This dissertation focuses on the development of autism in the Czech Republic from an historical-sociological perspective. The study pursues the structural processes related to autism and their impacts on individuals, as well as the roles of various agents in the shaping of these processes. The study utilises the social constructivist approach as well as the standpoints of the interpretative stream of sociology. The concept of autism was introduced in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s. It was understood as a rare psychiatric disorder and was known about by only a few professionals. Until the beginning of the 1990s, autism wasn't recognised in Czechoslovak society. Since the beginning of the 1990s new processes have emerged, resulting in the formation of a paradigm of autism - a new dominant and increasingly recognized system of values, methods, approaches and institutions, all connected to the concept of autism. The category of autism was reconceptualized in the 1990s and has started to be used more widely in Czech society. Based on the concept of autism, new institutions have emerged, such as specialized educational approaches and services, therapeutic methods, social services and NGOs etc. Discourses of autism have also started to form. This paradigm has been crucial for the social history of autism...

The dissertation "Vojvodovo Sketches" thesis consists of an introduction and further of published texts related to Vojvodovo. Vojvodovo, a Czech village in north-western Bulgaria founded in 1900 by about twenty Czech evangelical families from the village of Svatá Helena in what is today the Romanian part of Banat, which they left because of religious disputes and a shortage of land. Although Bulgaria engaged in several armed conflicts in the first decades of the twentieth century, the village flourished economically and the population rose steadily during that period. Eventually, however, its economic prosperity, based almost exclusively on agriculture, was curtailed by a land shortage. As a result, some villagers emigrated to Argentina in 1928. By 1934/5 the village was again overcrowded and suffering serious land shortage. This time some of its inhabitants moved to the Turkish village of Belinci in north-eastern Bulgaria (Isperich region). The history of Czech settlement in Vojvodovo, as well as Belinci, effectively ends in 1949-1950, when the overwhelming majority of their Czech inhabitants left as a part of post-war migratory processes organized under inter-state agreements and resettled in several villages in the South Moravia region of the Czechoslovak Republic. Vojvodovans were renowned for their...

The aim of this work is to analyze the problem of social alienation of two cultural centers of one region, rediscover a common link in between them and suggest a solution of their permanent coexistence through a specific architectural design.

It has been approximately three decades since "new" approaches to studying regions began to appear in the context of socio-cultural turn in geography. From the perspective of the so-called new regional geography, the region does not represent a naturally given spatial unit nor a semantically empty construction of the analysis of the society's spatial organization. The "new" regional geographer perceives regions as dynamic social structures linked to a collective consciousness. In this respect, the research of regions represents a study of the social organization of space. While research of the spatial (geographic) organization of society in Czech geography has a rather long tradition, a similar statement cannot be made regarding the research into the social organization of space (the other side of the relationship between space and society). Despite the fact that even in Czechia the number of academics interested in the process of the institutionalization of regions is gradually growing, i.e. about how and why regions are constructed/deconstructed as a part of social life, domestic research of the social organization of space is still only in its early stages. The present doctoral dissertation represents a relevant contribution to the current debate regarding the issues of the social organization...

Gastronomy belongs among the important elements of the French national identity and at the same time it is one of the main tourist attractions. Which place and why does the gastronomy have among the modern trends of public diplomacy and how is the French gastro-diplomacy formed on the online social media? There are certain long-lasting tensions visible in the French gastronomic discourse, for example between the Republican idea of unity and the foreign policy strategy of supporting diversity. However, historical research shows that these aspects are not excluding one another, they are more like two sides of the same coin. Gastro-diplomacy is then understood as a narrow dimension of the foreign policy, namely as a part of public cultural diplomacy. In the framework of contemporary French gastro-diplomacy, it is possible to observe the employment of modern instruments, such as the communication through online social networks. Combined with the bet on the long-standing good image of French cuisine, it is one of the ways in which France prove successful in the international arena. It is also a sign of strategic behaviour against the standardization of food products. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts showed that during the period 1. 1. 2009 - 30. 6. 2017,...

The thesis Racism and New Dimensions of Projecting the Multicultural Experience in Contemporary British Drama analyzes multiculturalism in contemporary Britain and questions its discursive boundaries through the works of some black and Asian contemporary playwrights such as Roy Williams, debbie tucker green and Tanika Gupta. The works of these playwrights articulate a set of experiences that reflects an image of the contemporary issues of bigotry and violence in Britain. Williams, Gupta and green present new approaches on the multicultural Britain concerning the issues of racism, discrimination and knife crime, shedding light on the cruelly racist world from the 'white and black' perspectives. Rethinking the questions of identity, Britishness, social agency and national affiliation from new proportions. The second chapter Roy Williams's Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads (2002), Sucker Punch (2010) and The No Boys Cricket Club (1996). Williams stages sport in all its complexity as a rich ground for contemplating the issues of racism, belonging, nationalism and identity. He portrays an image of the conflict among the ethnic communities in a multicultural space, highlighting that conflict in its larger context. The third chapter discusses Tanika Gupta's White Boy (2008) and Sugar Mummies (2006). Both of...

Barbora Youssef Staňkovská - abstract (annotation) of the Master thesis "The Role of National Identities in the Media Space Devoted to European Politics: The Czech Presidency of the European Union in European Press" Abstract Diploma thesis "The Role of National Identities in the Media Space Devoted to European Politics: The Czech Presidency of the European Union in European Press" deals with media images of national identities, the way of their formation in media, and the effects of these images on transformations of national identities during the process of European integration. Using the qualitative content analysis and an inductive approach to the collected data, an analysis of two corpuses of articles was carried out. These articles treated the topic of the Czech presidency of the European Union and were published during that period in the Czech newspaper MF DNES and the French newspaper Le Monde. The most important Czech actors and other elements were identified, which together hold up the media image of the Czech Republic. The media image of the Czech national identity is described through them. Based on the results and wider theoretical frame of the thesis, the author further reflects the position of identities in the European media space and states that this space is not Pan-European but rather...

National identity is a complex notion of being and belonging. The multiple selves, out of which the identity is composed of such as gender, class, race, and ethnicity etc. pose a challenge in creating any sort of unified collective national identity that would encompass each individual's unique set of these multiple selves and roles. This complexity is even more pronounced when a national identity of such nations as the U.S. is examined. Due to its multicultural and multiethnic nature, identifying a collective American identity becomes a challenge. This thesis examines the birth of national identity in the U.S. during the Revolutionary era through the time of the Early republic and the period of 1800-1850 in an effort to discover the unifying features of such complex identity and to uncover its origins. The text consults theoretical framework on nation, nationalism and national identity to establish a working definition of a nation and to explain the complexity of the concept which is then further examined in the context of the U.S. In combination with a historical overview of the period 1770-1850, the thesis addresses nationalist feelings and thoughts that permeated the country at the time, examining the first emergence of calls for unified American national identity and the subsequent...

This master's thesis focuses on a bilingual Czech-English collection of short stories Hořící nebesa/The Burning Skies by Jiří Fränkl. It creates a profile of the author and studies the bilingual text questions of self-translation, bilingual writing and identity, which serves as a basis for analysing both language versions and examining their differences with regard to the author's personality.

This work aims to compare two models of migration, on the one hand, Czech migration to the capital city of Mexico on the other hand, Mexican migration to the capital city of Czech Republic. This text looks at migration as a cultural-social act, with its main protagonists, individual migrants. Therefore this work is not demographic, but anthropological based on qualitative research. With the background of basic sources it offers the monitoring of behavior of two groups of migrants, especially in their adaptation process. The basic research question then is: What is the process of cultural adaptation of the Czechs in Mexico, DF and Mexicans in Prague? To what extent are these models similar or different? Finding answers to this question necessarily leads to other topics, reply to completion, which are: How strong are the tendencies of development of ethnic communities? How respondents experienced the process of adaptation and changes of their identity? What strategies of living in the destination country they occupied? To what extent they communicate with compatriots and embassies? This paper provides both theoretical basis, which defines the terms of migration, cultural adaptation and identity, and practical sections, which through examples of qualitative research describe the process of cultural adaptation...