Other topics: supervised theses

2010- ::::

Petra Závorková: Religious faith as vanishing/reproducing itself

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

PhD theses

2015-2023 ::::

Terezie Lokšová: Participation as an instrument of change: historical trajectories and contemporary arrangements of professional roles

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

It appears that the organized involvement of residents in the revitalization of public spaces and other urban projects is already a standard part of the idea of good governance and development of Czech cities. This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of the current forms of this top-down participation in architecture and planning by exploring two underexplored, interconnected issues. First, through a policy mobility approach, the research retrospectively traces how invited participation has been established in Czech cities. Especially the early means of dissemination were constructed as instruments of democratization in post-socialist cities. The influence of this conception persists; therefore, the dissertation engages with the debates in Central and Eastern Europe's urban studies and responds to their implicit hierarchies, comparisons, and absences. Second, this work explores the contemporary forms of organized participation by focusing on the arrangements of participation by architects. This role has tended to be neglected despite its impact. The research also traces how the newly emerging consultancy role of participation experts, the historical orientation towards democratization, the monopoly of architects on contributory expertise, and the public deficiency model contribute to the preservation of boundaries, roles, and competencies within the participatory process.
2010-2015 ::::

Petra Závorková: How religious faith is vanishing/reproducing itself (uncompleted)

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

2008-2015 ::::

Jana Dvořáčková: Academic Jobs in Shifting Coordinates: An Ethnographic Study

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

During the last decades universities have been going through a period of dramatic changes. There have been an increase in requirements for functions to be to fulfilled as a result of knowledge economy and society ideals. At the same time, demands for effectivity rises. The development of higher education in Czech Republic is characterized by late yet notably fast transformation. Increasing numbers of students, as well as the rising expectations towards higher education, enhance the social significance of academic profession and its impact. Based on ethnographic research of five university departments, the thesis seeks to describe ways researchers “live” and negotiate selected imperatives and trends in the contemporary Czech education system (massification, accountability policies, imperative for international mobility and knowledge transfer between academic and applied sphere, flexibilisation of work) and their mutual tensions. Drawing on Martin Trow’s massification theory and on perspectives accentuating the extension of audit practices in research and education I analyze the ways university key activities – education, research and knowledge transfer – are being transformed by changes in academics’ activities.
2009-2011 ::::

Martina Hynková: Gendered (re)construction of the Czech political dissent during so called normalisation in 1970s and 80s (unfinished)

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

2002-2009 ::::

Lenka Zamykalová: Sweet diabetes - the life with chronic disease (unfinished)

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

2008 ::::

Kristýna Ciprová: Activism of gays and lesbians in the Czech context (unfinished)

PhD programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

MA theses

2008-2009 ::::

Pavla Špondrová: Seggregation of Roma children in Czech elementary schools

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno

This thesis deals with the issue of the separation of (ethnic) minorities and the dominant majority in the Czech Republic in a particular area – in education. Some theories describing relations between majority and minorities, above all to the situation in the Czech territory applicable ones, are summarized in the first part of the work. The author chose to use a qualitative research –empirical enquiry to focus in the main part of the thesis on searching for reasons of persisting segregation of Roma children within elementary education, whether in special schools, which were renamed by the new Education Act to practical primary schools, in special classes for mentally disabled within standard primary schools or in Roma-only ordinary primary schools. The aim of the thesis was to look for an answer on the question: Why are not the key players (majority parents, Roma parents, Roma and majority children, teachers and school principals, school psychologists and a civil servants – politicians) interested in a change in the status quo? The author, after the qualitative analysis of deep, semi-structured interviews with the key players and study of the relevant documents and literature, assumes: None of the main players in the field understand the potential change as suitable. Although one would expect at least some of them to be interested in the change. Motivation of key players are blended and complementary to each other, with a great “support” of the system components is relatively simple to recognize in their behavior rationality and legitimacy.

1999-2004 ::::

Jenda Paleček: Not quite ill, not quite normal: deconstructing mental illness

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

2000-2004 ::::

Mahulena Nenadálová (Hromádková): Experiencing the tatooed body

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

1999-2002 ::::

Lenka Zamykalová: Assisted reproduction - constituting the borders

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

In my thesis I study the practices of assisted reproduction technology in the Czech republic. My work is based on a one-year field work: interviewing doctors, embryologists, members of ethical committees, patients, representatives of ministry, lawyers, members of Pro-life movement and representatives of churches and doing media analysis. I concentrate on the ways different actors negotiate the boundaries of assisted reproduction. How they define and answer following three questions: Who can participate? (Borders of Infertility), What is artificial? (Borders of the Natural) and How to treat embryos? (Borders of Humaness). I focus mainly on the discursive strategies that are mobilized. I also analyze the ways the categories of nature, science and society and their mutual relationship are used as well as the use of categories of expert versus lay. I observe how the delicate balance and temporary consensus is managed and which actors are (in the end) more influential than others. At the end I put forward a slightly different mode of discussion – a way how to redefine the problem of assisted reproduction.
Full text (in Czech) as PDF file
1998-2002 ::::

Martina Rokosová: Altzheimer disease in family

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

2001-2002 ::::

Luděk Brož: Relatives For a Season: Incorporating Au Pairs Into Host Families

MA programme in ethnology, Philosophical Faculty at the Charles University in Prague

The author argues that the middle class English family does not offer symbolic space for a reproductive labourer. The role of an au pair as a “family employee” is highly problematic since it, on the one hand, conflicts with official discourse on cultural exchange (within which au pair visas are issued) and disrupts understandings of the private, domestic sphere (defined as a place of unselfish reciprocity) through associations with the public sphere and commerce. On the other hand, the au pair is not a “real” family member as understood through English idioms of blood and marriage bonds. As a consequence, au pairs are ascribed through everyday practices the often contradictory roles of “employee,” “parent,” “partner,” and “child”. To examine those mechanisms of ascription, the author employs feminist theories of reproductive labour, its stratification and commodification as well as kinship studies influenced in particular by the work of David Schneider. The thesis is based on six months of participant observation in an au pair position in Britain (2000-2001).
1999-2001 ::::

Tomáš Bitrich: The aesthetic values and borders in the world of music: Three cases from alternative rock

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

This text is based on analyses of a set of biographical interviews related to alternative rock. Theoretical background of this work resides in the sociology of music influenced by so called Actor-Network Theory (ANT). If the musical object is construed by mediators changing from situation to situation, how than can we talk about stable, spaceless and timeless value? The question is answered by analysis of three cases. In these three cases the moves over the object boundary are reached through the strategy of ontological gerrymandering. The part of the music that should stay a part of musical object should be unconditioned. It should be connected with the essence of the Music. To the contrary, the part of the music that should be pushed across the musical object boundary should be shown as socially or technically conditioned. It should become a social or technical context of the music.
Full text (in Czech)
1998-1999 ::::

Pavel Říčan: Returning to the countryside

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

1996-1998 ::::

Tereza Vajdová: ZOO: mirroring the Michel Foucault's concept of episteme

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

1995-1997 ::::

Petr Kamberský: Maniny: aneb cesta tam a zase zpátky

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

This work is a case study of a religious society "Christian community Maniny", often called a sect. It differs from other similar communities not so much in its creed as in the lived praxis. The society may be classified as one of new religious movements, more precisely as a movement for charismatic renewal. The key institution which constitutes the identity and social compactness of the Maniny society is a kind of "small group" - a small social group in which its members live their daily life. Through the "small group", Maniny become the primary group for its members. This study is based on concepts of grounded theory and objective hermeneutics. Its main part is built on analysis of biographic tales of former members of the society. The text analysis then shows that joining the society, staying with it and the degrees of identification with it are primarily determined not by "ideologic" resonance but rather by the biographic situation and personal relations to other members of the community. Departure from the society is then determined not by theological disputes but by biographic changes - the member who changes his social role does not "need" any more the background of a near but controlling community.
1996-1997 ::::

Martin Hádek: The concept of hypermedia technology: Knowledge construction metaphor

MA programme in sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

BA theses

1997-1999 ::::

Tomáš Bitrich: Authority and opinion leaders in Litomerice - the trajectory of a view

BA programme in sociology and social policy, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

1995-1996 ::::

Robert Basch: Constructing provisional arrangements - strategies of social survival in the Terzin ghetto

BA programme in sociology and social policy, Faculty of Social Sciences at the Charles University in Prague

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KONOPÁSEK, Z. (2024 - in press): Sbohem příteli, naše cesty se rozešly: O interpretativní analýze, počítačích a programu ATLAS.ti [Farewell, my friend, our paths have parted: On interpretive analysis, computers, and the ATLAS.ti software]. Biograf, (78), Available at http://www.biograf.org/

Discussion paper

KONOPÁSEK, Z. (2024): Ať spolu vědci dál nesouhlasí [Let us not ask the scientists to speak in a single voice]. In: Š. Kučera, ed: Jen další konec světa: 33 rozhovorů o antropocénu, "věku člověka", vedl Štěpán Kučera [Just another end of the world: 33 inteviews about anthropocene, lead by Štěpán Kučera]. Brno: Druhé město. Str. 116-122

book chapter

KONOPÁSEK, Z. & ŘÍHA, C. (2024): Letáčky [Leaflets]. In: E. Fulínová & A. Kvíčalová, ed: Antropocennosti: Malý průvodce světem antropocénu [Matters of Anthropocene: A small guide to the world of Anthropocene]. Praha: Academia. Pp. 73-83

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