This paper recapitulates two influential JRAI articles to discuss comparison in anthropology. Charles Lindholm’s 1995 article criticized the then new, now well-established, trend in Middle East ethnography for its radical emphasis on particularism and lack of theorization, driven by fears of de-humanizing subjects. In turn, Joel Robbins’s 2013 article proposed an “anthropology of the good” as a substitute to the particularism of the anthropology of the “suffering subject”. This would reinstate the notion of cultural diversity and its comparative vocation as touchstones of contemporary anthropology. Connecting these articles is a discussion of Middle East and Palestine ethnography’s major shift in the 1970’s to an anthropology of suffering reflected in anthropology at large. The conclusion is that suffering, just as comparison, must be qualified. Thus, qualified comparison must be the foundation to anthropological critiques of Western reason as much as it is to classical cultural critique.

This paper recapitulates two influential JRAI articles to discuss comparison in anthropology. Charles Lindholm’s 1995 article criticized the then new, now well-established, trend in Middle East ethnography for its radical emphasis on particularism and lack of theorization, driven by fears of de-humanizing subjects. In turn, Joel Robbins’s 2013 article proposed an “anthropology of the good” as a substitute to the particularism of the anthropology of the “suffering subject”. This would reinstate the notion of cultural diversity and its comparative vocation as touchstones of contemporary anthropology. Connecting these articles is a discussion of Middle East and Palestine ethnography’s major shift in the 1970’s to an anthropology of suffering reflected in anthropology at large. The 

conclusion is that suffering, just as comparison, must be qualified. Thus, qualified comparison must be the foundation to anthropological critiques of Western reason as much as it is to classical cultural critique.

The article refers to the research and activity of Nazi Institute für Deutsche Ostarbeit (IDO), which operated in occupied Poland between 1940–1944. Drawing on archival sources mainly on Diary of archeological research in Szaflary (1942), the author provides new and verifi es existing information about research projects and expeditions carried by IDO in Poland, in this case by  Section Vorgeschichte. This yet unknown Dictionary provides new insight not only into research procedures and excavations in Szaflary village but also into Germans ethnopolicy towards conquered nations (Polish Highlanders from Podhale region), as well as relations between German and Polish scientists. In that sense presented article contributes to the contemporary discussion about political involvement of German and academics in the Nazi regime, taking under consideration the relation between science, war, and power. The article is also questioning the problem of ethics, responsibility and political engagement of academics and the statues of data produced by IDO.

The term psychological operations, viewed in the context of security sciences as one of the fundamental methods of contemporary hybrid warfare is commonly described as the use of non-military means such as information campaigns, subversive activities, indirect strategic communication and propaganda in attempts to achieve certain strategic goals. However, I will argue that by describing these activities as psychological, we risk losing sight of their cultural aspects, namely the fact that they are directed at and conducted within a specific cultural context. By placing the concept of hybrid warfare within the framework of semiotic anthropology, I will show how the activities traditionally viewed by the security experts as psychological in nature are actually directly linked to shared cultural meanings, values, motivations, worldviews and cultural and subcultural identities. I will argue that hybrid warfare, in its essence, can be viewed as a conflict resulting from the simultaneous presence of competing interpretations of social reality within one sociocultural context.