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'A milestone in the history of Slovakia': two narratives about the 2015 referendum on the family in Slovakia

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Synek Rétiová A.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

2022

vol. 58

issue 3

309-333

This paper examines a discursive controversy that arose in Slovakia after a conservative civic association initiated a referendum to protect 'traditional families' against the supposed encroachment of LGBTI rights. The 2015 referendum represents a tipping point in the formation of a new Slovak conservative political front. In this article, meaning-making among actors civically engaged in the referendum is brought to light by re-constructing the deep cultural structures in which they are immersed. Drawing upon the strong programme in cultural sociology, I analyse the master narratives woven through the discourse of the referendum organisers and boycotters. These narratives are re-constructed from 20 semi-structured interviews with the engaged actors and a corpus of 82 written documents, such as blogs, speeches, and declarations concerning the referendum. The analysis employs the methods of thick description and the structural analysis of narrative genres. It shows that, first, the referendum controversy presents a clash between a narrative of social decline and a narrative of social progress. The narratives serve as moral regulators by deploying emotionally loaded images of nostalgia for 'traditional families' and a utopia of unconditional progress. Second, although both narratives interpret the referendum as a milestone in the history of Slovakia, they do so in different genres with specific implications for action. Using the example of the decision by referendum opponents to withdraw from the pre-referendum debates, I demonstrate how narrative genres as implicit and deep cultural structures have the power to orient action and shape the contours of controversy.

‘We have always been like this’: the local embeddedness of migration attitudes

51%

Rapoš Božič I., Synek Rétiová A., Klvaňová R.

Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

2023

vol. 59

issue 3

339-365

This article contributes to the local turn in migration research. It explores how the city context shapes migration attitudes among residents, resulting in the formation of imagined communities of 'Locals' and 'Others'. Relying on qualitative research methods and cultural sociological theories of cultural armatures of the city, cultural repertoires, and symbolic boundaries, we examine the cases of two Czech cities, Teplice and Vyšší Brod. We find that the specific characteristics of the local history, geography, and demography of the cities give rise to distinct cultural repertoires that shape how their residents view migration and the presence of people with a migratory background in their city. We identify two prevailing cultural repertoires, local cosmopolitanism in Teplice and Czech nativism in Vyšší Brod, which inform both the patterns of boundary work towards residents with a migratory background and their positioning on local hierarchies of otherness. We argue that to understand the role of local context in the formation of migration attitudes, it is not sufficient to study only the characteristics of cities; how these characteristics are made meaningful by the people who live in them should also be considered.

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2 Sociologický časopis. Czech Sociological Review

2 Synek Rétiová A.

1 Klvaňová R.

1 Rapoš Božič I.

1 2023

1 2022

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'A milestone in the history of Slovakia': two narratives about the 2015 referendum on the family in Slovakia

‘We have always been like this’: the local embeddedness of migration attitudes