Enlightenment, Culture, Leisure: Houses of Culture in Czechoslovakia

Enlightenment, Culture, Leisure: Houses of Culture in Czechoslovakia is the first book that provides a comprehensive overview of the creation of a nationwide network of houses of culture that were systematically established during the period of state socialism in the former Czechoslovakia. As places of public life in post-war society, these buildings enjoyed generous economic, political and legislative support. In addition to their specific typology, the book also looks at the educational and emancipatory potential of houses of culture and their role in the organization and control of leisure time. The publication also takes in the programmatic precursors of this type of cultural and social institution dating back to the nineteenth-century and the inter-war period (clubhouses, national or workers’ houses), as well as overlaps into the period after 1989, when buildings and their operators had to, and sometimes still have to, cope with the demands of modernisation. The book covers both the Czech and Slovak context of the construction of houses of culture, which not only manages to cover the entire territory of the former Czechoslovakia, but also to capture the different historical experiences.