Josef Alan

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Josef Alan (born March 18, 1938 in Zlín ) is a former Czechoslovak sociologist and philosopher. During the normalization after 1969 he moved in dissident circles and was involved in the spread of samizdat .

Life

Josef Alan studied history and philosophy at Masaryk University in Brno (until 1961) and also took part in postgraduate studies in aesthetics at Charles University in Prague. 1966–1969 he worked at the Ústav sociálně politických věd UK (Institute of Social Political Sciences at Charles University) until its dissolution in 1969. In the late 1960s, he was a member of Pavel Machonin's research team , which was one of the preparers of the Prague Spring . At the end of the 1980s, during the normalization phase of the communist regime, he (with Miloslav Petrusek) published the samizdat magazine Sociologický obzor (the sociologist Nešpor writes about it “probably the only sociological samizdat magazine in the world”). Even here he dealt with the problem of Stalinism (for example in essays such as “Stalinovo dědictví” [Stalin's legacy] or “Děti doby Stalinovy” [children of the Stalin era]). After 1989 he worked as director of the revived institute, edited the magazine S-Obzor (1992-95, follow-up magazine of the Samizdat editions).

After the collapse of the regime in 1989, under Alan's leadership, an attempt was made in 1990–1993 to revive the former Institute Ústav sociálně politických věd UK . However, due to a lack of financial resources, this failed.

In the 1990s, Alan devoted himself more and more to the sociology of culture and art. He started a project on the history, sociology, cultural anthropology and aesthetics of Czech alternative culture in 1945–1989; the anthology published in 2001 ( Alternativní kultura ... ) was preceded by a multi-part film documentation. The sociologist Marketa Spiritova deals with the same phenomena of the time (escape into the private and the "counterworld" of intellectual dissent including the lively samizdat movement) and draws similar conclusions as Alan, she only polemicizes something with the term used by Alan " alternative ”and thinks“ parallel ”would be more appropriate (and the terms“ second culture ”and“ independent culture ”brought into play by the opposition at the time are not popular with it either).

Works (selection)

  • Společnost, vzdělání, jedinec: Kapitoly ze sociologie vzdělání , Svoboda, Praha 1974
  • Systémové prognózovanie, Československý výskumný ústav práce a sociálnych vecí , Bratislava 1976 (with F. Gál)
  • Budúcnosť vo svetle prognostiky alebo čo vieme či nevieme o budúcnosti , Smena, Bratislava 1983 (with F. Gál)
  • Etapy života očima sociologie, Panorama, Praha 1989
  • Sociologie, literatura a politika: Literatura jako sociologické sdělení , Karolinum, Praha 1996 (with M. Petrusek)
  • Alternative culture: příběh české společnosti 1945–1989 , anthology, ed. and introduced by Josef Alan, NLN, Prague 2001, 610 pages (illustrated and with CD-ROM)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Before 1967 the institute was called Ústav pro výuku a vědeckou práci kateder marxismu-leninismu (Institute for the teaching and scientific work of the chairs for Marxism-Leninism)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Zdeněk R. Nešpor: Ústav sociálně politických věd UK (1957-1969) , keyword in the Sociologická encyklopedie (Sociological Encyclopedia), ed. from Sociologický ústav AV ČR (Sociological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic), online at: encyklopedie.soc.cas.cz / ...
  2. ↑ Zdeněk Nešpor, Miloslav Petrusek ve světle své publikační činnosti v samizdatovém "Sociologickém obzoru" , in: Sociologický Časopis / Czech Sociological Review 2/2014, pages 189-209, JSTOR 24642561 (partially restricted access)
  3. ↑ Josef Alan: Rodinné vztahy a členství v KSČ , in: Otevřená minulost: autobiografická sociologie státního socialismu , ed. by Zdeněk Konipásek, Karolinum, Prague 1999, pages 155-170, cited therein. according to Atlas transformace, online at: monumenttotransformation.org / ...
  4. ↑ a b Zdeněk R. Nešpor et al., Slovník českých sociologů (Lexicon of Czech Sociologists), Academia, Prague 2013, 469 pages, keyword Alan Josef, ISBN 978-80-200-2221-9 , online at: encyklopedie.soc. cas.cz / ...
  5. ↑ Marketa Spiritova: Witch Hunt in Czechoslovakia: Intellectuals between the Prague Spring and the End of Communism , Böhlau Verlag, Cologne - Weimar - Vienna 2010, ISBN 978-3-412-20437-2 , 391 pages, online at: books.google. de / ...

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Alan, Josef
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czechoslovak sociologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 18, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Zlín