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

Review
"Serious students of Czech culture and politics can ill afford to ignore Holy's fascinating book." H. Steck, Choice

"As it challenges recent understandings of central and eastern European economic and political developments as 'natural' in themselves, the material within The Little Czech and the Great Czech Nation will be extremely useful to anthropologists who work in the region." Rebecca Nash, American Anthropologist

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


Book Description
Ladislav Holy 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 analyzes Czech discourses on national identity. Arguing that there were specifically "Czech" aspects to the Communist regime and to the "velvet revolution", 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.


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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 carried out 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 the particular Czech discourses on national identity and the changing but always problematic relations between nation and state in a period of revolutionary transformation. 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.


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