Contemporary Czech Society by Lyons, Pat and Kindlerová, Rita (eds)

Abstract

Contemporary Czech Society, edited by Pat Lyons and Rita Kindlerová, is a wide-ranging study of current attitudinal trends and changing realities, based on insights drawn largely from mass survey data. This highly engaging and thought-provoking work, which employs a social scientific framework, seeks and largely manages to present a value-free account of popular perceptions of the self and others. The publication comprises five sections: Preface; Introduction; Theory, methods, and structure; fifty-seven short empirically-informed chapters; and Conclusion, which contains a ‘cross-validation’. The separate chapters include contributions from eighteen different scholars, although Lyons’ own input merits special recognition, not least because it exceeds that of all the other authors as a whole. The main body of the text is divided into five broadly conceived thematic parts, which consider Czech society from economic, historical, political science, psychological, and sociological perspectives. Each chapter adopts an erotetic (question and answer) approach, and is grounded in solid scholarship, with reference to numerous secondary sources, and models and frameworks, but without conventional academic citations and footnotes. The study is thus presumably intended both for a general educated market keen to learn more about the dynamics and values Czech society, and for a more specialized readership, with an interest in particular aspects of the subject area.