Syllabus
THE FIRST SESSION MEETS ON OCTOBER 10TH, 12:30 p.m., ROOM 2071 JINONICE (classes are cancelled on Oct 3 due to immatriculation ceremony).
Schedule: every Tuesday 12:30-13:50 in room 2071, Jinonice.
This course presents the history of Czech sociology as a part of the international development of social sciences in the period from the end of WW II to the present.
The study of the history of social sciences provides important contributions to our understanding of these disciplines. Besides the history of ideas, it is no less important to map the development of institutions and look at how the government and private donors influenced the growth (or decline) of social sciences throughout the 20th century. This course puts Czech sociology in international context by studying the work of its major representatives against the background of the substantive and methodological agenda of sociology in Western Europe and USA. It 1) offers an outline of the history of Czech sociology in the period 1945-2010s and 2) it situates the trajectory of Czech sociology against the developments in the discipline in other countries of East Central Europe, Western Europe and the United States. The background for our account of the development of Czech sociology is provided by studies about the history of Western European, American and global sociology (Turner, Platt etc.) as well as by the literature on parallel processes in other countries of East Central Europe (Voříšek, Keen and Mucha etc.).
The course combines lecturing with seminar-style readings and critical discussions of selected texts and data.
FOR DETAILED SCHEDULE, COURSE TOPICS AND READINGS SEE THE FULL SYLLABUS IN THE ATTACHMENT.
THE NEW SYLLABUS FOR WINTER SEMESTER 2017 WILL BE UPLOADED BEFORE THE FIRST SESSION. To get a more precise idea about this course, see the syllabus for Winter semester 2016 in the files section.
Annotation
THE FIRST SESSION MEETS ON OCTOBER 10TH, 12:30 p.m., ROOM 2071 JINONICE (classes are cancelled on Oct 3 due to immatriculation ceremony).
This course views the history of Czech sociology as a part of the international development of social sciences in the period from the end of WW II to the present; it pays attention to comparisons to sociologies in Poland, Hungary, Austria and other countries. Main topics: the destruction of the interwar sociology after the Communist coup of 1948; the nature of Marxism-Leninism as a replacement for sociology in 1950s and 1960s; the renaissance of Czech sociology in the 1960s; sociology under the neo-Stalinist "Normalization" regime 1969-1989; international intellectual networks, philanthropic organizations; new themes, methods, possibilities and problems after 1989; sociological journals and books across several decades; international influences on Czech sociology; and others.