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This paper examines the usefulness of the new social movements (NSMs) paradigm in the changing context of East European post-communist societies and their agricultural systems and rural communities. Starting with statements formulated in Western sociology in the context of Western democratic societies about NSMs as a protest against modernity, the paper analyses the role of such movements in the still modernizing Eastern European reality. The first part of the paper briefly examines some basic elements of the NSMs paradigm in European and American social science. The goal of this section is not only to identify the basic characteristics of NSMs, but also to identify the typical frames used by them. The second part of the paper focuses on the presence of NSMs in the communist era. Drawing on the idea of NSMs as indicators of a "post-materialist shift" as well as of "anti-establishment" and "pro-participatory democracy", the paper examines the frames of democratic opposition in Eastern Europe before 1989. The final part of the paper considers several selected examples from Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to explore the role of NSMs in the process of shaping new ruralities during the post-communist transformation.

This paper examines the role of collective memory in the protection of "traditional" sociocultural and symbolic aspects of football vis-à-vis the processes of commodification and globalization. Empirical evidence that underpins the analysis is drawn from a multisite ethnographic study of football fan activism in the Czech Republic, Italy, and England, as well as at the European level. The authors argue that collective memory represents a significant component of the supporters' mobilization and is related to the protection of specific football sites of memory, including club names, logos, colors, places, heroes, tragedies, and histories. The authors further explain that collective memory operates through three interconnected dimensions: embedded collective memory, transcendent collective memory, and the collective memory of contentious politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extant research on social movements has highlighted activists' discursive tactics to challenge the state, yet little analytical attention focuses on elite efforts to dominate the discourse arena through the deployment of oppositional frames. This paper analyzes elite oppositional framing surrounding the placement of a highway bypass in the Czech Republic. Our research examines how democratic states deploy oppositional frames and enlist elite countermovement support for their efforts to obstruct challenges. Using a range of data sources, we delineate the mechanisms used by these elite actors to vilify and stigmatize environmental activists, paving the way for more violent forms of public harassment. The concept we initiate, "discursive obstruction", adds the critical dimension of power relations to analyses of both framing processes and discursive opportunity structures. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for social movement research.

Anti-government extremism in Germany may represent examples of the significant shift and growth of anti-government movements and anti-system activism in the past few years. Conspiracies and insurrections to overthrow a democratically elected government are certainly not new phenomena, but they are uncommon in consolidated Western democracies. The paper tries to convey the manifestations of delegitimization movements of sovereign citizens with an emphasis on the potential of political violence in the context of correlations of conspiracy theories and disinformation and radicalization group mobilization.Selected sovereign citizen movements are introduced based on their motivations, goals, and strategies of resistance to existing government structures.. The evaluation is done with the help of an analytical model of three dimensions of assessing the level of anti-government extremism of sovereign movements: 1. delegitimization of the democratic order, 2. offensive social action, 3. democratic norms within the sovereign movement. Expressions of coercion against public authorities, state institutions and courts in the Czech Republic copy the expressions of foreign sovereign citizen movements, including the terminology and form used. With the development of the anti-systemic scene in recent years, frustrations that have been embedded in society for a long time crystallized, among other things. Among them for example deep-rooted hostility is towards the division of Czechoslovakia among a certain part of the population. It appears a lot in the 40/50+ generation, which, by the way, is becoming the main driver of the antisystemic discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of environmental activism in the Czech Republic since the country joined the European Union (EU) in 2004. We argue that even under similar contextual conditions political activists come up with and develop their course of action and strategies on the basis of their strategic capacity and do not necessarily follow a uniform pattern determined by the given contextual settings. In this respect, in addition to bringing a new analysis of post-accession activism in the Czech Republic, the article argues for an actor-centred understanding of political activism and social movements. Since the field of social movement studies is still dominated by the structuralist understanding of activism, this forms a relevant contribution to the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper discusses the role of public leadership and the strategic response of local governments to the external shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors examine the typical Czech response with regard to how the leadership of municipalities in the Czech Republic responded to this extremely negative external stimulus. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use qualitative research methods for this investigation. They have chosen the case study method (see Yin, 2009; Stake, 1995; Klonoski, 2013). The general case is the Czech Republic. Mini-cases consist of municipalities from the Znojmo region, municipalities of the Central Bohemian region and the municipal districts in the capital city of Prague. Furthermore, the method of participant observation was used. Findings: The authors' analysis of the problem of local government responses to the pandemic crisis shows that municipal leaders responded with a variety of (non-)adaptation strategies. It appears that certain framework factors influenced the various local governments' behavior. Originality/value: The article examines the strategic behavior of Czech municipal leaders regarding the pandemic crisis based on the observation of the reactions of local governments in the Czech Republic to the pandemic crisis and strives to define their basic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper fills the gap in research on online public representations of politically active youth by focusing on the discursive representations of Fridays for Future, a youth-led climate movement, in user generated content in Czechia and Hungary. By employing the childism approach, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of the exclusion of youth from the public sphere. Our qualitative analysis identified two exclusionary strategies: 1) normative roles attributed to youth; 2) labeling youth for allegedly holding aberrant values. We stress both similarities and differences in the two countries of Central and Eastern Europe, reflecting this region's historicopolitical features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Czech Journal of International Relations / Mezinárodní Vztahy is the property of Ustav Mezinarodnich Vztahu, v. v. i. (Institute of International Relations) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines gender aspects of tactics of the alter-globalization movement. Focusing mainly on two transnational collective actions in Prague in 2000 and in Genoa in 2001, the research draws on participant observation, interviews with activists and analysis of the movement's alternative media. The feminist activism within the movement, the gendered tactics and their representation in the alternative media are analysed using the concept of diffusion. Although feminists are involved in the protests, and local Czech feminist activism was incited by the international mobilizations in Prague in 2000, they are often marginalized because of the emphasis on masculine confrontational and violent tactics used in demonstrations. The movement's alternative media further reproduce gender stereotypes. The visual representations of the tactics are traditionally gendered -- women are depicted as fairies, men as fighters; this is because the movement does not want to appear weak and feminine, and seeks to be effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research into the dynamics of the social movements has contributed significantly to the recognition that the political and geographic preconditions underlying the emergence of the feminist collective identity are important factors in the possibilities of feminist organizing. Therefore, the aim of the article was to analyse the intersection between political and personal, historical and contemporary aspects of narrating identity in the local context and to gain insight into how feminists reflect on their collective feminist identification in the light of the post-socialist history. The study builds on narrative interviews with 26 women, who reflect on the historical background of the Czech feminist movement in which they engage nowadays. The research results discuss distinctive features of post-socialist countries, e.g., non-activism, unwillingness to express committed consent in relation to feminist movement and its continuity, the negotiation of western and local feminism and limits of the construction of the collective identity. This article is intended to be a selective summary - linking theoretical concepts, which have been extensively discussed but have been not substantiated by practical statements, to the contemporary state of feminist organizing. My effort was to contribute to the debates on the specificity of women's experience in post-socialist societies and analyse the framework of how we think about historical implications of local feminism within the context of "western" feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares Czechoslovak, Czech and Slovenian hardcore punk fanzine scenes from the 1980s up to the present, emphasising in particular their connections to the various anti-authoritarian movements with which they share the common idea of do-it-yourself (DIY). The comparison is embodied in the histories of above-mentioned scenes and in the context of their legacies. Fanzines are the author's main sources mainly because cultural and political activities were connected on their pages. While Czech hardcore-punk fanzine culture has persisted until today, Slovenian fanzines in fact have disappeared hand-in-hand with advancing gentrification, despite the punk scenes being remarkably strong there during the period of socialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past 15 years there has been an increase in the use of local direct democracy in the Czech Republic. The analysis shows that the primary cause has been the regulation of development projects. Using transaction costs economics (TCE) approach it is shown how the regulation related to the siting of development projects leads to a not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) response resulting in political activism that uses institutions of local direct democracy. Drawing from the TCE perspective, in this article it is argued that the key sources of this political mobilisation have been the existence of contractual hazards related to development projects and an inability to form credible commitments between developers and communities. The article highlights a previously neglected explanation for the increased use of direct democracy because sources outside the political system often go unnoticed and contributes to the research on NIMBY disputes and on the expansion of direct democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ongoing feminist debates about the past, present and future of feminism, the multidimensionality of time in activist work has largely remained under-examined. This article develops the partial timeframes of trajectories, encounters and timings to explore the practices of women organizing in Czech NGOs after 1989. Empirically the study draws on individual and group interviews conducted with NGO activists in 2003/2004 and 2009/2010 as well as organizational websites. The article argues that a timescape perspective provides a useful heuristic lens for tracing trajectories of organizing shaped by different funding mechanisms; activist encounters that open up social and political alternatives of acting and being; and the effects of timing activist engagements with the lifetimes of activists. The conclusion reflects on the implications of an investigation through time for reconfiguring pervasive deficit accounts of NGO-based activism and its futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a study of the now clichéd Bohemian Index. I explore how Richard Florida’s arguments flatten, homogenize and commercialize the radicalism and resistance of the cities validated through his criteria. Activism becomes a brand. San Francisco is important in such research because of its political and literary history, with North Beach’s iconography tethered to the Beat Generation. The best known ‘Left Coast City’ in the world, San Francisco reveals the political paradoxes of creative industries and the city imaging literature. Bohemia creates an attractive city of coffee and conversation. San Francisco is a diverse economy, with developed service, tourist and hospitality industries. It isfacing seismic challenges, as is the home state. In a credit crunch, the economies based around lifestyle capitalism and service industries suffer as international infrastructural and public sector funding retracts. My article proposes no causal relationship between bohemia and economic development through either tourism or the creative industries. Instead, the complexity of ‘Bohemia’ as a concept, trope and brand is revealed, spilling beyond the seemingly predictable, mappable and trackable Bohemian Index. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies the internet media communication of 12 organizations representing Czech trade union, feminist, human rights and environmental movements. Drawing on Foucault's concept that discourse has a formative influence resulting in a specific system of statement allocation, the study investigates the discursive characteristics of activists' communication. The research is methodologically based on a quantitative exploration of co-occurrences of frequent lexical items. The computer-assisted text analysis reveals an important characteristic of the communication - an internal split in two discursive areas: on the one hand, the 'conditions area', dedicated to phrasing the existential conditions of subjects of contest or protection, and, on the other hand, the 'contention area', referring to strategies and negotiation with movement opponents. In the study's interpretation, the discourse constrains activist organizations to communicate both about the life conditions of actors/subjects and about their claims and negotiations, but in large measure separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Eastern Europe, which is the focus of our study, different national scholarly traditions assigned their own place to the study of culture. Although the influence of the kulturologia ("culturology") schools installed at Russian universities in the 1980s radiated out into Eastern European countries, local academic communities dictated the approach to the study of popular culture. While the Polish field of kulturoznawstwo was propelled by internal forces from the early 1970s onwards, in Czechoslovakia, kulturologie emerged as a new discipline around the fall of the Communist regime. Even so, it failed to take off and by 2012 had vanished completely from the Czech Republic. Central European countries were also affected by the German academic tradition of Kulturwissenschaften with its emphasis on philosophy and aesthetics. Our inquiry highlights the first international conference on cultural studies in the Czech Republic in 2013. It was during this event that a group of new postdocs from Charles University, including ourselves, raised the topic of changes in Eastern European popular culture due to the political transformation in 1989. This group had also arranged for Ann Gray, the final director of the UK Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to give a keynote address at the conference, a gesture that clearly linked the CCCS with the group's own Centre for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPK) established three years earlier. From the outset, CSPK's organizers aimed to promote the Anglo-American tradition of cultural studies both in the academy and among the general public. At the same time, they sought to retain their independence from academic structures and funding systems that might restrict their political activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]