Nadia Johanisova, a 2003 diploma graduate from the Czech Republic, has recently completed her PhD dissertation: “A Comparison of Rural Social Enterprises in Britain and the Czech Republic.”

On one level, it is a “remake” of her 2005 book, Living in the Cracks (published by Feasta and the New Economics Foundation). It examines a number of questions: What is a (green, rural) social enterprise in Britain and the Czech Republic today? How does it work in practice? What are the constraints and how do today’s social enterprises survive in an uncongenial “globalised” environment? The answers are collated from interviews with 72 social enterprises in both countries (in Britain these include the Phone Co-op, West Dorset Food and Land Trust, Port Appin Community Co-operative and many others).

On another level, Nadia’s PhD has attempted to go substantially deeper than the book. Building on hundreds of references, she has tried to link the concept of social enterprise, often seen as just another gimmick for “social inclusion” into the mainstream economy, with the ideas and aspirations of deep thinkers from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Ivan Illich and Mahatma Gandhi to Vandana Shiva, Richard Douthwaite and other current green economists looking for constructive alternatives to mainstream economic theory and practice. Is “social enterprise” a new incarnation of a long tradition of mutual aid and self-help, still alive in traditional societies though ignored by economic theory? What can we learn from the Central European co-operatie tradition? What is “economic democracy,” and is it something that we should strive for? How do we re-define “the economy” to make room for emerging structures such as community land trusts, development trusts, local currencies, community firms, local transport schemes, community-owned shops and ethical banks? And how does all this link up to conceptions of “the green” and “the rural”?

These are some of the questions Nadia’s PhD thesis attempts to adress. It was defended at the Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, in October 2007, and a hard copy is now available in the CHE library. Nadia will send an electronic version (in Word or PDF format) if you e-mail her at: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Alternatively, the PDF version can be found on the Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Studies website.

Nadia sends warm greetings to all her friends in the CHE community and to current students, and best wishes to the CHE as an institution committed to a holistic educational approach. In 2008 she plans to move from her rural home in South Bohemia to the Moravian metropolis of Brno, where she will be taking up teaching and research in ecological economics full time at the Masaryk University. She has also applied for a Fullbright scholarship, so may turn up at the Gund Institute in Vermont next year, where she would like to draft a textbook for her students.