The diploma thesis: "Purity and Danger: The Perspective of Compliance with Ritual Purity in the Contemporary Roma House" deals with the boundary definitions of Roma groups and identities. This examination takes place via the narration of the Roma themselves and by observing the ritual practices in Roma households. The main tool that the Roma use in determining their group boundaries is the concept of cleanliness and impurity. It appears both in their narratives and in their ritual practice. This thesis describes the definition of a specific group of Roma women against many other groups of Roma and against the majority society. By doing so, we can examine their values, and the importance of the concept of purity in their lives and at the same time where their concept of purity comes from and how they work with it every day. Furthermore, it describes the environment, habits and clothes worn by women and their children, their hobbies and the way of their everyday life. Another important topic emerging at work is what roles men and women have in their group, and how the duties, or the spaces associated with their daily lives, are shared between the sexes. In conclusion, the thesis also answers the questions of what role the concept of purity plays in the life of particular studied families, how this...

The Diploma thesis focuses on the approach of the presidents of the Czech Republic to the power of appointment, dismissal and reconstruction of the government from 1993 to the present. In selected cases it compares individual specifics of approaches and interpretation. From the obtained data it is possible to compare the development of the approach over time and the development of the position of presidents within the Czech political system. The main source of the thesis is content analysis of the period media and other connected documents. Theoretically, the thesis is based on specialized literature focused on position and application of powers of presidents.

The topic of this diploma thesis is immigration from Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba to the Czech Republic from the year 1993 to the present. Political events in Venezula in recent years have increased migration to the neighboring states in region. Therefore, we could expect also increase in immigration from Venezuela to the Czech Republic. Even though the increase did really occur, the population of Venezuelans in the Czech Republic is not so large (mainly due to geographical distance and language barrier) in this diploma thesis will also appear immigration from Brazil and Cuba. Brazil was chosen mainly because the population of Brazilians living in the Czech Republic is the largest of all Latin American countries. Another difference between Venezuela and Brazil is the different mother tongue of immigrants. The last nationality represented are Cubans, whose immigration history to the Czech Republic or originally to the Czechoslovakia differs. During the socialist era, many Cubans lived here due to intergovernmental agreements of Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. Which cannot be said about Venezuelans and Brazilians at that time. According to statistics, even in the mid 1990's, only dozens of Venezuelans and Brazilians lived in the Czech Republic. While at this time lived hundreds of Cubans in the Czech...

UNIVERZITA KARLOVA Fakulta sociálních věd Institut politologických studií Bc. Anna Hlaváčková ZELENÁNÍ POLITICKÝCH STRAN - ADOPCE ENVIRONMENTÁLNÍ POLITIKY PARLAMENTNÍMI STRANAMI V ČESKÉ REPUBLICE Diplomová práce Praha 2011 Autor práce: Bc. Anna Hlaváčková Vedoucí práce: PhDr. Petr Just, Ph. D. Rok obhajoby: 2011 Bibliografický záznam: HLAVÁČKOVÁ, A., Zelenání politických stran - Adopce environmentální politiky parlamentními stranami v ČR, Diplomová práce, Univerzita Karlova, Fakulta sociálních věd, Institut politologických studií, Vedoucí diplomové práce PhDr., Petr Just, Ph. D., Praha 2011, 177 s. Anotace: Diplomová práce "Zelenání politických stran - Adopce environmentální politiky parlamentními stranami v České republice" se zabývá fenoménem zelenání univerzalistických poltických stran ve smyslu jejich postupné adopce environmentální politiky do volebních programů. Objektem zkoumání jsou programy českých parlamentních stran podle výsledků voleb do Poslanecké sněmovny Parlamentu České republiky v červnu 2010. Problematika je zkoumána z kvantitativního i kvalitativního komparativního hlediska, snaží se odhalit trendy v přijímání environmentální politiky do programových dokumentů a popsat jednotlivé postoje českých parlamentních stran k zelenému programu. Práce dále zkoumá vztah této programové změny k...

Who are the postmaterialists? Sociodemographic characteristics of those who bear postmaterialistic values in the Czech Republic and Germany This master thesis is devoted to the Value Change Theory formulated by Ronald Inglehart. This American sociologist came in the 1970's with a conclusion, that there is a substantial difference between the values of the generation that experienced war and the values of the post-war generation, which is experiencing an unprecedential economic growth. As a consequence these younger generations have different priorities called by Inglehart as postmaterialistic values in contrast to materialistic ones. The aim of this paper is to find out what are the socio-demographic characteristics of postmaterialists, whether they differ in time and over countries by using secondary data from the European Values Study and from International Social Survey Programme. The results support the theory only partly. Czech and German postmaterialists are both rather younger and more educated. But there is a difference when examining the influence of gender and the size of community, where they live. In the Czech Republic the probability of being a postmaterialist is higher among men and together with eastern Germany it is higher in big cities. For western Germany relationships were in...

This thesis seeks to analyse small parties within the Czech party system with the focus on the period of 1996 - 2010. The Attention is paid to those small parties that succeeded in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies. A theoretical framework of the small parties is presented in the first chapter. It is also necessary to outline a development of the small parties before the examined era (i.e. 1989-1996). There is a need to ask whether the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia could be seen as a small party or not. The main part of the work concentrates on years following the election in 1996 till last one in 2010 because it is recognised that circa since that time the Czech party system has begun to stabilise. It is structured in a chronological order from one election to another. Here 3 aspects that are related to the activities of the small parties, according to the author are studied: 1. results of the parties in elections to the Chamber of Deputies. 2. parties' influence at the time of creating a national government. 3. a position of the parties within a defined election period. In the last chapter the author placed results of one part of his research that was based on interviewing mainly former small parties MPs. The second part (inquiry via e-mail correspondence) is offered in the appendix.

TITLE: Psychological and Epistemological Aspects of Curriculum Design AUTHOR: Dominik Dvořák DEPARTMENT: Department of Primary Education, Charles University in Prague SUPERVISOR: Prof. PhDr. Vladimíra Spilková, CSc. ABSTRACT: The alarming trends in Czech pupils' achievement in reading, mathematics and science raised the question of quality of the Czech primary and lower secondary school curricula. A conceptual framework for analysis of the intended curriculum as a multi-level document has been devised. A review of available methods for curricular analysis is presented. The mixed method research design has been used to study the actual Czech curricular framework. Preliminary exploration of quantitative data on Czech pupils' success rates in individual items of TIMSS and PISA studies identified the "suspect" curriculum areas for the subsequent qualitative analysis. These areas (e.g. fractions in mathematics, reading literacy in language arts) were compared in past and present Czech curricula/syllabi. The international benchmarking method was used to compare Czech, English, Finnish, and U. S. curricula. The results revealed the idiosyncrasies that remain relatively stable feature of the Czech curricula. The neo-institutionalism may provide the theoretical explanation of the results of the analysis. KEYWORDS:...

The mass character of political mobilization is not the only measure for the strength of civil society. It turns out that, in post-communist countries including the Czech Republic, transaction capacity became the characteristic of protest movements and initiatives. It referrs to the ability to cooperate, take advantage of inter-organizational network and share resources and know how. These transactions, to a certain extent, compensate for poor mobilization capacity, which is typical for new transactional activism and civic self-organizations. The contrast between "old" social movements, episodic mass mobilisations, new transactional activism, along with civil self-organization, illustrated that even without mass mobilization a mature structure of civil society and advocacy organizations can emerge and operate. The year 1998 brought the beginning of favorable conditions for political activism. It turns out that the activity of the "old" activism decreases with the number of members of trade unions, which is typical for this mode. At the same time, people prefer forms of direct action and direct public protest. Using five selected case studies we described the nature of episodic mass mobilization, civil ad hoc and informal self-organization and new transactional activism,whose repertoire is besides petitions...

This thesis is devoted to the election and political marketing topics. I analysed different types of political marketing tools and guerilla marketing tools. Guerilla marketing is a special marketing form suitable for some campaign situations. Moreover we can use it for campaign optimization. This optimization is the core of this topic. It is important to find the best tools, with the lowest expenses for our preferred voters. In addition to that, I introduced several kinds of campaign tactics useable in the Czech politics. There are also election campaign proposed budgets for different types of the Czech elections.

This thesis raises the question to what extent remains lesbian identity relevant as a stigma in the Czech Republic. The theoretical part shows how sexuality and homosexuality in particular is influenced and shaped by society. I draw predominantly from scientific texts of foreign origin and for information relating to the Czech Republic I draw from Czech resources. My approach to the study of sexuality is constructivist. The research part of my study I drew from the analysis of semi-structured interviews with lesbian women. Initially, I offered an insight on what it means to be lesbian by the bearers of lesbian identities themselves. In the central part of my study, I explained in what context and why are the lesbian identities usually experienced as a stigma. As part of everyday life lesbian identity manifests itself as a stigma especially when a lesbian did not come out and treats her own identity as a stigma herself. By doing so she brings tension into interactions, especially with people who she is closer with, because she constantly deals with the control of information about her lesbian identity. Dissimulation of lesbian identity gets even harder in case that she is in relationship with a woman. Such a thing is necessarily connected with closeting the relationship, which makes it difficult for the...