Podrobný výpis o publikaci

Our study focused on different social representations of Roma in Czech society. Social representation as such can be grasped in two ways: as the contents of individual socially shared layers of knowledge and, on the other hand, as publicly relevant forms of that knowledge. The criterion of public relevance, i.e. the latter, narrower qualification of social representation, was the guiding principle for our paper on the social representations of Roma. That is also where our decision to use authorial photographs of Roma stemmed from; they are, by definition, intended for display in public spaces, designed for viewers and as such are expected to depict reality in a "certain" way. They are made with the intent to show "something". One essential characteristic of social representations is their practicality. Social representations are interactive by nature, they are a process providing a code for communication and one’s understanding of the world. Practical consequences of social representations follow from their ontological character of value or meaning, as an attribute of cultural reality. Language as the structure of meaning is permeated with values, that is, with practical purposes linked with human activities. The same of course generally applies to social representations which are typically based on communication in the natural language, or they are at least partially translatable into it, as in the case of photographic representations. The principle lying at the core of the social representations of Roma in Czech society is the power asymmetry between the majority and the minority. Their mutually opposing attitudes create a background against which further characteristics stand out, including the fact pointed out by experts, i.e. the diversity of groups as well as varied life patterns which are all included in the unifying category of Rom or, earlier, Gypsy. Also the completed historical survey of the main social types representing the state or quality of being Romany in the social space, which we well may, given its dominant connection to the territory of the Czech lands, call "Czech" society (keeping in mind the diverse political, economic and social formations taking over in this territory as time passed), is rooted in this basic power matrix.