Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11230%2F17%3A10367292" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11230/17:10367292 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2017.53.6.376" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2017.53.6.376</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.13060/00380288.2017.53.6.376" target="_blank" >10.13060/00380288.2017.53.6.376</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Discourses of Thrift and Consumer Reasonability in Czech State-Socialist Society

Original language description

The article examines how notions of thrift, saving, and frugality were present and active in the state-socialist discourses of economic behaviour and what meaning these notions carried. The research is based on three kinds of data: the official state-socialist public discourse of economic behaviour as presented in transcripts of parliamentary speeches, household guides and manuals, and eyewitness accounts of the state-socialist era recollected in oral history interviews. Such a multi-faceted corpus of discourse data made it possible to examine factual and normative aspects of thrift in state-socialist discourses and compare them with the accounts of everyday practices and tactics that may well contradict the official discourse. The analysis reveals that (a) notions of thrift and saving were strongly present throughout the period in all discourses examined, (b) both terms underwent a semantic shift from a productive to a restrictive meaning over time, and (c) both notions were eventually publicly sidelined by the emphasis on raising revenue. Despite fading from public discourse in the late 1980s, the notion of thrift had by then become instilled in the subjective understanding of the &apos;reasonable consumer&apos;, a concept that can therefore be considered a precursor of the contemporary concept of consumer responsibilisation.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

50401 - Sociology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GA15-04863S" target="_blank" >GA15-04863S: Frugality and Economy in Times of Crisis: Economic behaviour in family and public discourses in present Czech society</a><br>

Continuities

P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)

Publication year

2017

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Sociologický časopis / Czech Sociological Review

ISSN

0038-0288

e-ISSN

—

Volume of the periodical

53

Issue of the periodical within the volume

6

Country of publishing house

CZ - CZECH REPUBLIC

Number of pages

27

Pages from-to

805-831

UT code for WoS article

000423274800002

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85041347170