp the complex patterns of modernity that developed under Communist rule.
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.