Title: First Metamorphosis of the Frankfurt School Author: Bc. Karel Chlouba Abstract: This thesis deals with first metamorphosis of the Frankfurt School - its origins, deve- lopement and historical context. The developement of this metamorphosis of critical theory is split into three parts within this work: first part elaborates individual moments and motives of this positive dialectic and also observes the develomepent of skepticism within it; second part elaborates the sceptical turn itself and the third part deals with the negative dialectics mainly presented within the work The Dialectic of Enlightenment. This thesis aims mainly on thought of Max Horheimer as a leader of the circle of thin- kers. Although he is not always the most powerful source of insight in this circle, he is the one who controls the direction of its thinking. Key words: Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, critical theory of society, sociology, ra- cionality, science, theory, reason, change, alternative, dialectic, enligh- tenment viii

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

The main subject of the presented work is the question of power within the context of sociological theory, and in relation to the mechanism of psychological mimesis and the phenomenon of the sacred. Our starting point is René Girard's mimetic theory, which systematizes the relationship between the mechanism of psychological mimesis and the sacred - in the light of the phenomenon of violence. We, firstly, present Girard's mimetic theory, explicate its main concepts, and situate all into a broader context. Further, we critically examine Girard's theoretical scheme and come to the conclusion that his theoretical and conceptual framework calls for a revision, if it is to be utilized within the context of sociology and social theory. Consequently, we try to "sociologize" Girard's thinking. First, we position his line of thought into the wider sociological context, and then examine his theory in the light of thinking of two classical sociologists, Gabriel Tarde and Émile Durkheim. We then project this examination into a theoretical and conceptual synthesis on the basis of which we formulate our own conceptual scheme, which is based on the assumption of psychological mimesis as an anthropological constant, and which overcomes the main shortcomings of Girard's theoretical framework. On the basis of this...

The aim of this thesis is to determine what affects cross-national differences in attitudes towards immigrants and immigration in Europe while using mainly theoretical framework of the Ethnic Competition Theory and the Human Capital Theory. We use multilevel models to test the hypotheses based on these theories. We use individual level data from European Social Survey 2014/2015 and country level data from World Bank, Eurostat, and MIPEX. The thesis finds a support for the Human Capital Theory, but does not find a clear support for the Ethnic Competition Theory. Even though economic vulnerability of a person is associated with attitudes towards immigrants, this association can be due to education. It seems in this thesis that people with higher education tend to hold more positive attitudes towards immigration of both skill levels of immigrants, professionals and laborers, than individuals with less years of education. Therefore, we find a support for the Human Capital Theory. On the contextual level, more permissive migrant integration policies seem to have positive effect on attitudes towards immigrants. Further investigation of the association between attitudes towards immigrants and immigration, and education and migrant integration policies is needed.

Systemic corruption remains a challenge to good governance and development in many parts of the world, while anti-corruption policies have largely been failing to prove success, despite increased international efforts. The growing scope of research literature suggests that ineffectiveness of the fight against corruption is caused by the inadequate theoretical ground that anti-corruption activities are developed on. Principal-agent model of anti-corruption interventions, which have been dominant, fall short in targeting the roots of systemic corruption and its informal institutions. As a result, a policy gap emerges between the reality of corruption and practice to curb it. By presenting the main indicators of systemic corruption and features of the anti-corruption policy gap, this thesis probes into the nature of corruption in Azerbaijan and analyzes the anti-corruption policies in place. It concludes that systemic corruption continues to prevail as a norm in Azerbaijan, while measures to fight against corrupt practices remain largely unsuccessful, due to lack of political will of principals, in contrary to the assumptions of the principal-agent framework.

The submitted thesis entitled Framing of the Istanbul Convention in Selected Czech Media examines the way in which this particular topic was presented in printed and online media in the year 2018. The Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the Istanbul Convention, is a document, in which Czech Republic, by accepting it, has to commit to the a necessary steps to fight against gender based violence in our country. The aim of this work is to identify and present the specific media frames that have been used in the connection with the discussions surrounding the Istanbul Convention and to describe the construction of the actors around this document. The research sample consists of four printed pieces of media, namely Hospodářské noviny, Lidové noviny, Mladá fronta DNES and Právo and eight online journals aktualne.cz, blesk.cz, denik.cz, eurozpravy.cz, novinky.cz, parlamentnilisty.cz, reflex.cz and seznamzpravy.cz. Qualitative methods based on grounded theory techniques were used for the research. The result of open and axial coding is in total nine media frames about the way in which the Istanbul Convention is framed in Czech media.

We discuss certain aspects of string field theory and its applications in exploring the land- scape of classical string theory vacua. We start by giving a brief overview of various tree-level string field theories, as well as of some relevant mathematical background. As a byproduct of our general discussion of observables, we present a new gauge-invariant quantity for the A∞ formulation of open superstring field theory. Putting particular emphasis on perturba- tive methods, we proceed to review in detail the construction of tree-level effective actions governing the dynamics of a certain subset of degrees of freedom. In light of recent devel- opments, we also discuss efficient methods for evaluating certain vertices of zero-momentum effective actions for open superstring and heterotic string field theories in the presence of a global N = 2 worldsheet superconformal symmetry. We show how to apply this perturbative approach to study dynamics of the D(−1)/D3 system (both with and without a B-field), while also discussing a number of more complicated Dp-brane configurations. At generic points in their moduli spaces, such bound states of Dp-branes clearly cannot be described in terms of simple Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. The rest of this thesis is therefore devoted to developing analytic...

The PASS theory createsa new perspective not only on intelligence but also the way of thinking and learning in general. The c oncept of intelligence is expanded by Lurij a's Keywords: PASS Theory , PASS Rating Scale , Cognitive p rocesses, I nformation P rocessing T heory, Intervention

This thesis focuses on spatial distribution of immigrants in Italy. In the beginning, it presents three migration theories used in the thesis (network theory, Human Capital Model, institutional theory) and related hypothesis for the research. Then it summarises the migration history of Italy since the Second World War and the current situation. After that, the tex proceeds to the examination of the spatial distribution of immigrants in Italy. The examination is done in two ways. First, there is analysis of statistical data by correlation analysis which tries to find factors which explain the immigrants' distribution in Italy. Second is the analysis of the results of a survey done in Trieste, Italy, between March and June 2011 among the two largest groups of immigrants living in the province of Trieste (those with citizenship of Serbia and Romania). The main results are that one of the most important factors for the immigrants' distribution are the job opportunities and better earnings for themselves and for their families. Interestingly, the network theory wasn't supported by the research, especially for Romanians who seem to prefer provinces with less Romanians (and foreigners in general) already present. After the analysis, the results are compared with the situation in the Czech Republic. For further...

The frozen plasticity theory is a punctuationalist theory of adaptive evolution. It states that long periods of stasis, during which populations respond to selection pressures only by elastic change in the frequency of already present alleles, alternate in the evolution of sexual species with short periods of plastic evolution, during which alleles can get fixed or eliminated by directed selection. Asexual species are not expected to maintain such high genetic polymorphism in the long term. They should, however, be able to plastically respond to selection pressures throughout their whole existence. This difference between the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual clades has a number of ecological and macroevolutionary implications. Concerning ecology, we could expect different environmental preferences of sexual and asexual species. Accordingly, in our first work that was based on a comparative study, we statistically significantly supported the hypothesis that (ancient) asexual groups of (eukaryotes) inhabit more stable and homogeneous habitats than their related sexual controls. Focusing on actually experienced, i.e. subjective, heterogeneity of the environment turned out to be the crucial factor of this type of research. From the viewpoint of macroevolutionary implications of the frozen...