Social Effectiveness of Tertiary Education for Adults in Mid-life

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Civil Society and its Agency in the Political Process

(EN) Civil society is made up of committed individuals, non-governmental non-profit organizations, their employees, volunteers, and other supporters, as well as relations among these actors. Civil society activities include community development, advancement of leisure and professional interests, services to vulnerable groups, as well as efforts to intervene in the political process and to support certain legislation and systemic change. This work focuses on the latter, i.e. the ways how civil society actors influence the political process. In the introductory chapter I present an overview of the current research of civil society and political activism in the Czech Republic and other post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In this chapter, I identify five central propositions that can be formulated on the basis of existing scientific discussion and I subject them to a critical assessment. In addition, I argue that against the backdrop of the discussion, two streams of literature can be distinguished which differ in their assessment of civil society's quality in Central and Eastern Europe. I try to clarify the reasons for these contradictions. In the second chapter I offer an overview of social movements theories, thus completing the theoretical basis for the empirical part of this..

Urban tourism and its social and economic aspects

This thesis is divided into two parts, a theoretical one and a research one. The theoretical one deals with selected issues of modem mass tourism with emphasize on urban tourism and its social and economic aspects. The selected issues are city marketing, congress tourism, security in tourism, forms of tourism with increased social risk and sustainable tourism. The research part is based on interviews with tourism experts from municipal authorities of Prague and Hradec Kralove. The objective of the interviews was to demarcate the major features of the municipal authorities' tourism policy with emphasize on the aforementioned theoretical issues and to compare the policies ofthe two cities

Comparison of Juvenile Delinquency in the Czech Republic and Germany

Tato magisterská práce zkoumá na kvantitativních datech delikvenci mladých Čechů a Němců od sedmé do deváté třídy základní školy. Analyzovaná data pocházejí z mezinárodního "self- reportového" výzkumu delikvence mládeže ISRD-2, který je zakotven primárně v teorii sociálních vazeb (Hirschi 1969/2002) a obecné teorii kriminality (Gottfredson, Hirschi, 1990). Práce proto v prvním oddíle věnuje pozornost těmto a dalším vybraným kriminologickým teoriím, z dalších především teoriím napětí a teoriím kulturní deviace. Ve druhém oddíle se stručně věnuje sociálně- kulturním rozdílům a podobnostem mezi Českou republikou a Německem. Jádro práce tvoří třetí, analytický oddíl, ve kterém jsou prezentovány výsledky statistické analýzy dat. V práci dospívám k závěru, že sledované teorie zdaleka nejsou natolik protikladné, jak byly prezentovány autory teorie sociálních vazeb a obecné teorie kriminality. Spíše se zdá, že se jednotlivé teorie doplňují a často dospívají k totožným predikcím. Potvrzují se hypotézy, že některé charakteristiky vztahu žáků ke škole souvisejí s delikvencí: Žáci, kteří chodí do školy rádi, jsou o něco méně delikventní než žáci, kteří do školy rádi nechodí. Žáci, kteří chodí za školu, jsou výrazně více delikventní než ti, kteří za školu nechodí. Naopak špatné výsledky ve škole včetně...This Master thesis explores delinquency of juvenile Czechs and Germans from seventh to ninth grade based on quantitative data. The data comes from an International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD-2), which is anchored primarily in the Social control theory (Hirschi, 1969/2002) and the General theory of crime (Gottfredson, Hirschi, 1990). Therefore, in the first section, attention is paid to these and other selected criminological theories; the other theories are mainly the strain theories and the cultural deviance theories. In the second section, the thesis deals briefly with the socio- cultural differences and similarities between the Czech Republic and Germany. The core of the thesis is the third, analytical section, which presents the findings of statistical analysis. A conclusion is reached that the theories studied are by far less contradictory than what the authors of the social control theory and the general theory of crime claimed them to be. It rather seems that the individual theories are complementary and often lead to the same predictions. Hypotheses are confirmed that some characteristics of the pupils` relation to their school are related to delinquency: Pupils who like going to school are somewhat less delinquent than pupils who do not. Pupils who play truant are substantially...Department of SociologyKatedra sociologieFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Civil Society and its Agency in the Political Process

(EN) Civil society is made up of committed individuals, non-governmental non-profit organizations, their employees, volunteers, and other supporters, as well as relations among these actors. Civil society activities include community development, advancement of leisure and professional interests, services to vulnerable groups, as well as efforts to intervene in the political process and to support certain legislation and systemic change. This work focuses on the latter, i.e. the ways how civil society actors influence the political process. In the introductory chapter I present an overview of the current research of civil society and political activism in the Czech Republic and other post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In this chapter, I identify five central propositions that can be formulated on the basis of existing scientific discussion and I subject them to a critical assessment. In addition, I argue that against the backdrop of the discussion, two streams of literature can be distinguished which differ in their assessment of civil society's quality in Central and Eastern Europe. I try to clarify the reasons for these contradictions. In the second chapter I offer an overview of social movements theories, thus completing the theoretical basis for the empirical part of this..

Comparison of Juvenile Delinquency in the Czech Republic and Germany

This Master thesis explores delinquency of juvenile Czechs and Germans from seventh to ninth grade based on quantitative data. The data comes from an International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD-2), which is anchored primarily in the Social control theory (Hirschi, 1969/2002) and the General theory of crime (Gottfredson, Hirschi, 1990). Therefore, in the first section, attention is paid to these and other selected criminological theories; the other theories are mainly the strain theories and the cultural deviance theories. In the second section, the thesis deals briefly with the socio- cultural differences and similarities between the Czech Republic and Germany. The core of the thesis is the third, analytical section, which presents the findings of statistical analysis. A conclusion is reached that the theories studied are by far less contradictory than what the authors of the social control theory and the general theory of crime claimed them to be. It rather seems that the individual theories are complementary and often lead to the same predictions. Hypotheses are confirmed that some characteristics of the pupils` relation to their school are related to delinquency: Pupils who like going to school are somewhat less delinquent than pupils who do not. Pupils who play truant are substantially..

Teorie sociálních hnutí: přehledová studie

Throughout history social movements have taken on various forms, ranging from grassroots mobilizations to coalitions of professional organizations employing lawyers, project managers and PR specialists. They engage in their fights for both material and moral goals in various political contexts, use different resources, and strive to convince others of their world view. This paper deals with selected key social movement theories on the background of some pivotal past events. Its aim is to offer introduction as well as a basic theoretical overview

Whither slacktivism? Political engagement and social media use in the 2013 Czech Parliamentary elections

This article examines the relationship between online political expression and offline forms of political participation in the context of the 2013 Czech Parliamentary elections. It draws on the rapidly growing but still very much inconclusive empirical evidence concerning the use of new media and social network sites in particular for electoral mobilization and social activism, and their impact on more traditional forms of civic and political engagement. The theoretical framework of the paper is inspired by the competing perspectives on the role of social media for democratic participation and civic engagement, the mobilization vs. normalization thesis, as well as by the popular concepts of clicktivism or slacktivism (Morozov, 2009), denouncing online activism for allegedly not being complemented by offline actions and having little or no impact on real-life political processes. With the intention to empirically contribute to these discussions, this study uses data from a cross-sectional survey on a representative sample of the Czech adult population (N=1,653) which was conducted directly following the 2013 Parliamentary elections. The study was driven by the main research question: Is there a link between online political expression during the election campaign and traditional forms of political participation among Czech Facebook users? Furthermore, the analysis examined the relationship between online political participation and a declared political interest, electoral participation and political news consumption. The results obtained from an ordinal logistic regression analysis confirm the existence of a significant positive relationship between the respondents’ level of campaign engagement on Facebook and their political interest, political information seeking as well as traditional (mainly offline) participation activities, including voting

Transactional activism without transactions: network perspective on anti-corruption activism in the Czech Republic

In 2007, Petrova and Tarrow coined the term transactional activism, arguing that, despite weak individual-level political participation, civil societies in Central and Eastern Europe were surprisingly strong due to their capacity to establish transactional links. Yet the research which followed, relying mostly on quantitative data, has not uncovered much evidence of how transactional activism works. To make advances here, we take a more qualitative approach and focus on transactional ties among NGOs, developing a more fine-grained conceptualization. Specifically, we distinguish associative ties of loosely defined cooperation and interlocking ties based on the division of labour. We utilize this new conceptualization through a successful anti-corruption initiative known as ‘Reconstruction of the State’. The initiative presented itself largely in transactional terms (plurality of participating actors) and was extremely successful in the run-up to the Parliamentary elections in 2013 in the Czech Republic, inspiring similar initiatives abroad. We use social network analysis and qualitative interviews to test our concept of interlocking transactional ties. In contrast to our expectations, we find limited division of labour in the initiative, with just one organization, in the main, shouldering most of the important tasks. We use our findings to question the previously claimed importance of transactional activism in Central and Eastern Europe. Specifically, we call for more robust evidence describing how cooperation among organizations empowers civil society

Good girls don't comment on politics? Gendered character of online political participation in the Czech Republic

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Information Communication & Society on 25th September 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1369118X.2015.1088881.The article aims to contribute to the still relatively unexplored area of the relationship between gender and online political participation. Using two complementary methods – a representative, post-election survey of the adult Czech population and a content analysis of communication on the selected Czech political parties’ Facebook profiles during the campaign for the 2013 Parliamentary Elections – we attempt to challenge some established assumptions regarding the allegedly equalizing effect of the Internet and social media on participatory behaviour of men and women. While survey data discovered subtle yet statistically significant differences between men and women in some online expressive activities on Facebook, mainly commenting on other users’ statuses, content analysis further revealed that there are not only notable gender gaps among the Facebook users who commented on the campaign, but also differences in the tone of communication produced by the respective gender groups, with men posting more negative comments addressed to parties as well as to other Facebook users. We suggest that these results question the prevailing perception about the narrowing of the ‘gender gap’ in the online environment and call for a more nuanced methodological approach to different forms of online political expression