Doing fieldwork in Eastern Europe - New issue of Anthropology Matters

The new issue of Anthropology Matters - one of the few online anthropology journals - is out! The nine articles on "Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe" try to explore post-communism in Eastern Europe in new ways. They are based on ethnographic case studies of communities in Poland, Romania, Hungary, Georgia, Serbia and Croatia, among others among vendors in the market square, waste gatherers, Greek migrants, Transylvanian Saxons etc.

From the editorial by Michaela Schäuble, Tomasz Rakowski and Wlodzimierz Pessel:

Ethnographic micro-societal fieldwork creates new insight into the contemporary dilemmas and everyday practices of ordinary people dealing with the heritage of socialist ideology while simultaneously trying to obtain a sense of security and continuity in their identity.

(...)

Tackling everyday realities seems to be the most emblematic feature of anthropological research in post-socialist scenarios, insofar as it provides a valuable counterpart to 'apparent history' as featured in legal acts, political programmes, and changes of economic and monetary systems. In his influential Anthropology, Michael Herzfeld notes that anthropology and history 'have danced a flirtatious pas de deux throughout the past century' (Herzfeld 2001:55). In Central and Eastern Europe this flirtation has turned into a productive intellectual relationship, in that the authors' anthropological micro-scale fieldwork brings hitherto unseen or neglected levels, 'paces', and cultural narratives (back) into sight.

>> visit Anthropology Matters Journal, 2006, Vol 8 (1): Doing Fieldwork in Eastern Europe