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An expanding literature on money and identity is built around the assumption that political elites deliberately use currency design to foster national identities. However, the empirical evidence in favor of this assumption has been fragmentary. Drawing on detailed primary sources we demonstrate nationalist intentions of political elites involved in currency design. We also examine how political elites use banknotes as official pronouncements on who is and who is not part of the nation and what the official attitude toward foreigners is. By tracing changes in the inclusive and exclusive messages directed at an intra-state or international audience we document that there is no connection between ingroup (national) love and outgroup (foreigners, minorities, opposition) hate. The amount of exclusive messages to outgroups culminated in conditions of perceived threat when political leaders tried to mobilize pre-existing identities to secure or maintain political power. In contrast, the officials deliberately tried to broaden ingroup boundaries in order to build international communities. Finally, we document that in the case of limited support for the new conception of identity, officials tried to depict the old and the new identity as complementary, embedding the new identity in existing discourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper focuses on the memoryscapes of Cieszyn Silesia, Orawa and Spisz in a context of the border conflicts of the twentieth century. The regions located on the current Czech-Polish and Slovak-Polish border have lived through paralleled histories of the border demarcation after WWI, which was unprecedented there. In both cases the national minorities were left behind the border, outside of their home states. Their stories and memories are, however, not being researched together. This paper contrasts the patterns of memory production related to the border shifts in the landscape in both regions. Emphasis is placed on the memory sites, their narratives and memory activism related to the conflicting past. The results show that the main axes of both memory debates are contrasting. While the conflict over Cieszyn Silesia was most shaped by the short war in 1919, the lesser-known dispute over Orawa and Spisz was marked by numerous smaller incidents, assimilation efforts and a layer of post WWII violence. This has important consequences for the memory production. The other important differentiating factor is the scope of memory activism inside of the national minority group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the paper is to analyse a specific case of transformation of communicative memories into cultural memories under the influence of state institutions in Teschen Silesia [Cieszyn Silesia; Těšín Silesia]. In 1920, the multi-ethnic territory of the former Duchy of Teschen was divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia. The author focuses on the state of local social memories after one hundred years since the division and raises the question, what kind of social memories are supported by the Polish and Czech local administrations and what kind of social memories are ignored or suppressed by them. Both sides of the Polish-Czech state border have at least one common feature today, namely the colonization of the past by the national states present here, in that the history of the Polish part of Teschen Silesia is commonly seen here as the history of Poland, and the history of the Czech part of this area as the history of the Czech Republic. It is an unconscious - and thus unreflective - conceptual structure that affects local national identities. The author calls this cognitive structure "demarcation logic". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies 38 splits that occurred between 1995 and 2020 in the Czech Republic. Although the initial splits, that took place during the time of democratic transition, were driven by perceived local identity and the historical memory of being a former independent municipality, the splits after 1995 were predominantly driven by economic factors, be it objective underinvestment and a perceived grievance that the mother municipality was not taking care of its fringe parts. In all cases, the mother municipality had failed to communicate with the initiator of a referendum. However, if the central municipality invested in its parts and its political leaders communicated with its citizens, the municipality did not lose its part despites the attempts of secessionist leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study is based on ethnomusicological fieldwork and interviews conducted with two contemporary performers in the Czech Republic, the underground singer Dáša Vokatá and the popular actor Oldřich Kaiser, whose joint performances are based on reminiscences of Czech underground as well as mainstream culture during late Socialism. The paper explores cultural and communicative memory and musical activities regarded as mnemonic products and practices, aiming to demonstrate the process of transition of significant aspects of communicative memory to the domain of cultural memory and to identify the reason for their success in the contemporary commercial music scene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Sociology & Space / Sociologija i Prostor is the property of Institut za drustvena istrazivanja u Zagrebu (Institute for Social Research of Zagreb) 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.)

Recent literature in sociohydrology has shown the important role of flood memory in shaping hydrological risk. In this paper, we present a system dynamics model of human-flood interactions that simulates how the river proximity of human settlements is altered by changes in flood memory. We also compare our model outcomes with an unprecedented dataset consisting of historical and archeological observations of human settlements in the Czech Republic that have been affected by major flood events. This comparison allows us to evaluate the potentials and limitations of our sociohydrological model in capturing essential features of flood risk changes, including the process of resettling farther and closer to the river. Our results show that the accumulation (and decay) of collective memory has potential in explaining temporal changes of flood risk driven by the occurrence (or absence) of major events. As such, this study contributes to advancing knowledge about the complex dynamics of human-water systems, while providing useful insights in the field of flood risk reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to document the ongoing shift from communicative to cultural memory of war and post-war events in the Czech Republic by using an example of a local struggle about a memorial for German inhabitants of a Czech town killed in June 1945. Thanks to an anthropological and social geographical approach based on interviews, family memory research, observations, and analysis of archive materials, it is possible to reconstruct the local and international sources of the post-1989 collective memory of the German past in Central Europe. This memory is still in constant conflict with the pre-1989 version of Czech national history which had contemptuously marginalized its German component. The communicative memory of the German past has entered the public space and tries to become a permanent part of the Czech cultural memory, but it is not a straightforward process, mainly due to the continuously strengthening nationalistic framing of memory within Central Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Literatura: Teoría, Historia, Crítica is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia 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.)

A characteristic feature of post-authoritarian societies (such as the Czech Republic after 1989) is social consolidation, in which a re-construction of collective memory plays an important role. Usually, memories of minorities that have been temporarily silenced are reshaped. While in some cases minorities find their own autonomous voice (e.g. Roma in the CR), in other cases the minority “story” becomes part of the “story” of the majority. This is the case for the recollections of the concentration camp Terezín (Theresienstadt) 1942–45, where Czechoslovak Jews organized a rich cultural and musical life. In the words of one of the survivors – “Music kept us alive”. The article examines the transformation of the “Terezín phenomenon” (primarily its musical life and music production) from an important component of minority musical remembrance to a part of the majority narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes autobiographical accounts given by members of the oldest generation of ethnic Germans living in the Czech Republic. Czech sociologists are interested in non-expulsed Germans, because they have their own ideas about who the Germans living in the Czech Republic are and who they are not. Participants share and negotiate these ideas among themselves as well as with sociologists during narrative interviews. I deal with the ethno-concepts of "Czech Germans and/or German Czechs" (and "S/sudeten Germans" specifically as emic concepts and/or natural categories). First, I present the self-categorization of participants and the narrative practices shared by this community of memory. I demonstrate how these people, who have remained in the Czech Republic after the expulsion of most ethnic Germans following WWII, re-construct their visions of the past. Despite numerous analogies, there are serious differences between commonly accepted history and the ways in which "Czech Germans or/and German Czechs" conceive it. The collective memory of ethnic Germans in the Czech Republic is different and distant from the "official" historical memory of Czechs themselves. These differences are studied by applying the constructivist approach to collective memory pioneered by M. Halbwachs and M.C. Lavabre. I analyze the narrative forms employed in these autobiographical stories and the weight of the present which rests on the evocations of the past. The final part of the paper provides a more detailed analysis of the collective picture of the First Republic and how it is used by the speakers for depicting, judging and criticizing today's situation (i.e. the situation of the Czech Germans in the Czech Republic after 1989). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the increasingly tight race of inter-urban competition, the idea that cities have to be made creative has gripped the imagination of urban planners and scholars alike. This process is imagined as straightforward, readily exportable and devoid of conflict. The paper uses the perspective of relational place-making to reveal the creative city imperative as a political process. This is carried out through the medium of conflict, which brings about two contrasting place frames, which progressively reveal each other's political connections. We use the case of a former central-European prison, located in Brno, the Czech Republic, to show how making a city creative is just one possible framing of a place, how making cities attractive to creative individuals engenders resistance and how historical memory summons the powerful genius loci, that is nevertheless relational and contingent. The results illustrate in detail how the conflict between development and preservation unfolds around six axes of opposition that define the two frames (e.g. future vs. past, part vs. whole etc.) and how these axes are themselves linked to various concepts of place and time. • The creative city is not a neutral and natural strategy for urban regeneration. • Making a city creative is just one possible framing of a place. • The creative city imperative is a political process, not a mere planning decision. • Dynamics of conflict can shape mechanisms of creative city-making. • Instrumentalization of historical memory challenges the creative city thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we develop a conceptualisation of retro‐innovation, simply defined as the purposeful revival of historic practices, ideas and/or technologies, and apply this conceptualisation to the analysis of the development of the organic farming movement in the Czech Republic. Within the agricultural sector, we argue that retro‐innovation represents a critical practice, undertaken to counter modernisation trends. Retro‐innovation processes are thus often embedded within social movements. We identify four key mechanisms of retro‐innovation: reflexivity, reminiscence, revival, integration and learning. Drawing on 25 key informant interviews, we demonstrate how the growing critique of socialist collective farms in the 1980s coalesced with new policy supports in the 1990s to enable re‐learning and revival of traditional farming practices, situating organic farming approaches as the revitalisation of positive historical practices. However, as the Czech case demonstrates, the numerous options for and social memories of past innovations can lead to fragmentation of efforts and products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the developments in cultural memory in Czech-U.S. relations since the end of the Cold War with a special emphasis on the heated debate about placing a U.S. radar base on Czech soil in 2008. It first describes the abrupt transformation in cultural memory related to the transition from communist rule from the transatlantic perspective. It claims that the debate about the radar base is a clear indication of the shift within cultural memory, which became much more contested, especially when compared with the previous period culminating with the Czech Republic's entry into NATO. As cultural memory is closely linked to dominant historical narratives as well as identity, the findings have serious implications for the future of the transatlantic ties in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memorial spaces can reinforce consensus or deepen conflict over the past. Memories of communism in Europe are particularly fraught mnemonic landscapes. Although they experienced the communist regime as a single country, Czechs and Slovaks now manifest very different political memories in public spaces with different levels of contention surrounding them. Through a media analysis (1993–2012) of events surrounding the 12 memorials addressing the communist past in the capital cities of Prague and Bratislava, this study generates a theory of differing levels of contention between societies with similar ‘difficult’ pasts. The Czech case is characterized by official and unofficial actors, who are cooperative or noncooperative, presenting often competing versions of the past through an individualistic, human rights-focused mnemonic frame. Slovak memory politics are less contentious, dominated by official memory actors, and interpreted through religion and nationalism. The collective memory literature lacks a way to understand when contention is more or less expected over a problematic past. I propose that when official memory actors privilege an individualistic mnemonic frame, contention becomes likely through the interpretations of unofficial memory actors, while a more collectivistic frame results in less contentious memory politics. In other words, the variation in mnemonic frame helps to explain why unofficial actors sometimes contest official representations of the past and other times leave them unchallenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the meanings and identities of toys and puppets in three Czech feature films, which collectively cover a range of animation techniques (constituting a new definition of what it means to 'play' with these toys). Jiří Bárta's Na půdě aneb Kdo má dneska narozeniny (In the Attic: Who Has a Birthday Today?, 2009), Jan Svěrák's Kuky se vrací (Kooky, 2010), and Jan Švankmajer's Něco z Alenky (Alice, 1988) all build allegorical significance from tales in which toys take on independent lives, but are always framed through their relationships to children. Each film explores the afterlife of discarded or neglected toys, dolls, and puppets, a visual representation of the imaginative investment and cultural import given to these otherwise immobile things. All three directors use toys and puppets as markers of the passing of childhood, and as compendia of cultural memory, but with different degrees of political intent and social critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the historical memories of German travellers to Bohemia, Czech Republic between 1750 and 1850. Topics mentioned include the interpretations of the travellers on the region's historical sites and historical events, the role of historical memory in the promotion of collective identity, and analysis of historical memories in the context of emerging national identities.

This article aims to provide the first complete overview of the nature and content of the historical consciousness of the Czech population to be based on knowledge gained through tools from quantitative sociological methodology. First there is a snapshot of the population's interest in the history of the Czech Republic as such; then the focus is on general aspects of historical consciousness, particularly people's ideas about the importance of the forces that influence the course of history, and their assessment of the general importance of history. Interpretation of the analysis concludes with evaluations of Czech national history and its various stages and major events. In the final discussion there is a comprehensive interpretation of the empirical knowledge gained, in the context of existing theoretical concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how regional integration in Europe has informed processes of collective remembrance and transitional justice in Central and Eastern Europe. By taking the cases of Romania, Poland and the Czech Republic, two claims are made. First, although European institutions have not initiated top-down projects of historical reckoning, activists who have an interest in promoting engagement with the recent past have been able to draw the political, financial and/or judicial weight of European institutions behind particular reckoning initiatives, on an ad hoc basis. Second, the nature of the projects that have been realized with the assistance of European resources has varied across the region, according to the extent of prior efforts to promote collective remembrance and transitional justice at the national level. Where there have previously been constraints on historical reckoning, activists have drawn “Europe” behind efforts to promote national-level confrontations with particularly national experiences of communist rule. By contrast, where there has previously been extensive state sponsorship of collective remembrance projects and/or processes of transitional justice, European resources have been used in support of efforts to raise awareness of the repressions of communist rule, and transitions from that system of rule, among a wider, international audience. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes discursive moves taken by regime representatives and opposition activists on the occasion in 1988 of the Czechoslovak state holiday, 28 October. Confrontations in 1988 between the regime and opposition activists were typical of several such confrontations in the last years of communist rule in Czechoslovakia. To reveal how discourse formed and transformed commemorations of the state holiday in 1988, the article focuses on regime and opposition texts meant for the general public to read or listen to before or during 28 October commemorations. First, political players' use of genres is analyzed. Then, their possibilities of disseminating texts are addressed. The main part of the analysis concerns which past events players chose to commemorate, how they interpreted the causality and the legacy of those events, and how they portrayed themselves in their texts. It is concluded that despite restricted access to mass media, opposition activists managed to introduce to the public their interpretation of the past. In so doing, they contributed to reconstructing the collective identity of Czechoslovak citizens. Their discursive strategy may serve as a model for prodemocracy activists in other authoritarian regimes. However, in their discourse about the past of Czechoslovakia, they failed to address any specifically Slovak experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing recent conceptualizations of cultural memory (Assmann, Huyssen, Crewe), the article examines the poetics of remembering and forgetting in W.G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz (2001). Displaced from his native Prague with one of the Red Cross "Kindertransporte" of 1937/38, Sebald's protagonist leads a life that is characterized by geographical displacement as well as by suppressed and inaccessible childhood memories. Horstkotte reads Austerlitz' search for his past and the novel's topographic and archaeological view of memory as a metafictional and intermedial model for overcoming amnesia on a cultural level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the comparison of discourses and rituals of collective memory in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. Role of memory in overcoming psychic trauma; Forms of the will to memory; Information on ways in which Czech and Slovak intellectuals envisioned their social roles after the fall of communism.