Abstract
The review paper summarizes the results of the research project of the authors' collective headed by Pavel Pospěch, that has been devoted to the changes of the Czech countryside not only after 1989. It has been the subject of rural sociology since its inception in Western Europe and the USA, as well as its development in the Czech Republic.
Furthermore, the authors devoted themselves to the study of Czech countryside and agriculture in the period of normalization and after the restoration of the freedom, and they studied influence of European agricultural policies. An interesting chapter is about typology and classification of rural areas.
The last two chapters include rural self-presentation and rural commodification in the form of its marketization and visualization in the Village of the Year contest.