Pavel Pospěch

Images Of A Good Village: A Visual Analysis Of The Rural Idyll In The “Village Of The Year” Competition In The Czech Republic

Abstract This paper presents a sociological analysis of the image of a “good village”, as portrayed in the annual Czech competition Village of the Year. It focuses on the positive representations attached to the rural in the political and expert discourse. The analysis is rooted in cultural rural sociology and in its study of rural idyll. It is argued that a specific kind of rural idyll is produced in the competition. This idyll is analysed using the photographs submitted to the competition by the villages themselves. A combination of visual methods is employed to uncover the positive values attached to the images. The results show that activity and social life play a key role in the image of a “good village” thus produced. On the other hand, there are virtually no references to agriculture.

Urban or Family-Friendly? The Presentation of Czech Shopping Centers as Family-Friendly Spaces

This article presents a study of the self-presentation of shopping centers in the Czech Republic as “family-friendly” spaces. The notion of family-friendliness is analyzed both as a structural category, referring to the structure of the stereotypical normal family and to its respective members, and as a cultural representation, referring to “family values,” which Czech malls invoke in their self-presentation. It is argued that the presentation of a “space for the whole family” covers only the persistent stereotype of female-led economic consumption. The family values of safety and comfort distinguish shopping centers negatively from the city centers. They also strongly refer to the country’s past by invoking the image of a family promenade. On a more general level, the family appeal thrives on the phenomenon of postsocialist privatism and on the turning away from the public sphere in favor of the private realm of the family.

Critical urban studies, edited by Jonathan S. Davies and David L. Imbroscio

Putting together a volume like Critical Urban Studies is a bold effort. The book’s subtitle promises ‘new directions’ and the editors’ statement about the book’s aim to be the ‘beginning of a debate’ and to ‘provoke controversy and uncertainty’ (p. 2) reveal groundbreaking ambitions. The authors aim to direct our attention to new areas for analysis, to the so called ‘dogs that don’t bark’ (p. vii), or, rather, the dog whose bark is seldom heard in mainstream social sciences. This in itself is a laudable feat. The ambition of the volume, however, goes beyond that. The new directions for analysis are to be presented as critical (that is, opposed to mainstream), studied as urban (with all its many meanings) and they also need to be political, that is, described from the point of view of political science, which forms the theoretical backbone of the volume. It is one thing to point to new ways of doing research; it is a completely different thing to carry on one’s back the simultaneous weights of those three theoretical perspectives, which need to be adhered to, while doing this. The nature of the edited volume does not make it any easier, as each of the authors has approximately 20 pages to present their research as critical, urban and political at the same time. It is on this point that the success of this volume is to be judged. The book holds together well, framed by an informative foreword by Clarence Stone. Stone names the key areas – the ‘silent dogs’ – for critical urban policy research, namely (a) the interpenetrability of state, market and society, (b) social injustice and (c) the ambiguous authority of the government (pp. vii–ix). It should also be noted that the chapters in the volume cross-refer one another frequently, which further stresses the connections between them and adds to the strength of the book’s argument. On the other hand, some of the contributions do not quite keep up with this, as they fail to fulfill the three tasks laid upon them by the book’s aim. Let me address these arguments following the order in which the chapters are written. In the first chapter, Wyly offers a critique of the use of the figure of ‘positivism’ by critical scholars. While not intending to defend positivist positions, he argues that ‘using positivism as a banner to unite the diverse alliances and tensions of the nonpositivist movements of the social sciences and humanities . . . is counterproductive’ (p. 13). It is a timely point, for invoking the demon of positivism and using it as a straw man to establish one’s own critical position is a common tactic. A case in point is the following chapter by Sidney (ch. 2), who reviews the position of constructivist and interpretive analyses in urban studies. She suggests that critical urban scholars should stand ‘in contrast to a positivist position in which the researcher is understood as striving for objectivity and neutrality’ (p. 34). They should also ‘pull paradigms to the surface, up from the embeddedness of takenfor-granted or conventional wisdom’ (p. 37). While perfectly valid, these imperatives are severely dated: questioning of taken-for-granted knowledge has been on the agenda of social sciences ever since their beginning, and claims to ‘objectivity and neutrality’ will be easily refuted by any undergraduate student of today’s social sciences.