Challenges of Central European Security: Critical Insights

This book employs various theories of contemporary security studies to explore some of the most important and most common security issues in Central Europe at this time. Individual chapters of the book adhere mainly to European branches of critical and constructivist security studies, through which they look at some of the salient topics of Central European security politics.The distinction between internal and external security issues is employed throughout the book for analytical purposes.Tato kniha zkoumá za pomoci teorií současných bezpečnostních studií některé z nejdůležitějších bezpečnostních problémů dnešní střední Evropy. Jednotlivé její kapitoly vycházejí především z různých evropských kritických a konstruktivistických přístupů ke studiu bezpečnosti, které jsou následně aplikovány na charakteristická témata středoevropské bezpečnosti. Pro analytické účely kniha rozlišuje mezi vnitřními a vnějšími bezpečnostními tématy

Zdroje nebezpečnosti v sociálně vyloučené lokalitě

The present study aims to contribute to the development of sociological research on insecurity in socially excluded localities in the Czech Republic. Inspiration for the conceptualisation of the subject of this study comes from the field of critical security studies and specifically the Copenhagen and Aberystwyth schools of security and feminism. Empirically, the study draws on the author’s long-term experience conducting fieldwork in socially excluded localities, mainly in the socially excluded locality Havířov-Šumbark. The study concludes that insecurity cannot be reduced to just the issue of crime or violence, as existing scholarship has done. An element of insecurity in socially excluded localities is also represented by territorial stigmatisation and structural victimisation, that is, fear of the consequences of symbolic pollution and declining living standards or low social status. Symbolic stigmatisation and structural victimisation have a constraining effect on how inhabitants of excluded localities live their everyday lives, albeit in different ways than street crime does.25327

Sociálně vyloučené lokality mezi stigmatizací a sekuritizací: výzkumná re-orientace

The research project presented here emerges from my long-term interest in the meaning of security in relation to socially excluded localities. These places have become a hot spot in the Czech Republic, as their partly Romany populations are accused of the higher rates of criminality on the municipal level. To understand this recent wave of anti-Gypsyism, I offer a proposal of a research project based on securitization theory. There are suggested four dimensions that allow the process of saying and doing security to originate, that is, material, symbolic, territorial, and political-bureaucratic dimension. Last but not least, the possibilities to incorporate the findings from my ethnographic research in an excluded locality into the whole enterprise are outlined as well as several problems involved in this regard

The Dialectic of the Gypsy Fair Fight: A Contribution to the Critical Anthropology of Security

Within a Czech socially excluded locality,street violence is recognized as a serious securitythreat. This paper deals with several interpretationsof this phenomenon which is oftentimessymbolized as the ‘Gypsy fair fight’. It is analyzedvia the dialectical method structured around thethesis–antithesis–synthesis conceptual triad.While a prevailing explication in the discourseof respective locale comprehends street violencein terms of ethnic conflict, a less frequent one opposesthis interpretation on the basis of culturalconflict between the so-called decent and inadaptablepeople. The last stage of analysis consists ofre-reading these accounts from the perspectiveemphasizing structural factors in a ‘Gypsy fairfight’ explanation. The aim of the paper is to localizethe social experience of (in)security in relationto the political order and social structure. Takingthem into account, we can aspire to sociologicallyrelevant knowledge of how security discoursesand practices shape our everyday ways of being

Illicit drug use and exposure in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Czechia: policy representations and evidence

This study examines the lifetime prevalence of illicit drug use and illicit drug exposure in disadvantaged (“Roma”) and more affluent neighborhoods in Czechia. The results of a survey among populations of both types of neighborhoods suggest no statistically significant difference between the two in terms of the overall lifetime prevalence of illicit drug use; however, lifetime prevalence of methamphetamine use proved higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Further differences were identified in drug exposure, with the population of more affluent neighborhoods being more frequently exposed to illicit drugs than the population of disadvantaged neighborhoods. The predictors of drug use and drug exposure were partially different for both populations. In the disadvantaged population, drug use was revealed, among other predictors, to be associated with housing conditions

“The Landlord Treads on Them, so Everything’s Fine”: Exploitation and Forced Mobility in Substandard Private Rental Housing in Czechia

OBJECTIVES: This study explores the representation of the private landlords’ practices that may contribute to housing insecurity and forced mobility in Czech segregated areas. THEORETICAL BASE: Following debate on the “poverty business”, the study uses literature on Roma marginalization, sociology of eviction and housing studies. METHODS: The thematic analysis of 167 documents published mainly by the Agency of Social Inclusion was conducted. OUTCOMES: The landlords’ practices are analyzed in four areas: overcharging rent and other payments, tenancy contracts, disinvestment, and coercion. Their relation to housing security and eviction is pointed out. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: Social workers shall continue to embrace the issue of exploitative practices in private rental housing and use social work methods to reduce the power asymmetry in the tenant-landlord relationships, prevent eviction, and improve rental and housing conditions. Tenant stigmatization should be countered by exposing the agency of other actors and structural factors that co-produce housing insecurity and forced mobilit

Anarchist Criminology: Mark Seis and Stanislav Vysotsky Interviewed by Václav Walach

Anarchist criminology is not a new approach to the critical study of harm, crime, and criminalization, but it has been largely overlooked and gained serious impetus only in recent years. This interview features two scholars who have been at the forefront of this development. Mark Seis co-edited the volumes Contemporary Anarchist Criminology (Nocella, Seis and Shantz 2018) and Classic Writings in Anarchist Criminology (Nocella, Seis, and Shantz 2020), which bring together some of the key texts that utilize anarchist theorizing to challenge the status quo, both in society and in criminology. Stanislav Vysotsky has recently published his book American Antifa (Vysotsky 2021), where he explores, inter alia, militant antifascism as informal policing. The interview emerged somewhat unconventionally. Stanislav was interviewed first on March 22, 2021. The resulting transcript was edited and sent to Mark who was unable to join the online meeting due to technical difficulties. I received his answers on May 24. The following is a slightly shortened and edited version of the interview

Illicit drug use and exposure in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Czechia: policy representations and evidence

This study examines the lifetime prevalence of illicit drug use and illicit drug exposure in disadvantaged (“Roma”) and more affluent neighborhoods in Czechia. The results of a survey among populations of both types of neighborhoods suggest no statistically significant difference between the two in terms of the overall lifetime prevalence of illicit drug use; however, lifetime prevalence of methamphetamine use proved higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Further differences were identified in drug exposure, with the population of more affluent neighborhoods being more frequently exposed to illicit drugs than the population of disadvantaged neighborhoods. The predictors of drug use and drug exposure were partially different for both populations. In the disadvantaged population, drug use was revealed, among other predictors, to be associated with housing conditions

“The Landlord Treads on Them, so Everything’s Fine”: Exploitation and Forced Mobility in Substandard Private Rental Housing in Czechia

OBJECTIVES: This study explores the representation of the private landlords’ practices that may contribute to housing insecurity and forced mobility in Czech segregated areas. THEORETICAL BASE: Following debate on the “poverty business”, the study uses literature on Roma marginalization, sociology of eviction and housing studies. METHODS: The thematic analysis of 167 documents published mainly by the Agency of Social Inclusion was conducted. OUTCOMES: The landlords’ practices are analyzed in four areas: overcharging rent and other payments, tenancy contracts, disinvestment, and coercion. Their relation to housing security and eviction is pointed out. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: Social workers shall continue to embrace the issue of exploitative practices in private rental housing and use social work methods to reduce the power asymmetry in the tenant-landlord relationships, prevent eviction, and improve rental and housing conditions. Tenant stigmatization should be countered by exposing the agency of other actors and structural factors that co-produce housing insecurity and forced mobilit