Periféria, fluidný koncept s hmatateľnými implikáciami: český a slovenský kontext

Where does the periphery begin and where does it end? Who determines what is the periphery and what is not? What is the relationship between the periphery and the centre? Does the periphery depend on the centre, or can it exist independently? Is the periphery a static entity, or does it change in space and time? Can the periphery have its own centre? Does the periphery determine the form and quality of social practice and the patterns of behaviour of the population living there? These and many other questions are asked by scientists especially since the spatial turn in the social and human sciences, which has been intense since the 1970s, when scientists turned their attention to studying space and geography in explaining social phenomena. The first section deals with the conceptualization of the periphery across various scientific disciplines. I trace how the concept of the periphery was thematized, how it was adopted in historiography, and how the Czech and Slovak historical community reflects upon it. In the second part of the text, I attempt to apply relevant concepts of the periphery (the periphery of the world-system, the internal peripheries of empires and nation-states) to the interpretation of the Czech and Slovak historical context, while pointing out that the concept of the periphery is more than relevant for the interpretation of Slovak and Czech history, as well as their shared Czech-Slovak history. This part may seem overly ambitious and simplistic, but at the same time it can serve for further discussion on the specifics of the dynamics of the centre-periphery relationship in relation to the territories of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.