The Brno Center for Cultural Sociology is not an organization. It serves as a centrifocal point for intellectual and academic activities that respect the two general premises on which the Center is based (see below). It is here to highlight, inspire, and support such activities among interested students, scholars and beyond. We do it for pleasure, we take sociology seriously, and we don’t care about impact factors.
CULTURAL IS REAL: We take social world as a realm of meaning, and the social actor as homo interpretans. Meaning is the major driving and organizing force in human conduct and social relationships. It orients people in their world, it provides them with the will to act or abstain from acting, it shapes their innermost feelings and makes sense of them. Meaning is a social fact of the strongest caliber.
CRITICAL IS PRACTICAL: For us, cultural sociology is an exercise in critical thought. It thinks with, through, and for social actors, but not instead of them. At its best, cultural sociology provides information for critical understanding and self-understanding to those who are open to it. It is practical as it respects practicality of individual actors, not just governments and other institutions. It is not meant to provide intellectual ammunition for ideological struggles. Partisan thinking is antithetical to critical thought.