The little Czech man and the Great Czech Nation: National identity and the post-communist transformation of society

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.