In this diploma thesis I focus on the formation of urban cycling including heterogeneous participating actors - people, discourses, technologies, infrastructures and other materialities. I examine cyclists' relationships with their environment and describe asymmetries connected with the dominant status of automobilism in urban environment, and strategies for contesting this situation. I also focus on cyclo-activist discourse which plays an important role in the empowerment of cyclists in urban traffic. Mobilizing arguments of critical theory and the "right for the city" concept cyclo-advoacy strives to include as many citizens as possible in debate about public space and in this way support pro-cycling developments. From the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) this strategy has limits due to its operation with stabilized social science categories and I argue that ANT could contribute a more nuanced arguments to cyclo-advocacy with detailed description of connections between cyclists and urban environment, focus on embodiment and emotions and highlighting the role of materialities. It could thereby provide a stronger argument for furthering the pro-cycling development. Key words: urban cycling, automobilism, actor-network theory (ANT), cycloadvocacy, critical theory, materiality

This thesis is based on a qualitative research which draws from three case-studies of different households of alternative buildings. I am focused on those processes which are actively shaping these places regarding mutual human and non-human interactions. The movements of households' material elements are shown through spatial and temporal trajectories. By doing so I refer to the active meaning of materiality which was neglected by social sciences for a long time. The study demonstrates the importance of materiality not only as a significant driver of household's material reality but also of social practices overlapping societal phenomena. Key words semi-structural interview; alternative architecture; household; materiality; quasi- technologies; hybridization; spatial and temporal trajectories

Dissertation Abstract Paper Agora: The Samizdat Periodical Vokno and the Provincial Czech Underground in Historical and Social Perspective Martin Tharp, Department of Historical Sociology. The present work takes as its central subject a Czech samizdat publication, the magazine Vokno, primarily during its years of illegal operation, i.e. from 1979 until 1990, considered within the wider context of civil and cultural resistance to the oppressive social order of European state socialism. It treats Vokno as an instance of social action amid state forces inimical towards it, discussing the interplay and interaction of oppositional practice and the forces it opposes, both of state authority and more subtle ones of state cultural hegemony. It is argued that Vokno formed an attempt at a "counterculture" in the late 20th-century sense of an impulsive critique of a regimented modernity, yet within its immediate conditions was necessitated to assume three specific forms: as an aesthetic sub/counterculture, as a social network with differing levels of involvement and connections (whether to established intellectual dissent or to other social strata), and finally as a conscious oppositional social movement.

Using slow camera movement in 20 minutes in five video scenes of completely CGI-rendered environment called Area of Universal Latency, I am mapping space-time of the zone which is located in the north-western Slovakia. Minimalistic narration of the autonomous single-channel video projection is confronting subjectivism with universality of the Anthropocene, vanitas and spirituality with the belief of consumerism in infinite accumulation and simulacra of virtuality with the absolute truth. The story of this video-poem is communicated through virtual environment, composed sounds and natural noises. This thesis is presenting a fragment of my attempt to record the morphology of the specific place through which, as the title of the video states, I am indicating the state of reality and its consequences yet not describing it explicitly.

This dissertation examines the role of material in six selected zines from subcultural, artistic and activist circles. The work deals with printed micro media with a small reach and is based on the concepts of alternative media, gives a brief overview of theoretical perspectives on zines from subcultural studies, through fan studies and participatory culture. The thesis is critical of the concepts and calls for the enrichment of existing perspectives, mostly consolidated in old (post- marxist) materialism: specifically, for a reflection on post-digital culture and new materialism, which allows us to reconsider the role of material in the production and distribution of zines. The case study combines personal interviews and content analysis with an emphasis on material and ethnography of the spaces where zines are formed and transmitted. Based on Bourdieu's field theory, the study conceptualises the zine scene as a field of zine production and seeks to radically contextualise the traffic between bodies, spaces, paper and other materials, machines, and finally capital (economic and subcultural). The theoretical apparatus allows to examine the changing role of zines in the post-digital age when information shifts from sowers to platforms of emotion and touch. The main argument of the thesis is that...

This thesis is based on a qualitative research which followed the construction process of a self-sustaining house Earthship that is located in the larger centre of Prague. I am making use of Tim Ingold's approach of ecological anthropology which allows me to track the lines of the material flow and the exchange of materials which take place within the house and during the construction process of the Prague Earthship. Apart from humans there are other actants involved in these construction processes, that is non-human materials and elements of the natural environment which the building is an integral part of and which it is embedded in. With the help of the Ingold's concept of meshwork I interpret the Earthship as a living and dynamic organism, which is connected to its environment and which is through its becoming involved in various social processes. The materiality of the building navigates actions of its builders and residents and directs them to changing their life style and everyday practices towards more sustainable consumption.

This work aims, in a rather contemplative manner phased into three related parts, to discuss two concepts indispensable for Hegel's entire philosophy of life and history: language and memory. In Part I, I examine the triple relation between language and thinking, thinking and reality, and reality and language. I argue that language shares a logical structure with thinking and reality, and is itself the performative principle (or acteur) of creating reality, being itself the externalizing tool of the movement of thinking without which any development of the Spirit would not be possible. Part II targets the concept of memory and its function within thinking and action of self-consciousness. It is argued that Hegel's language functions as the modern concept of discourse in terms of its agency in reality. Memory is understood as fundamentally entangled with matter, or the material objectivity that calls in memory to be named, i.e. posited in language. Memory is an interiorizing principle, language is the exteriorizing principle, both deeply rooted in the so-called night of the self of each spirit. I also discuss the subject-objective relation against the background of memory, before moving onto Part III which generally tackles the process of the self-expression of the Spirit in history, the distinction...

This work aims, in a rather contemplative manner phased into three related parts, to discuss two concepts indispensable for Hegel's entire philosophy of life and history: language and memory. In Part I, I examine the triple relation between language and thinking, thinking and reality, and reality and language. I argue that language shares a logical structure with thinking and reality, and is itself the performative principle (or acteur) of creating reality, being itself the externalizing tool of the movement of thinking without which any development of the Spirit would not be possible. Part II targets the concept of memory and its function within thinking and action of self-consciousness. It is argued that Hegel's language functions as the modern concept of discourse in terms of its agency in reality. Memory is understood as fundamentally entangled with matter, or the material objectivity that calls in memory to be named, i.e. posited in language. Memory is an interiorizing principle, language is the exteriorizing principle, both deeply rooted in the so-called night of the self of each spirit. I also discuss the subject-objective relation against the background of memory, before moving onto Part III which generally tackles the process of the self-expression of the Spirit in history, the distinction...