Social Imaginaries and Conflict: Money, Work and Fraud in Czech Republic
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The chapter draws on a concept of social imaginaries proposed in recent works of Charles Taylor and focuses on its consequences for social analysis. More specifically, it shows how the imaginaries of economic success underlie social conflicts in Czech Republic, in the context of economic and political transition. On the one hand, work is taken to be the key aspect of recognition (in Axel Honneth’s sense of social esteem). On the other hand, many members of the elite gained their position in frauds related to more-or-less wild process of privatization of formerly state-run enterprises. More recently, corruption moved to the sector of public tenders, only to reinforce the image of undeserved success of large portion of economic and political elites. However, the sense of frustration and misrecognition stemming from this state of affairs plays itself out in problematic and potentionally dangerous ways. Even mainstream politicians, in order to channel frustration of many people away from threatening status quo, can utilize hatred against minorities, especially gypsies, still present on the fringes of the political scene. I will use the concept of social imaginaries to analyze, how relation to the state, the elites and the minorities on part of the majority is shaped. That includes, what are possible actions (and inactions) available to people, what can they hope for, i.e. what they imagine to be possible outcome of popular action. In the Czech context, there are some peculiar features to this - public imagination is strongly confined to the notion of state as the only relevant macroscopic actor, rendering other levels of administration and public society irrelevant. I conclude that imaginary present here thus hinders constructive political action and shared experiences of disrespect will more likely lead to aggression against surrogate victims.