Western moral and political theorists have recently devoted considerable attention to the perceived victimisation of women by non-western cultures. In this paper, the author argues that conceiving injustice to poor women in poor countries primarily as a matter of their oppression by illiberal cultures presents an understanding of their situation that is crucially incomplete. This incomplete understanding distorts Western theorists’ comprehension of our moral relationship to women elsewhere in the world and so of our theoretical task. It also impoverishes our assumptions about the intercultural dialogue necessary to promote global justice for women., Alison M. Jaggar, and Anglické resumé
Recenzentka představuje knihu francouzského historika, profesora pařížské Sorbonny a odborníka na dějiny reprezentací, symbolů a obrazů, která se zabývá fenoménem "lidské spodiny", jak se vynořil a proměňuje v euroamerické kultuře od počátku 19. století do současnosti. Zdánlivě neuchopitelné téma, unikající nástrojům sociálních věd, se autor nesnaží analyzovat metodami historické sociologie, ale prostřednictvím jeho administrativních, žurnalistických, turistických a uměleckých reprezentací. Důležité podle recenzentky je, jak autor převrací perspektivu a ukazuje, že dějiny lidské spodiny jsou především dějinami většinové společnosti a její potřeby popsat a pojmenovat své odvrácené stránky a strach z měnícího se světa, potřeby vylučovat, moralizovat a disciplinovat. Geografického omezení na frankofonní, anglofonní a hispanofonní svět lze sice litovat, může být ale také inspirující výzvou., The book under review, by the French historian Dominique Kalifa (is Director of the Centre for Nineeteenth-century History at the University of Paris, where he specializes in the history of crime, transgression, social control, and mass culture in nineteenth and early twentieth-century Europe, particularly France), is concerned with the phenomenon of the "lower depths" (or "dregs of society"), as they emerged and changed into Euro-American culture, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. The author does not seek to analyse this seemingly ungraspable topic using the methods of historical sociology, for it has long evaded study by the means available to the social sciences. Instead, he turns to the ways the subject has been represented by bureaucracies, journalists, tourism, and art. According to the reviewer, it is important how the author inverts the perspective, and demonstrates that the history of the dregs of society is mainly the history of majority society. That is to say, majority society has felt a need to describe and name its dark side and its fear of a changing world, to exclude, moralize, and discipline. One may regret that the work is limited to the francophone, anglophone and hispanophone worlds, but that means also that the topic remains an inspiring challenge to other scholars., [autor recenze] Lucie Dušková., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
This article deals with empirical research on poverty in Czechoslovakia from the interwar period to the present in terms of three distinct phases. First, between 1918 and 1948, considerable attention was devoted to poverty, but research possibilities modest, so that a complex mapping of the problem was not feasible. Second, during the 1948 to 1989 period, the communist regime allowed "examinations" of poverty for the purpose of depicting pre-war capitalist Czechoslovakia as an impoverished, class-divided society. A similar approach was applied to studies of Western countries during the Cold War period. Research on poverty within the socialist regime was not allowed, even after the rehabilitation of sociology as a social science. Detailed analysis of household surveys was either forbidden or the results were embargoed; only simple cross-tabulations were ever published. Third, after 1989, the opportunities for undertaking research on poverty increased dramatically due to stimulus in both the national and international arenas. Important projects were fielded leading to many studies and published articles. Statistical surveys were used to map poverty primarily in terms of income; while sociological, ethnographic and anthropological approaches were used to examine key groups affected by poverty in Czech society. Within the literature there has been to date no synthesis of the study of the nature and origins of poverty in the Czech Republic., Jiří Večerník., and Obsahuje bibliografii a bibliografické odkazy
While gender has gained serious credit on the international development research and policy agenda, this is not reflected in Czech development studies. Likewise, the situation of women living in the developing world has been tackled by Czech gender studies only occasionally. This lack of attention from both Czech academia and Czech civil society is owing to the slow reconstruction of both interdisciplines during the transition and to the prevailing liberalism of Czech society. Even though links between gender and poverty are reflected in the mainstream discourse of international organizations, the author criticizes their underlying liberal assumptions from the viewpoint of feminist economics without acknowledging the capacity of post-modern feminists to tackle lived poverty. While grassroots women’s movements in the South reveal diverse theoretical backgrounds, in Czech development cooperation gender is only formally reflected in policy and operational documents. The author demonstrates this strong gender blindness through the example of a presumably gender neutral project on agricultural education in Angola. Czech development cooperation has supported only a few gender projects, which were intended especially for at risk women. In conclusion, the author advocates mainstreaming the gender perspective into Czech development cooperation and, by extending the scope of feminist standpoint theory, argues that the development constituency cannot be genuinely pro-poor without paying special attention to women and the gender constituency cannot pretend to defend women’s rights without paying attention to the poor living in the South., Ondřej Horký., and Obsahuje bibliografii