The thesis aims to look into the possibilities for the use of community work in the process of immigrant's integration into the society. The community work as an instrument of social work serves as a mean for building mutual bonds within a urban community, encourages development and exercise of the potential of the community and its citizens. This strengthens the active citizenship and involvement of the citizens in the processes that imminently concerns their lives. The thesis desribes the ways of possible inclusion of the immigrants in these processes in order for them to become equal fellow citizens of local communities and equal citizens of the country into which they decide to emigrate. The theoretical and philosophical background of this approach is an implementation and development of the political, civil and social rights that the immigrants acquire when given the permission of stay in certain country. The thesis describes results of a qualitative research lokking into community practise of two cities - Sheffield (United Kingdom) and Graz (Austria). These two examples describing the city council's involvement and the organizations-in-the-community's involvement are used to both define the realms of integration where the community work plays an undeniable role, and to come up with concrete...

This dissertation applies anthropology analysis to study a specie of a tree frog, living in the northern Amazonia, called Kambo. The wax-like substance, which the frog releases upon irritation, is used for its healing potential around the world. A basic conceptual framework is used to analyse the frog from the perspective of modernity, globalisation, and diffusion of cultural dimensions. The dissertation anticipates their influences on multiple parties. The geographical scope of the dissertation is limited on Amazonia and the Czech Republic. Kambo is a host of numerous biochemical interactions; in addition, it is used in socio-material context; in rituals; for gaining, or circulation of experience; or it is part of various techniques of understanding oneself, as described in later works of Michel Foucault. Due to Kambo's alleged participation on creation of human's subjective thinking, the dissertation answers the question on the extent to which Kambo could be responsible, through ethnographic lens. The results show that for those respondents who were experienced Kambo users; using the substance as a potion for treating physiological and mental issues and who were subsequently influenced by New Age movement; Kambo stands as a milestone in their life trajectories. Through the ethnographic research,...

Structural Violence and Great Power Competition: The Effects of Sino-U.S. Geopolitical Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific Abstract This paper examines the effects of the ongoing strategic rivalry between China and the United States for influence over the Indo-Pacific in order to demonstrate the negative impacts upon structural violence within the region. Using an amalgamation from various authors, this paper establishes a definition and set of criteria for the presence of structural violence which are then applied to the cases of Vietnam, Myanmar, and Japan. By correlating the mechanisms with which China and the United States garner influence with the specific consequences for the prevalence and severity of structural violence, this paper illustrates that the ongoing geopolitical rivalry poses considerable threats to all Indo-Pacific nations regardless of their development status or social, political, economic, and geographic characteristics. Results indicate that the extent of each country's structural violence was directly or indirectly affected by the presence of foreign involvement, and that different levels of alignment or independence can serve to reduce or exacerbate these effects. Furthermore, evidence indicated that China's methods pose a more immediate threat to induvial countries, but that the United...

In the long term the issue of the welfare state is one of the most debated political topics and it concerns almost all members of society. In the last few decades the advanced welfare state has been more frequently perceived as an obstacle for competitiveness in the globalized economy and issues of its economic sustainability and societal impact are widely debated. Sweden is generally considered to be a country with the most advanced model of welfare state, but it is also a country which suffered from a deep economic crisis in the early 1990s. Development of the Swedish model of welfare state in the context of the crisis presents a critical case for assessment of welfare state vitality. In this thesis, welfare state is defined as a multidimensional phenomenon that includes both social expenditures and institutions of social policy and power structures and legitimacy. For analyzing of transformations of the Swedish welfare state in all four dimensions is applied a theoretical perspective based on the power resources theory, the institutional approach, the transnational perspective, the dependency and the world-systems theory which whose complementarity is theoretically substantiated. The thesis with this approach should contribute to better understanding of the development of the welfare state in...

What effect do global news agencies have on foreign sections of Czech daily newspapers; that's the focus of this master thesis. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces two before-mentioned concepts of intermedia agenda-setting and globalization of news. Other theoretical concepts like gatekeeping, news values or media routine are also briefly presented. So are profiles of selected media outlets are also presented. Next part of the thesis introduces the reader to methodology upon which the research is based. The research itself is divided into two parts. The first one is a quantitative content analysis of ČTK's foreign news agenda during the specified period. The same analysis was also carried out for selected Czech daily newspapers. The research focused on several variables - what media sources are being used, what topics do the articles cover or who are the actors mentioned in the articles. The second part of the research focused on whether and on what scale do daily papers use texts provided by ČTK and if they're being used without adjustments. Main findings of the research with commentary are presented in the conclusion section of this thesis.

Globalization is a concept that manages to attract both academic and mainstream attention and it became an important reference point of many contemporary conversations. However, there is a surprisingly little genealogical research on globalization. This thesis seeks to contribute in this area by analyzing part of the overall academic debate about this concept from the year 1990 to 2012 and by reconstructing the debates and arguments through which the concept was shaped. It breaks the chosen time frame in two periods (1990-2000 and 2001-2012) and conducts a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the debate in four leading academic journals, each of them grounded in different discipline. The thesis finds that key reference points of the debates about globalization in both periods of the time were the terms market and state and the relationship between them. Globalization as a phenomenon that was said to alter the nature of this relationship posed a particular challenge to social science paradigms that operated with state-centered frameworks. The key dimension in which globalization was discussed the most was in both periods the economic one; however, we also saw a rise of social dimension in the second period indicating a shift in attention beyond the economics. Furthermore, this work finds that...

This master's thesis examines how powerful and determining Japanese cultural influence is and how it impacts today's globalized world. It primarily focuses on the Czech audience and its relationship to Japan. The aim of this research is to assess the current efforts made by the Japanese government to export its culture, and compare them with the image that Czech society has on Japan. The primary source of this research is quantitative data collected from Czech and Slovak respondents. . Data was collected by a semi-structured questionnaire that consisted of both open and closed questions and that was spread in electronic form. The first section of the thesis empirical. The main theoretical, historical, and socio-cultural concepts of Japan. are defined and explained in the context of modern convergence culture and the Japanese media mix theory. Japanese cultural diplomacy and the application of soft power as the primary bearer of influence over the West are explained through the critical analysis of specific campaigns. Then, the methodological section analyzes the answers of 1,609 respondents across three predefined samples. Analysis shows that Japan's cultural promotion efforts in the Czech Republic are limited, and that take place primarily through official agencies or directly through the fans of...

of diploma thesis Title: Strangers at home - In Search of Indigenous Identity at the Suburbs of a Glocal Mexican City Student: Marie Heřmanová Tutor: Mgr. Radovan Haluzík The presented thesis is based on a fieldwork realized during five months in the city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas in south of Mexico and deals with different strategies through which are young Tzotziles and Tzeltales living in the new suburbs of the old colonial city constructing their identity. Main axes of the thesis are first the relationship of these young people to the native communities of their parents and second to the rich and turistic city centre. As a main ethnographic method I use participant observation and also the material culture studies ( the tesis focus mostly on identification through visage and consequently on the consitution of identity through styles and modes of dressing).

Global companies have to deal with cultural differences which may be source of misun-derstanding in the moment when company expands in to the new location and tries to introduce own organizational culture in different country. This diploma thesis tries to identify possible complications which might arise to an American company running business in the Czech milieu. At the beginning the thesis introduces main terminology and theoretical concepts related to the topic (labour market changes, globalization, culture, organizational culture etc.). The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the results of own survey made among the employees in the Czech office of an American company. Survey is based on the results of the analysis of documents about Czech and American values (mainly about values related to the work) and is trying to analyze how Czech employees accept American corporate culture. Survey tries also to confirm differences which are rising from cultural value orientation of Czech and American population.

Diploma thesis "The Concept of Tradition in the Context of the Theory of Reflexive Modernization" deals with the phenomenon of the tradition and its influence on the construction of the social order and the construction of individual biographies in the modern era. The thesis rests on the theory of reflexive modernization which is well- known in sociological theory thanks to Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens. The present reinterpretations of their papers quite often lead to the incorrect explanation of the current reality. Then, the reality is claimed to be detraditionalized. Using the concept of relativization I reject considering the actual state as the state without tradition. The aim of the concept of relativization, which is supported by the principle of sociological imagination, is to dispute this radical statement. The postulate of relativization is demonstrated on the example of the traditional social forms, such as nuclear family. In a wider perspective the aim of the thesis is to declare the continuing tendencies in social sciences to emphasize only the selected aspects of social reality.