The text is dedicated to the reflections on the author’s own ethnographic field research in the rural areas of the Republic of Macedonia, which has been carried out since 2011 to specify the strategies which local inhabitants develop to manage their everyday reality and practices. The author discusses the factors which influence an ethnographic field research and presents the reflexivity and awareness of the research process. She also focuses on researcher’s personality and individual features, on how the locals accept a stranger in their private space. The several key moments are underlined like coming to the field and its impact on the further activity through the reflection if the field which precedes next steps, gaining the confidence and respect, difficulties that the researcher faces in communication etc. All these moments (and many others) should be considered as an inevitable part of the work.

The text concerns the author’s project “Ethnography as a personal experience. Generational transformations in methodology and research practices”. It reveals a problematic, and partly unstable character of the strategy of constructing the identity of an anthropologist professional group. In the author’s opinion a Polish young anthropologist shows a disruption of knowledge transmission between generations as well as a discontinuity in the Polish ethnology tradition. As a result, there is a tendency in not only borrowing the theory and authority from the tradition of foreign national anthropologies, but also an uncritical transfer of discursive forms, authorizing national anthropology. In his opinion it is the most important question about contemporary shape of national anthropologies, especially Polish ethnology.

The author in his text dedicated to action research made in the Vilnius region, Lithuania (a project realized by undergraduate students, PhD students, and one of the employees of the Chair of Ethnology and Anthropology University of Wrocław and a Lithuanian partner), presents an approach of engaged anthropology, basing on the characteristics important for it: cooperation, dialogism, openness, voluntariness. The paper presents the main features of the methodology of action research and further – the objectives and results of the research. It describes the cooperation between the academic anthropologists and non-professionals, moreover – the reflections on fieldwork and the problems that researcher has to cope with.

The text presents an approach which bases on participant observation, but is significantly more intensive and considerably interferes in peoples’ everyday life. The observer becomes a “shadow” of the observed people and accompanies them in everyday activities. This technique was crucial for the research made by the author and concerning students’ lifestyles, commissioned by Sustainable Lifestyle Research Center, carried out by the group of students from the University of Łódź. The text describes goals and results of the project and aims to show briefly the problems and chances of using shadowing tools in anthropological work.

The author presents scientific achievements of two scientific projects conducted by the Student Scientific Circle of Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of Jagiellonian University in cooperation with the Student Scientific Circle of Institute of Public Health Collegium Medicum of Jagiellonian University which he took part in: “PromoAfryka” and “PromoKazachstan”. “PromoAfryka” was the scientific expedition to Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania (the author was responsible for an ethnological part of the research). The participants took part in the 13th World Congress of Public Health in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and conducted field research on the question of the impact of tourism on traditional culture of 12 tribes settled in lower Omo Valley and nutrition habits of the members of the tribes. The project has won several prizes. The “PromoKazachstan” project consisted in field research on Kazakh shamanism. Doubtless, both projects are fine examples of the key role which can be played by ethnology and its methodology in interdisciplinary scientific projects, as a complementary with life sciences approach.

The paper is a report from the author’s research which was focused on a cultural and social meaning of the forest. Its aim is to show how to connect a topic of the forest with tools of the space anthropology. The main part of the text is an indroduction to the ethnographic region of the Tuchola Forest (Bory Tucholskie) and its deep associations with the forest space. On this example the author presents that the forest can be analyze as a starting point from which we can understand a local society; all the time it surrounds locals and it has an influence on many aspects of their life, e.g. economy, history, beliefs, worldview, setting boundaries. Also the foresters and a new phenomenon of saint Hubert cult are mentioned.

The article bases on ethnographical field research made in intercultural environment of little Slovakian spa. The author choses a place where different social groups co-exist: spa clients, spa employees and residents of the spa village. The general question is how the local quality of this environment is perceived and what are the contents of this exact idea of local quality, but the text mostly reveals a few aspects of the field research experience, the role of anthropologist, problems with finding informants and possible ways of fitting into the rythm of live in the spa resort.

The paper attempts to examine the multicultural society of Budapest in the context of the Oriental tradition brought by the Arab, Turkish and Persian immigrants. The author presents the smoking of waterpipe as an object of a transfer from immigrants custom into general fashion. According to the author, by using sheesha the transmitters make effort to create familiarity and feeling like at home. Nevertheless, this practice dislodged from the original context (or users) and became a fashionable mean to create or to support social circles. This is a good example of general question of a process by which ethnic traditions and customs become parts of life in multicultural environment of big cities nowadays.

In his text the author showed the results of his fieldwork in Turkey, in the western Kurdistan. In his research, conducted on the border of the perspectives of anthropology and political science, he decided to compare the situation of the Kurdish people, the largest stateless ethnic group in Istanbul and Diyarbakir and the way in which they build their ethnic and national identity living in different places and in different environments. The author investigated how the Kurds preserve their ethnic customs and how they define their contemporary ethnic condition.

The author describes the custom of two villages in Hargita county in Hungary. As the two settlements are close to forests, they abound both in pines and birches, which enables the inhabitants, for instance, the chopping-down of fourteen pines for a wedding as bridal young trees. Apart from weddings, there are numerous other occasions to set up young trees. The author also attempts to interpret the tradition, describe the functions of young tree setting in the limelight of its magical, artistic and ethnic contexts from the 1950s to the present days.

The paper concerns new immigrants (on the example of Polish-Chinese neighbourhood) but in two folklore phenomena: gossip and urban legend. The author demonstrates the process of formation the Polish-Chinese relationships resulting in – established in 2010 – economic cooperation between the city authorities and Chinese investors in the Silesian city of Jaworzno in Poland, where is located the Chinese largest Wholesale Center „Silesia Chinese Center” in the southern part of the country. The contact of such different cultures in the space of the city brought new urban legends and creates gossips, heroes of which were the Chinese people. Basing on her field research the author tries to answer the question of the source of these processes and their impact on the quality of Polish-Chinese relationships in the city.