Hana Cervinkova__Michal Buc

Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe E d i t e d b y Hana C ervinkova , Michal B uchowski , a nd Zden ě k Uherek RETHINKING ETHNOGRAPHY IN CENTRAL EUROPE Copyright © Hana Cervinkova, Michal Buchowski, and Zdeneˇk Uherek, 2015. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-52448-5 All rights reserved. First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-57126-0 ISBN 978-1-137-52449-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137524492 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data. Rethinking ethnography in Central Europe : / edited by Hana Cervinkova, Michal Buchowski, Zdeneˇk Uherek. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethnology—Europe, Central—Case studies. 2. East Europeans— Europe, Western—Social conditions—Case studies. 3. Post-communism— Europe, Eastern—Case studies. 4. Europe, Central—Social conditions— 21st centruy—Case studies. I. Cervinkova, Hana, 1973– editor of compilation. II. Buchowski, Michal, editor of compilation. III. Uherek, Zdeneˇk, editor of compilation. DAW1026.R47 2015 305.800943—dc23 2015008117 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September 2015 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s vii Introduction On R ethinking E thnography i n C entral E urope: Toward Cosmopolitan Anthropologies in the “ Peripheries” 1 Michal Buchowski and Hana Cervinkova P a r t I M o b i l i t i e s 1 Othering the Self: National Identity and Social Class in Mobile L ives 23 M a r e k P a w l a k 2 Renegotiating S ymbolic C apital, S tatus, a nd K nowledge: P o l i s h P h y s i c i a n s i n S w e d e n 4 1 Katarzyna W olanik B ostr ö m a nd M agnus Ö hlander 3 Mobile E ntrepreneurs: T ransnational V ietnamese i n the C zech R epublic 59 Gertrud H ü welmeier 4 Pavlivka I odine S pring W ater: T ransnational E ntrepreneurship i n P o s t - T r a n s i t i o n C o n t e x t s 7 5 Zden ě k U herek a nd V eronika B eransk á 5 Giving B irth i n B erlin: R eproductive E xperiences o f Polish M igrant W omen 89 I z a b e l l a M a i n Part II Contesting Transition: Activisms and Expert Knowledge 6 New U rban A ctivism i n S lovakia: T he C ase o f Bansk á B ystrica 115 A l e x a n d r a B i t u š í k o v á vi ● Contents 7 Feminist a nd Q ueer S ex T herapy: T he E thnography o f Expert Knowledge of Sexuality in Poland 131 Agnieszka K o ś cia ń ska 8 Civil Society and EU Integration of Serbia: Toward a Historical Anthropology o f G lobalizing P ostsocialist E urope 147 M a r e k M i k u š Part III Postsocialist Modernities 9 On the Road: Polish Modernization from the Perspective of the A nthropology o f t he M otorway 175 Waldemar K uligowski a nd A gata S tanisz 10 Ethnography o f P ostsocialist R ural C hange: S ocial M emory, Modernity, Local Empowerment, and Internal Displacement 195 H a n a H o r á k o v á 1 1 D a l a i - L a m a i s m : A n O r i e n t a l i s t C o n s t r u c t i o n o f Postsocialist C onsciousness 217 M a r t i n H ř í b e k A f t e r w o r d 2 4 1 Michal B uchowski a nd H ana C ervinkova L i s t o f C o n t r i b u t o r s 247 Index 253 Acknowledgments The editors would like to acknowledge the International Visegrad Fund for its support for the research and writing of this volume under the Standard Grant Project Social and Cultural Change in Contemporary Central Europe (21320085) and the support of the Institute of Ethnology of the Czech Academy of Sciences RVO 68378078. This publication was subject to external peer-review and we thank the anonymous reviewers for their generous and helpful comments. We would like to acknowledge the invaluable help of the language editor Sophie Richmond and of Patrycja Poniatowska who compiled the index. Finally, our apprecia- tion goes to Mireille Yanow, Mara Berkoff and the production team at Palgrave Macmillan for their excellent support and collaboration. INTRODUCTION On Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe: Toward Cosmopolitan Anthropologies in the “Peripheries” Michal Buchowski and Hana Cervinkova I Rethinking There have been many studies with “rethinking” in the title.1 E d m u n d Leach’s collection of essays probably comes first to mind as a book that influenced anthropological thinking in the Anglo-Saxon world and beyond. The authors of this volume do not have the ambition of changing the course of thought in anthropology and the individual chapter authors do not spend much time trying to “understand what is happening in social anthropology” and they do not “go right back to the beginning and rethink basic issues . .” (Leach 1961: 1, original emphasis). Neither do any of them enter “the game of building new theories on the ruins of old ones” (Leach 1961: v). In a rather m odest way, they present findings from their ethnographic fieldwork concep- tualized through contemporary anthropological concepts, bringing ethnographic accounts from their research field and interpreting issues they find important for the understanding of societies and peoples they study. Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe is is literally an account of ethnography in Central Europe, but contextualized through a par- ticular historical perspective on anthropological studies on the region and in the region. This book represents the “tip of an iceberg” of a new wave of writings in Central European anthropological scholarship. 2 ● Michal Buchowski and Hana Cervinkova Central Europe Several questions should be explicated, beginning with the notion of “Central Europe.” In most writings this term is assumed intuitively or simply taken for granted, but like any geographic and political notion, it has a long and controversial history. It is not our aim to explain or define it thoroughly here. It should suffice to say that the concept was invented in the nineteenth century as a German political idea of Mitteleuropa aimed at creating a zone stretching from the North Sea to the Adriatic, in which German culture and language, seen as superior in relation to Slavic, Romanian, and Hungarian forms of communal and economic lives, were to dominate (Partsch 1904; Naumann 1916). In the inter- war period, the idea was hijacked by Czechoslovakia’s president, Tom áš G. Masaryk, who turned the tables around and applied the notion to the newly (re-)established states lying between the Baltic nations in the north and Greece in the south, and sandwiched between Germany and the Soviet Union. Culturally, linguistically, and religiously diversified societies, subjected to various imperial policies through centuries, were combined in the narrative as at least partly unified in terms of shared cultural features and historical destiny. World War II and the Cold War consigned the idea of Central Europe to oblivion, but it was revived in 1970s and 1980s by Central European intellectuals who once again used it as an emancipatory tool. As Milan Kundera, the Czech é migr é writer argued, Central Europe was the West kidnapped by the “bar- baric, Asiatic East” (1984). This fully essentializing strategy was not purely strategic, since it seems that participants in the discussion truly believed in the existence of these historically shaped cultural zones, and its ultimate goal was to undermine the dichotomous Cold War division of Europe. On the one hand, it was showing the need to question the naturalized and hierarchical West–East dichotomy, while at the same time pushing Soviet satellite states more toward the highly valued West, and also implying the existence of a tripartite structure defined by post– World War II geopolitics (Buchowski and Ko ł bon 2004: 69–71). The disintegration of the communist bloc led to various redefinitions of the idea of Central Europe. In the 1990s the term was used as a way of distancing the so-called Vi š ehrad states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Slovenia) from other countries that were seen as lagging behind in implementing neoliberal reforms, were unstable politically and economically, often defined religiously by Christian Orthodoxy, and located further east than Poland and the Baltic states, and south of Hungary and Slovenia (this included especially countries in the region On Rethinking Ethnography in Central Europe ● 3 torn apart by the post-Yugoslav Balkan wars).

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