CORRESPONDENCE:REPLY TO MICHAŁ BUCHOWSKI Chris Hann, Max Planck Institute

Though we have recently discussed some of whereas I have argued (Hann 1995) 1 that the same issues at conferences, the published anthropologists can provide the corrective to version of Michał Buchowski’s critique of such orientalizing tendencies, it seems that for Western anthropological work dealing with Buchowski we are among the main culprits. I Central and (CEE) find this charge highly exaggerated. (Hierarchies of Knowledge in Central-Eastern 3. For Buchowski the problem has roots in the European , AEER 22(2):5-14) works carried out by Westerners in the contained some sharp surprises for me. This socialist period. The problem with my response is offered in the same spirit, and I monograph of a village in South-East am sure that our friendship will survive! (Hann 1985) is apparently not that I failed to 1. Buchowski is obviously correct in most of pay sufficient attention to Polish scholarship what he says about ‘hierarchies of but that only two authors listed in the select knowledge.’ World-wide it is the English bibliography were ‘ethnographers.’ I can only language that dominates the discipline. Even plead that I found the works of rural in CEE, English tends nowadays to be the sociologists and historians more relevant to lingua franca (previously this role was played my modest project than the works of by German; almost half a century of Soviet ethnographers, whose general interest in the domination did little to establish Russian in traditional ‘folk culture’ was not of much use this role). As a result, Anglo-American to me in examining a community that was a scholars such as myself enjoy advantages that product of 1940s ethnic cleansing. Buchowski we do not deserve. I have always been aware himself has told us (1997) that his of this, and never more so than in recent years ethnographer colleagues by and large ignored while working in Germany and struggling to contemporary social issues in the villages. I master the old lingua franca of the region. Let cannot think of any Polish ethnographers at me note here that the inequities of the time of my project who combined an international scholarly publishing affect interest in Western anthropology with serious scholars in Germany in the same way as those fieldwork on socio-economic issues in their who struggle to establish journals in Poznań, own society. This changed only in the 1990s, Ljubljana, etc. We too, at the Max Planck when scholars such as Zdzisław Mach, Jacek Institute (MPI), spend a lot of time and energy Nowak, and Buchowski himself carried out preparing camera-ready copy for subsidized important empirical projects. Their studies publications which we then circulate in would be highly relevant to my project, were I exactly the same informal ways described by to begin it afresh. But in the 1980s, when I got Buchowski. (My general plea to all fellow to know Michał Buchowski in Cambridge, he actors in this unsatisfactory market is simply wanted to discuss rationality with Ernest this: please try to arrange for editing by a Gellner and shamanism with Stephen Hugh- native speaker, and please take the trouble to Jones. He showed only a minimal polite include an Index.) interest in my project in his own country, and I never expected more. How could I possibly 2. Having acknowledged this basic injustice, what can one do about it apart from hand- wringing? Buchowski’s critique moves at 1 This is one of those home-made publications typical of various levels. At the general theoretical level, Eastern Europe, and it lacks an index. It was actually he suggests that ‘the field of postsocialist made when I was still based in Britain and is available study’ is best seen as an invention of Western from the Department of Anthropology at the University scholarship. He is not the first to draw on of Kent (Canterbury). I am also open to ‘stone age’ direct-exchange offers of the sort described by Said’s ‘orientalism’ as an analogy. But Buchowski. have asked him to read and criticize my work, Italian, 1 American, 2 Romanians, 1 Estonian, when it was obvious that his own intellectual 1 Slovak, 1 Bulgarian, 1 Pole, and 1 East interests lay elsewhere? (Others in Michał German! Among the ‘Easterners,’ three are Buchowski’s Department in Poznań did working primarily in their own societies, express interest in what I might be doing in a while all the others have had to face the same Carpathian village. I recall being visited in the linguistic hurdles that I had to face in Poland a field by two enthusiastic students of generation ago. But regardless of whether Etnografia, as the discipline was still called; they are in some sense working ‘at home,’ all but they could not really understand my students spend at least 12 months collecting concern to document the prevailing economic data in the field before returning to the MPI and political structures, just as I could muster for the ‘writing-up’ phase. It may seem little intellectual interest in their project to inadequate to define a discipline in terms of photograph and catalogue the roadside its research methods but I suggest that this religious monuments of the region.) emphasis upon long-term immersion in the field is perhaps the main feature 4. Leaving aside such ancient personal distinguishing our kind of anthropology from , I am more perturbed by the the usual practices of the colleagues with accusation that the MPI in , where I have whom we work in CEE and other postsocialist worked since 1999, is discriminating against countries – including such innovative bridge- CEE scholars and privileging the work of builders as Buchowski.2 Westerners. This charge needs to be placed in the context of the changing anthropological 6. This, then, might be the basis for an answer field in CEE. As in other former socialist to Michał Buchowski. If he and other ‘local countries, the terrain is far from stable. There scholars’ wish to be as widely read as some of has been some opening up to Western the outsiders who write about CEE, then they anthropological styles, and the entire issue of need to put in the field time and write AEER in which Buchowski’s piece was monographs of equivalent depth and published is an example of the kinds of sophistication. In this respect Buchowski’s influence that appear to be spreading. For Cahier of 1997, published by the Centre Marc some CEE scholars in anthropology/ Bloch in Berlin, which he himself describes as , all change is unwelcome, while an essay, is thin in comparison with one of its for others it has been taking place much too sources of inspiration, Nagengast (1991). It slowly. At the MPI we have made a point of inviting scholars with a more traditional 2 orientation in ‘folklore’ as well as colleagues It would be a retrospective rationalization to claim that such fieldwork was an explicitly formulated criterion for whose research orientation is closer to our inclusion in my edited collections on and own. We do not see ourselves as missionaries, Postsocialism, criticized by Buchowski for their and all our own researchers are encouraged to imbalance; but he might bear in mind that the first of form non-exploitative partnerships with local these volumes was the product of a conference of the scholars in the countries in which they carry Association of Social Anthropologists of Britain and the Commonwealth; I had little control over the papers that out their research. were offered (including several on “African Socialism”), 5. Let me give some more specific data to though the organizers did go to a lot of trouble to raise funds to support the participation of Russian and CEE illustrate what I am saying. Buchowski would colleagues. The second volume was indeed the result of perhaps agree that nothing is more important invitations issued to attend a launch conference for my for the future of our subject than the training Department at the MPI in 2000. The aim was to give as of PhD students. Prompted by his critical broad a view as possible of the anthropological work that had been undertaken in the 1990s, both regionally article, I drew up a list of the students we and thematically. Rural change was covered in this currently support and those who have already volume by Western colleagues with a much longer completed their doctorates in my Department. record of fieldwork-based research than Michał The thirteen students are divided equally Buchowski. between East and West: 4 West Germans, 1 can of course be argued that such same exasperation that I felt when reading his ‘Malinowskian’ fieldwork is but a poor AEER contribution! I suggest that this second-best for the accumulated insider experience would place him in a better knowledge of the ‘native ethnographer.’ position to undertake similar in-depth work in Tamás Hofer addressed these issues more his own country, and thus to compete more than thirty years ago, arguing that the two effectively in that sector of the market. perspectives were different but 8. Of course one solution to Buchowski’s complementary (see the republication of this problem is that we should all do our fieldwork classic essay with a new Preface by the author at home; apart from visits to each other’s in Hann, Sárkány, and Skalník 2005; note that academic institutions! all of the contributors to this volume apart from myself are natives of the country whose 9. My own view is that there is much to be anthropological history they document!). gained from working elsewhere, especially Even though much has changed in recent early in one’s career. If linguistic and years, including new forms of fieldwork by financial conditions can be fulfilled, I CEE scholars, it seems premature to speak of encourage all PhD students to work outside a full disciplinary convergence. their home societies (at present this is not realistic for us at the MPI, mainly because we 7. I would question whether such convergence are unable to offer more than 3 years is desirable anyway. Why should CEE funding). I believe this is the best way for scholars try harder to write books about CEE theoretical as well as empirical progress to that compete with the products of foreign occur in our discipline. As an example I scholars for publication by Cornell, would cite the work of Yulian Konstantinov, Cambridge, or some other prestigious player the Bulgarian anthropologist whose work on in the market that is dominated by the Anglo- the informal economy has added significantly Americans? Is this the only career option open to our knowledge of postsocialist to them? The entire thrust of Buchowski’s developments in his native country. contribution is to complain that the voices of Nonetheless, his recent fieldwork has been Westerners who write about CEE are louder mostly based on the Kola peninsula of than those of the local scholars. Nowhere in Northern Russia; following this research, his article does he consider the possibility that carried out in cooperation with MPISA’s CEE anthropologists might take advantage of Siberian Studies Centre, he and his student postsocialist freedoms to embark on Vladislava Vladimirova have contributed the anthropological projects outside their home concept of sovkhoism to the anthropological countries. This seems to me regrettable. It tool-kit (2002). Personally I find this idea, as seems that virtually every contributor in the it is developed in their ethnography, more issue of AEER in which his article appeared is inspiring than the intellectual pyrotechnics speaking from a national perspective; in this that appear to be suffusing some anthropology sense rather little has changed, the CEE programs in some CEE countries these days ethnographers/anthropologists are still (the concept might also prove useful in confining themselves to their national frames. analyzing Buchowski’s own materials from But Michał Buchowski is an internationally Poland). I have much sympathy with students respected scholar who has spent many years who react to some of the new courses now on conducting research outside his country. offer in CEE with the sentiment that, “if that Might he not consider spending a year in the is really what socio-cultural anthropology is field somewhere, anywhere, instead of doing all about nowadays, then better to sign up for his fieldwork at home and confining his a traditional ethnography course and foreign trips to academic institutions? If he document the vanishing folk culture by were to do this, he might find himself having making two-week excursions to the to develop complex working relations with countryside, just as our predecessors have the ‘local scholars’ – and feeling some of the done since the nineteenth century!” References Cited: Konstantinov, Yulian and Vladislava Vladimirova. 2002. Ambigious Transition: Buchowski, Michał. 1997. Reluctant Agrarian Reforms, Management, and Coping Capitalists. Berlin: Centre Marc Bloch. Practices in Murmansk Region Reindeer Hann, C. M. 1985. A Village without Herding. Working Paper No. 35. Halle Solidarity; Polish Peasants in Years of Crisis. (Saale): Max Planck Institute for Social New Haven: Yale University Press. Anthropology. -- 1995. The Skeleton at the Feast; Nagengast, Carole. 1991. Reluctant Socialists. Contributions to East European Boulder, CO: Westview. Anthropology. (Canterbury, CSAC Monographs 9). Hann, Chris, Mihály Sárkány, and Peter Skalník (eds.). 2005. Studying People in the People’s Democracies: Socialist Era Anthropology in East-. Münster: LIT.