Ethnographic Works 2017, vol 47 issue 4

2017

Publication date: 2018

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Volume Editors: Marcin Lubaś

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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Issue editor Marcin Lubaś

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Sprzężenia krytyczne: antropologia, postsocjalizm, postkolonialność. Słowo wstępne

Marcin Lubaś

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 1-1

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.023.8886

This text is an introduction to the collection of essays that address the relationship between the discipline of Anthropology, Postsocialism Studies, and the Postcolonial Thought and Scholarship. The article outlines the history of anthropological research on Postsocialism and marks the spheres of mutual influence and possible collaboration between Postcolonial Critique and the Anthropology of Postsocialism and Post-communism. It poses the question regarding the validity of time-space categorizations that frame social scientific research and theorizing about the Central and East-Southern Europe.

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Kolonizowanie historii. Postkolonializm i postsocjalizm jako komunały

Łukasz Kaczmarek

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 369-391

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.018.8602

Drawing on Eric R. Wolf famous appeal that anthropology bears a special responsibility to examine the commonplaces of human thought and the fighting words of human speech (Wolf 1994), in

this essay I consider some aspects of postcolonialism and postsocialism specific understanding

in a public culture – especially in Poland and, to lesser extent, other formerly dependent nation-states: Fiji and Jamaica. Public culture itself is, in a sense, a common place where numerous terms and arguments of academic origins are losing their previous meaning and acquire new senses. They are often objects of abuse and semantic manipulations in order to impose a specific interpretations of the past – which is the colonizing of the history – that are instrumental to justify domination of the particular socio-political policies.

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Post-co? Przydatność kategorii „postsocjalizmu” w badaniach antropologicznych w byłej Jugosławii

Karolina Bielenin-Lenczowska

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 393-402

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.019.8678

The aim of this paper is a look into a notion of “ostsocialism” in the context of anthropological research in former Yugoslavia. After a short overview of the definitions of postsocialism, I argue, that this concept is defined too broadly in order to capture complexity of social and cultural life in various post-socialist or post-communist states. In the case of former Yugoslavia I suggest using the term “post-Yugoslav” in order to show a specifics of life in socialist Yugoslavia and in the republics emerged after its collapse. My arguments base on the data collected during ethnographic fieldwork in the Republic of Macedonia.

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Ucieczka w postkolonialność. Pułapki wschodnioeuropejskiego dyskursu teorii postkolonialnej

Magdalena Nowicka-Franczak

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 403-414

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.020.8679

The paper discusses the circulation of the concept of postcoloniality from Western Academia to Eastern European context of research. On the one hand, the proliferation of meanings of postcoloniality results from the heterogeneity of the postcolonial theory that combines various components of postmodern, feminist and emancipatory discourses. On the other hand, the notions of “postcoloniality” and “postcolonial society” become vaguely comprehensive and too easily identified with post-communism or post-socialism. At the turn of the century many researchers decided to incorporate the concept of a historical European domination over the Orient and people from the Middle East to analyse the relics of communist regimes in Eastern Europe: a colonialized man has been transformed into a homo sovieticus. The paper focuses on the concepts borrowed from the postcolonial theory which used in the Eastern European context might change into an ideological voice trapped in the specific discourse of modernization and otherness.

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Uwagi o (nie)przydatności konceptu homo sovieticus na przykładzie badań wśród białoruskich kołchoźników

Anna Engelking

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 415-428

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.021.8680

The author on the grounds of her ethnographic field research in kolkhoz villages in Belarus negatively verifies the established, orientalising concept of homo sovieticus as a possible tool of interpretation. She concentrates on the relation between the kolkhoz inhabitants and the authorities at both the local and the state level. She argues that in the kolkhozniks’ worldview the authorities at both levels are a modern variant of a feudal pattern of the “good master”. The concept of homo sovieticus has been constructed to grasp the psychological effects of long-term living under the rule of the authoritarian Soviet system: fearing the authorities and having a slave-like approach to them. The Belarusian villagers have rather functioned in a symbiosis with the authorities, based on a feudal principle of hierarchical complementarity. As the imaginary of the kolkhozniks reflects the archaic, sacral content of the more distant past, it seems more adequate to define them as homo (post)traditional or homo (post)feudalism.

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Czy postsocjalizm wytworzy „postszamanizm”? O problemach badań współczesnego syberyjskiego szamanizmu

Wojciech Połeć

Ethnographies, Volume 45, Issue 4, 2017, pp. 429-442

https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.17.022.8681

The article describes the problem of mutual relations between the “post-Soviet” situation and the process of renaissance or the “rebirth” of shamanism. The author asks the question whether a sufficient explanation for the reappearance of shamanism in Siberia is the collapse of the communist system. The next question is whether contemporary shamanism is a completely different phenomenon than pre-revolutionary shamanism and may be considered as “neo-shamanism”. The author claims that in the case of Siberian shamanism, when asking about the continuity of shamanism, we also need to ask ourselves whether we mean the continuation of the whole system or only its chosen manifestations. We must take into account the changing cultural and social context of shamanism and relationships between shamanism and the cultures of indigenous peoples. Empirical base of this paper are four fieldworks in the south of Siberia in the years 2000, 2010, 2013 and 2014.

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Słowa kluczowe: postsocialism, postcoloniality, post-communism, East-Southern Europe, anthropology of history, political anthropology, postsocialism, postcolonialism, Poland, postsocialism, former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, East and West, Europe, postcolonial theory, Eastern Europe, modernization, post-communism, post-socialism, homo sovieticus, kolkhoz, field research, Belarusian studies, shamanism, post-socialism, Siberia, Buryatia

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