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This dissertation deals with the relations between economics and ethics. It specifically focuses on a contemporary trend that seeks to reform the socio-economic system from within the private sector, which the thesis conceptualises as 'conscious capitalism'. The thesis is the result of a long-term ethnographic research on socially responsible start-ups in Prague and presents conscious capitalism through three case studies. The first study focuses on the question of work ethic and subjectivity of conscious entrepreneurs and workers and the dynamics of their interrelationship in enterprises. The second study shifts the focus to the sphere of socially beneficial production and the creation of conscious products, and analyses in detail the operation of one social enterprise. The theme of the third case study is the relation of conscious capitalism to shareholder capitalism, which it on the one hand criticizes, but on the other hand builds on and uses for its own development. This dissertation belongs to the critical social science studies that address the ethical turn in capitalism (Bandinelli 2017; Chiapello 2013; Land & Taylor 2014; Morozov 2013), although its own contribution stems primarily from the research focus on the inside of the small start- ups. The work presents conscious entrepreneurship...

1 ABSTRACT The work is devoted to the online communication of children and adolescents aged 11-17 from the perspective of their parents. 11 interviews with parents were conducted, which were subjected to a critical discursive analysis. The documentary film V síti (2020) directed by Barbora Chalupová and Vít Klusák, which deals with the abuse of children on the Internet and the moral panic it has already caused, is used as a stepping stone for the investigation. The concept of online public, which the work uses, follows the work of Benedict Anderson (definition of public) and Jürgen Habermas (concept of public) and danah boyd (online public); the concept of identity in the online environment is then inspired by the work of Pierre Bourdieu (distinction, judgement of taste) and Erving Goffman (masks, roles, controlled creation of an impression). For the analysis of parental strategies based on supervision or trust, the work uses the writings of Michel Foucault, and for parental stereotypes, which include dependence on modern technologies and computer literacy, the concepts of danah boyd and Granville Stanley Hall. Although parents show efforts to trust their offspring, the control mode usually wins out. Keywords critical discursive analysis, moral panic, internet, adolescence

In the thesis I ethnographically study the process of interconnecting and mutual influencing of human and non-human entities in case of the visually impaired persons and the compensation devices based on computer technology. I examine this process, which I call "the technification of blindness", in symmetrical terms. The main theoretical inspiration for the study is the interplay of technology and the health-inconvenienced body and its consequences which are based on the Actor-Network Theory and related material-semiotic tools of social-science research. My aim is to analyse processes which enable/not allow to manage everyday activities to visually impaired persons in the Czech Republic, while they are using computer technologies and their relation with wider processes of accessibility. I trace mutual influencing of human and non-human entities on a specific configuration of visually disabled body with specifically modified personal computer, and with a touch-screen smart-phone. The study shows how the specific form of portable electronic and computer-based devices, which are specially adapted to seeing users, is what excludes blind and visually impaired persons from the interaction with computer technology. Such a cooperation and visual orientation of blind persons is allowed only thanks to...

This diploma thesis traces the changing human, animal and technology assemblage after the recent emergence of wolf packs in Broumov region. As the return of wolves coincides with ecological transformations gaining in strength, the central research focus are the possibilities - and impossibilities - of local multispecies coexistence in the conditions of Anthropocene. The research draws upon methods of multispecies ethnography, building on the literature that examines the ontological aspects of multispecies coexistence, including primarily the work of Donna Haraway, Eduardo Kohn, Annemarie Mol, Anna Tsing and Rane Willerslev. The thesis analyzes several modes of situated multispecies coexistence which have been reconfigured or made possible by the return of wolves: administrative and sensual practice of shepherds, methods of mimetic empathy of wolf trackers, emergence of new actors interfering with local events (satellites, subsidy programmes, drought) and the translation of processes on pastures into politically engaged activities of local farmers. The thesis develops the employed concepts in such a way that they enable analyzing the situation in Broumov region as situated making of more-than-human sociality. Key words: multispecies ethnography, wolfs, pastoralism, trackers, more-than-human sociality

This thesis builds upon ethnography of Apple Watch user experience and explores its connections with Apple's different branding strategies such as official website advertisements for Apple Watch Series 4, Supplier Responsibility Progress Report (2019) and Today at Apple sessions held in Apple Stores. I draw on sociomaterial approaches with special emphasis on John Law's (2004) method-assemblage and the feminist critique of ANT managerial vision that allow me to conceptualize corporate practices as means of enacting singular and coherent commercial out-thereness and absences. The goal of this thesis is to explore possible connections between the user's experience and the corporate branding strategies which craft a series of commercial realities in order to translate the needs of other actants and enroll them in its corporate network. This paper also argues that ambivalence is central to this process as corporate branding is being constantly reshaped and reconfigured by both the branding strategy itself and the actants involved. Chapter I provides a semiotic analysis of advertisements inspired by Woolgar's (1990) concept of moral universe. The second chapter follows with examining the Progress Report which provides information on the production processes that are completely absent in exclusively...

In my diploma thesis I focus on events of football match. I use affect theories which enable me to observe these events as an interplay of persons, bodies, practices, objects, technologies and aspects of spatiality, and I focus on manners by which we can perceive these events as a form of an affective athmosphere. Within an analysis of the events of football match I work with concept of carnival. Gradually, I concern with events which accompany them and I follow their temporal and spatial rhythm, techniques of support by which supporters participate on a process of creating the athmosphere, surveillant technologies which within these events operate, and commemorative practices and protests of supporters as strategies by which relevant actors endeavour to incite a specific form of athmosphere. I demonstrate that affect is not only situational intensity but rather it becomes a form of (pre)disposition of persons, bodies as well as spatiality of the stadium while these (pre)dispositions create different experiences of the events of football match. The thesis results from a long term ethnographic research in a milieu of football supporters of AC Sparta Prague and is sustained by elements of autoethnography. Key words: body and corporeality, affect, affective athmosphere, carnival, football supporters.

This thesis is based on a qualitative research which followed the construction process of a self-sustaining house Earthship that is located in the larger centre of Prague. I am making use of Tim Ingold's approach of ecological anthropology which allows me to track the lines of the material flow and the exchange of materials which take place within the house and during the construction process of the Prague Earthship. Apart from humans there are other actants involved in these construction processes, that is non-human materials and elements of the natural environment which the building is an integral part of and which it is embedded in. With the help of the Ingold's concept of meshwork I interpret the Earthship as a living and dynamic organism, which is connected to its environment and which is through its becoming involved in various social processes. The materiality of the building navigates actions of its builders and residents and directs them to changing their life style and everyday practices towards more sustainable consumption.

The subject of this diploma thesis is Dialogical acting with the inner partner, which understands itself as psychosomatic introspective and self-developing discipline founded by Ivan Vyskočil. I approach dialogical acting through three conceptualizations of objects - as networks, fluid objects and fire objects. With these I explore different ways in which dialogical acting holds its shape as a discipline. I focus on the creation and continuous re-enactment of dialogical acting and its ambiguous relation to its founder Ivan Vyskočil. I analyze the stability and fluidity of rules that shape and define boundaries of the discipline and describe dialogical acting as a set of relations of changing entities and realities that are present and absent, and as passages that are enacted by the rearrangements of multiple specificities. I try to capture tensions that constitute the discipline. Dialogical acting aims at being an open discipline without rules. As rules re-emerge and tend to stabilize, the discipline develops strategies in the process of transferring knowledge that seek to destabilize the rules. Findings and conclusions of this thesis are based on participative observation of dialogical acting in the courses that take place on The Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, on...

This study is a symmetrical ethnography of the Czech development project Kola pro Afriku (Czech Bikes for Gambian Schools), which involves the collection, repairs, modification and shipment of old Czech bicycles to The Gambia. Once there, they are distributed to partner schools and offered to communing pupils. In my research, I mainly focus on the pivotal technology of the project, bicycles, and their performances. Drawing on classic ethnographies of development and (most importantly) on studies based on the actor-network theory (ANT), I gradually explore the bike collection process, their modifications and repairs, their shipment to The Gambia and their local operations. When doing so, I focus on the social topology of the bicycles and its transformations in the timespace. In this regard, the bicycles gradually appear as junk (i.e. a dysfunctional relict of stabilized networks), as a fluid collectivity and as individually fluid. Thereby, this study shows that technology transfers may lead not only to changes in the set of relations, of which the given object consists, but in the very modes, in which those relations arise. It is precisely these topological transformations that significantly contribute to the functioning of the project Kola pro Afriku. Key words: development cooperation,...

This thesis is a study of running from the perspective of the Actor-Network Theory (ANT). In my research I have been focusing on running as a discipline, as well as entertainment in the contemporary society pervaded by smartphones and other personal technology. In the analysis of the discipline, self-discipline and the governance of the self my work draws primarily upon the argument of M. Foucault. First, I examine mechanisms of runner's self-discipline with its imperative of continuous improvement. My second key argument, exploring running as entertainment, starts from Bourdieu's comments on running, as he suggested that running does not bring any instant satisfaction and certainly not any satisfaction from competition. My empirical work brought me to a contradictory conclusion. From my point of view, running is not just present suffering with the strive for future results, but it can also be a competitive and creative play. In this context, I also explore the notion of the "runner trance". In my work I am presenting several examples of the blending of discipline and entertainment in running (for example when experiencing pain). Furthermore, I suggest that the aspects of running as entertainment may not only serve as a support mechanism for the runner's discipline. My thesis is based on more than...

In this diploma thesis I focus on the formation of urban cycling including heterogeneous participating actors - people, discourses, technologies, infrastructures and other materialities. I examine cyclists' relationships with their environment and describe asymmetries connected with the dominant status of automobilism in urban environment, and strategies for contesting this situation. I also focus on cyclo-activist discourse which plays an important role in the empowerment of cyclists in urban traffic. Mobilizing arguments of critical theory and the "right for the city" concept cyclo-advoacy strives to include as many citizens as possible in debate about public space and in this way support pro-cycling developments. From the perspective of actor-network theory (ANT) this strategy has limits due to its operation with stabilized social science categories and I argue that ANT could contribute a more nuanced arguments to cyclo-advocacy with detailed description of connections between cyclists and urban environment, focus on embodiment and emotions and highlighting the role of materialities. It could thereby provide a stronger argument for furthering the pro-cycling development. Key words: urban cycling, automobilism, actor-network theory (ANT), cycloadvocacy, critical theory, materiality

The purpose of this thesis is to identify practices that constitute plastic surgery in current Republic of Korea with emphasis put on relationships between participating human beings, materials and technologies. It focuses on practices proceeding inside and outside the clinic of plastic surgery. In accordance with M. Lock's concept of local biology this thesis introduces Korean plastic surgery as a set of practices shaped by mutual interaction of local technologies and Korean bodies. The actor network theory approach (ANT), which emphasizes relational open-ended forming of entities, is applied to examining various aspects of plastic surgery. This approach also provides new ways of exploring how the entities and practices described in the medical anthropology as medicalization, medical tourism or local biology are produced. Key words plastic surgery; Republic of Korea; Actor - Network Theory (ANT); bodily practices; local biology; beauty ideal; medicalization.

This thesis is a result of more than a three year long ethnographic research of a resuscitation unit of a Czech hospital where I have been employed as a general nurse. I describe the character of provided care and show that medical care is not simply an answer to patient's needs and interests but it is shaped by wide range of different motives and factors which are often in mutual conflict. Not infrequently it is the case that interests of health care providers are preferred to patient's interests. I discuss situations when doctors are forced to act more as good accountant managers than physicians, which might often be in conflict with the idea of good care, and I show how care is negotiated in these situations. I also focus on relationship of medical technologies and its users, some ritualized elements of care and in conclusion explain an apparent paradox that care can be evaluated as successful even if it didn't lead to improvement of the patient's condition or her survival. Keywords: health care, medical technologies, objectification, medicine, rituals in health care

This diploma thesis deals with the relations created between social workers and women, providing paid sexual services, in the area of street work environment. The thesis shows us the process of creation of these relations on the basis of the specific position of its actors, such as the stigmatized sex workers and "the wise" ones in the area of social work. However, these positions are not fixed. Social workers, as well as sex workers transform and redefine them, by using their own ways of understanding to categories such as trust, authority and process of self definition. The relations between the actors are mainly created on the basis of the topic of health that enters this environment through the harm reduction approach. This approach is also responsible for bringing an attention to actual health of sex workers but moreover an attention towards group of these women as such. Nevertheless, in the process of actual field research, were these categories shown as to be part of a larger picture of topic like motherhood and partnership. The last chapter of this thesis discusses the approach towards these topics during the contact with social workers. Keywords sex work, non-governmental organization, harm reduction approach, field social workers, stigma, health, biopower, motherhood

This thesis presents the main results of a five-month ethnographic research project in a global factory in the Czech Republic. It is focused on three topics. Due to a number of ethical dilemmas that accompanied the research, the first part examines ethics in anthropology, both the instruments of the institutionalization of professional ethics and "ethics in practice". As a strategy for dealing with ethical dilemmas the thesis aims at a reflexive approach, as proposed by Guillemin and Gillam (2004) not only to ensure rigor in research methodology, but also as a form of "morally adequate research work". The second research focus is the production line. The line makes sense - that is, produces stuff - only when people and machines interconnect. Symmetrical analysis juxtaposes humans and machines and explores the dynamics of agency as it shifts the borders between people and machines and the characteristics that each takes from the other. The last part of the thesis presents the factory as an actor in the labor market. Through the analysis of economic and organizational factors as well as workers" stories and interpretations and regional authorities" accounts, the final part tries to explain the perception of the factory as a stable and relatively solid employer. Keywords: global factory, ethics,...

This thesis is based on a qualitative research which draws from three case-studies of different households of alternative buildings. I am focused on those processes which are actively shaping these places regarding mutual human and non-human interactions. The movements of households' material elements are shown through spatial and temporal trajectories. By doing so I refer to the active meaning of materiality which was neglected by social sciences for a long time. The study demonstrates the importance of materiality not only as a significant driver of household's material reality but also of social practices overlapping societal phenomena. Key words semi-structural interview; alternative architecture; household; materiality; quasi- technologies; hybridization; spatial and temporal trajectories

This diploma thesis, based on a field research on Czech organic dairy farm, attempts to trace and identify actors involved in the process of organic milk production. The text consists of several seemingly unrelated parts, that will be linked togehther later in the text. First part makes reader familiar with all dairy farm inhabitants and workers. It uncovers the dynamics of the compromise workplace, where heterogenous actors collaborate. I portray actors in their instability and multiple realities (Mol 2008) and point out their interdependance which does not have to be only economical. The following part introduces organic agriculture as a metabolism surrounded by semipermeable boundaries and tries to identify bodies, materialities and practices inhibited by those boundaries. I search for the role of dairy cow in this restricted metabolism and relate a local dairy cow to wider political and agricultural contexts. Finally, I move to deeper analysis of actors and networks involved in organic milk production to suggest that the organic dairy farm performs as an infraorganism. I follow the methods of Actor Network Theory and symmetrical anthropology. Key words - organic agriculture, dairy cow, metabolisms, ANT, multiple ontology, symmetrical anthropology

The aim of this thesis, which is based on one-year participant observation in Petřín (a public park in the centre of Prague), is to approach key processes for creating and maintenance of this space in symmetrical-anthropological way. The park is not consider to be mere static background for human interaction, but, reversely, hybrid dynamical process created through a wide actor-web of both material and immaterial matter. The park is not just a public, thus human, space but a space shared by a great variety of actors. Among this hybrid actors human is the one who holds the power over park management, who can include, or reversely, exclude chosen actors from participation and maintenance of this space. The author of this thesis tries to answer the question: What is the basis for this kind of decisions? Who shall be given the "right to Petřín"? From which power position? The author argues that these decisions are politicised in all cases because there is no possibility to describe the complicated reality of Petřín in exhaustive scientific way and make ever-lasting claims about it. For this reason, all those decisions originate in historically particular context. As a consequence of some actors exclusion there is a threat of dissolution of both cultural and biological diversity of this space. Key words:...

This paper looks at the issue of homelessness from an emic perspective of a homeless people themselves. The categories under discussion here, and the order of importance in which they are presented arises from the context of the street and has been determined by the research itself. Besides a reference to a typology of homelessness it focuses primarily on the personal - individual strategies of survival, the needs of people on the street, their activities and economic behavior. In addition there is a space for the voice of homeless people's closest associates, charity workers. The paper also applies topics such as exclusion homeless people and outlines some possible solutions. The research methods employed are, semi- structured narrative interviews, participate and non-participate observation.

This thesis is based on a 10-month field work conducted in a retirement home. The empirical part is rooted in the fact that the author of this work actually became a part of the institution for a several months as its employee at the position of a certified nursing assistant. This perspective naturally enabled him to focus on a description of daily routines, taking place within the mentioned institution, from a perspective of a certified nursing assistant as well as on his interactions with the clients, which occur during these daily routines. Paying attention to the mutual interactions of both enables us to perceive how the dominant discourse in public health care works. It is particularly revealed through disciplinary techniques. The analysis of the disciplinary techniques follows the theory of power by Michel Foucault, which seems to prove that not only the clients but also the certified nursing assistants are being disciplined during the everyday practices of the given institution. Their position is at the lowest level of the hierarchy of health care system and this - in a way - dooms them to being disciplined since they are a part of the same routines as are the clients. Moreover, the analysis of the mutual power relationships between the certified nursing assistants and the clients shows that...

Pomahač, Matěj. 2011. Headhunting: etnografie utváření osoby jako zboží. Nepublikovaná diplomová práce. Praha: FHS UK. Key Words ethnography; human resources consulting; headhunting; economic anthropology; economization; commodification; structural holes Summary This thesis is based on more than a year-long research which took place in a private human resources consulting company focused on the search for highly skilled workers (known as headhunting). The research focus was based primarily on the fact, that the author worked in the reference field as human resources consultant. This perspective enabled to focus on description and perception of everyday activities ongoing in the company in relation to its clients and candidates, from the headhunter's point of view. The data collected during the course of participant observation have been analysing with the use of Michel Callon's studies of economization and commodification in major part, and through the Ronald S. Burt's theory of structural holes in minor part. The analysis reveals the economic and political factors determining the field of headhunting practices and procedures, which headhunters use in order to face up their position of intermediary party between clients and candidates. The study also focuses on processes and technologies, by means of the...

The thesis is based on a qualitative research realized in summer 2008 in several municipalities in Šumava. Focus groups organized within this research aimed at the relationship of different stakeholders to the Šumava National Park and more generally to nature and environmentalist thoughts and actors. The research design and the data gathered are presented in the introduction. Then the theory of general principles of consensus is described, which serves as the main theoretical framework for the study of focus groups participants' arguments. Using particular arguments, I show that against the protection of nature as it is realized by Šumava National Park Authority, critical citizens build their arguments on values that are considered legitimate and important in Czech society. The next part of the thesis studies the ecological principle of consensus as a new general principle of consensus: I discuss the conditions for existence of such a principle, its form in the controversy about the management of Šumava and the implications its form can have, supporting broader acceptance of the principle or, on the contrary, its rejection. An important point there is the relationship between expertise and participation, which are, together with the concept of nature, main elements of the ecological principle of...

This work deals with the interaction of human and non-human actors in the creative process. Its basic point is the notion of a socio-technological order, which works with equal access to human and non-human actors in social processes. The work is inspired by concepts from the selected studies, science and technology (Science and Technology Studies). Research follows the interaction of human and non-human entities using the example of programming music on the radio, namely the Czech Radio station for young listeners, Radio Wave. Field research was based on monitoring the interaction of three key players in the process of programming: music, selector software (used for programming most music radio stations worldwide) and the music director. The observation of mutual cooperation, induced effects, pressures, manipulation and the transformation of actors provides a comprehensive look at the creative process in which the software is not just a passive tool in the hands of its active user and music is not just obedient material in the hands of the reigning human creator, the music director. The goal is to help challenge anthropocentric discrimination of technologies and their activities in contemporary society. Although the research showed that, at Radio Wave, although the use of software is limited by a greater...