Zdeněk R. Nešpor

Invisible Religion in a “Non-believing” Country: The Case of the Czech Republic

The authors analyse contemporary ir/religiosity and spirituality in the Czech Republic using data from national censuses, international surveys and a specialized national survey on the de-traditionalization and individualization of religion from 2006. The authors conclude that the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on a respondent’s religiosity, both traditional and alternative, is weak; a more important factor in the determination of a person’s world-view was found to be his/her religious socialization or the absence thereof. The effectiveness of religious socialization differs significantly between the various churches; the least effective being the Catholic Church and Czechoslovak Hussite Church. For historical reasons, attitudes towards Catholicism also influence the Czech mind-set on religion in general. The out-of-church movement became established very early in the country’s history and was subsequently strengthened by Communist anticlericalism resulting in today’s prevalence of “non-believers”, the highest proportion in Europe. Les auteurs analysent l’(ir)religiosité et la spiritualité contemporaines en République tchèque, en utilisant des données issues de recensements nationaux, d’enquêtes internationales et d’une enquête nationale spécialisée portant sur la “dé-traditionalisation” et l’individualisation de la religion à partir de 2006. Les auteurs concluent que l’influence de caractéristiques sociodémographiques sur la religiosité, autant traditionnelle qu’alternative, du répondant est faible. Un facteur plus important dans la détermination de la vision du monde d’un individu a été situé dans sa socialisation religieuse ou dans l’absence de celle-ci. L’efficacité de la socialisation religieuse diffère de façon significative entre les différentes Églises, les moins efficaces étant l’Église catholique et l’Église hussite tchécoslovaque. Pour différentes raisons historiques, les attitudes à l’égard du catholicisme influencent également la perception tchèque de la religion en général. Le mouvement de sortie de la religion s’est très précocement développé dans l’histoire du pays et a ultérieurement été renforcé par l’anticléricalisme communiste, qui aboutit à la prédominance actuelle des non-croyants, dont la proportion est la plus élevée d’Europe.

Baťov 1940 – první český empiricky podložený výzkum v oblasti sociologie práce

There is a forgotten chapter in (history of) the Czech sociology of work. In the early 1940s, an empirical study was conducted by Otakar Machotka among employees of the Bata company in Batov (today Otrokovice). One of the leading figures of early Czech sociology, Machotka saw the closure of Czech universities during the Second World War as an opportunity to carry out original empirical research devoted to the sociological analysis of the workforce and consisting of a study of the social determination of work efficiency. This was the first Czech, and one of only a very few European, empirically-grounded research projects in the sociology of work and occupation that had been conducted to that time. Machotka statistically analysed the vast data sets collected by the company’s personnel department and provided a detailed interpretation of the outcomes, while remaining very much aware of the limitations of the results and the methods employed. He formulated hypotheses about how the age gap between spouses, the number of children in family, and other characteristics might impact (various aspects of) work efficiency, and reformulated existing hypotheses about the impact of siblings, marital status, and parental profession. Machotka also helped to theoretically and methodologically (re)orientate the sociology of work and occupations. Machotka subsequently abandoned this topic and quantitative sociology in general, perhaps in part as a result of the above-described research, which, the author suggests, led him to realise that ‘abstract empiricism’ was not the only method on which to base social studies.