The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation
National Identity and the Post-Communist Social Transformation

Timely and insightful study of Czech nationalism and identity in the post-communist period.

Ladislav Holy (Author)

9780521555845, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 August 1996

244 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.4 cm, 0.36 kg

"...a valuable and suggestive study....to enrich our understanding of the domestic transitions from communism Carol Skalnik Leff, Slavic Review

When Ladislav Holy precipitately left Czechoslovakia for the UK in 1968 he was already one of the leading anthropologists in Central Europe. In the following decades he made important field studies in Africa. Since 1986 he has been engaged in research in the Czech Republic, and he brings to this timely study of national identity the skills of a seasoned researcher, a cosmopolitan perspective, and the insights of an insider. Drawing on historical and literary sources as well as ethnography, he analyses Czech discourses on national identity. He argues that there were specifically 'Czech' aspects to the communist regime and to the 'velvet revolution', and paying particular attention to symbolic representations of what it means to be Czech, he explores how notions of Czech identity were involved in the debates surrounding the fall of communism, and the emergence of a new social system.

Introduction
1. Nation against state
2. Freedom, nation, and personhood
3. Self-stereotypes and national traditions
4. National traditions and the imagining of the nation
5. National traditions and the political process
6. Nation and state in the context of Czech culture.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]