Resilience, Uncertainty and Local Periodicals: Making Sense of Agency in Two Small Towns in Czechoslovakia (1928–1943)

Abstract

This article explores how local media constructed resilience and agency in two small towns in interwar Czechoslovakia. It explores how small towns were represented as actors capable of coping with structural disadvantages and of navigating through the uncertainties of the turbulent period of the “long” 1930s. The research focuses on two towns, Kdyně and Heřmanův Městec, and presents the content analysis of two periodicals, Kdyňská Stráž (The Kdyně Argus) and Zájmy Heřmanoměstecka (The Heřmanův Městec Affairs). The comparative analysis of the periodicals’ agendas, the narratives of the towns, the towns’ relationship to a larger system, and the framing of major challenges during the analyzed period has unveiled common traits as well as differing strategies in creating a sense of agency: an internally- and individually-oriented discourse in Zájmy Heřmanoměstecka and an externally and collectively oriented discourse in Kdyňská Stráž.