Modus vivendi

In the midst of a transcriptional mayhem (damn too many interviews), I found some time for some educational activism. I hope the CEU cause is not lost! Do you want to support it? Learn more here:  https://www.ceu.edu/category/istandwithceu .

HAU FB page shared this list of 30 essential books in anthropology compiled by AllegraLab . The original post is here . So if you are up for a round of humiliation , do not hesitate to share your ignorance. Mine is marked  in bold and makes two thirds of the list. Geertz, C., 1973,  The Interpretation of Cultures . Basic Books. Lévi-Strauss, C., 1955,  Tristes tropiques . Librairie Plon. Malinowski, B., 1922,  Argonauts of the Western Pacific . E.P. Dutton. Mauss, M., 1950[1923-24],  Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les sociétés archaïques . Presses Universitaires de France. Appadurai, A., 1996,  Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization . University of Minnesota Press. Boas, F., 1911,  The Mind of Primitive Man . MacMillan. Tylor, E.B., 1871,  Primitive Culture . John Murray. Mead, M., 1928,  Coming of Age in Samoa . William Morrow and Co. Evans-Pritchard, E.E., 1937,  Witchcraft,...

Exactly after three years I teach again! Hoooray! I have a small course called Anthropology and the supernatural at the Faculty of Humanities in Prague. The course resembles my old course which I taught back in 2014 during my unsuccessful Ph.D. I reworked my lectures and here I am. My course basically serves as an introduction for complete beginners in sociocultural anthropology. Instead of focusing on basic stuff like nature-nurture controversy, relativism-universalism issues or "What is anhtropology and how do you explain it to your grandma?" I decided to focus on the inner architecture of essential arguments and theories related to anhtropological theories of witchcraft, religion, magic or ritual. Also, I try to put less stress on biographical anecdotes (Malinowski's troubles on the Trobriand Islands, Leach's lost fieldnotes or Evans-Pritchard's WWII escapades) and hackneyed descriptions of the so-called paradigms in anthropology. Contrary to my previou...

1. Lost his fieldnotes, yet wrote a monograph that anthropologist love to read even after more than sixty years since its publication. 2. Became known even outside anthropology.  Political Systems of Highland Burma  appeared in  Autumn Ball , a famous 1979 novel by Estonian writer Mati Unt. 3. Expressed an opinion that Frazer’s Golden Bough  was actually a gilded twig. 4. Called Clifford Geertz a theologian disguised as a professor of anthropology (and seems to have suggested that Geertz was a major novelist also). 5. Took the label “positivist” as a compliment. 6. Spoke of his fellow colleagues as of mere butterfly collectors. 7. Revolutionized British anthropology by dragging Lévi-Strauss across the Channel. 8. Was surprised to find that so many people attended Lévi-Strauss’s 1965 Huxley Memorial Lecture, because only Leach himself (and maybe a few others in UK) understood Lévi-Strauss’s structuralism. 9. Wrote that Melford Spiro’s anthropological a...

The conference I attended and had written about earlier was odd. It was supposed to be an international conference but the only speaker from abroad was an Estonian Ph.D. candidate, Kaisa Kulasalu. Also, the conference was a witness to a real powerpoint hell - black letters on a dark background. But the colours did not matter. The letters were too small anyway. On the other hand I learned a lovely joke from Juraj Podoba about the current politics in Slovakia - Never make jokes on Boris Kollár, because he might be your children’s father . Self-censorship and continuity The best thing about the conference was its international element, Kaisa. After the conference she sent me her article titled  Immoral Obscenity: Censorship of Folklore Manuscript Collections in Late Stalinist Estonia . The article is basically about censorship of folklore collections in Estonia between 1945 and 1952. After Estonia became a socialist country, censors blackened some parts, glued paper over some p...

Czech students are divided by their teachers into two groups. Those who can write well and those who cannot. The first group does not need any further guidance, the second group does not deserve any time to be wasted on them. Regardless of what group you belong to, this post will tell you all you wanted to know about academic writing. My impression is that this side of becoming an academic is rather underestimated at Czech universities. There are suspiciously too many students who dislike writing and a considerable amount of those who are compulsive writers. This is too bad for the discipline. Either you have nothing to say, or you speak too much so that by the time you finish reading your paper, half of the lecture room is away and the other half deep asleep. I cannot deny myself a small comparison from my current work in domain-name dispute-resolution . While foreign panellists produce short, yet explicit decisions where nothing important is missing, Czech panellists like to...

It was a situation that is well-known to any sociocultural anthropologist in my country. Someone asks you what you do. You answer: “anthropology.” The inquirer replies: “that is bones, ain’t it?” Your response goes something like: “can be, but I do the sociocultural one.” The inquirer nods but you can read from his face that he is perplexed: “what exactly is that,” he asks. You attempt to dispel his impression that sociocultural anthropology is some kind of pseudo-mystical science that approaches human beings from a holistic point of view: “a combination of philosophy, sociology and history.” This time I did not expect the climax: “I see! So what do you think about our society at large today?” I suppose that among professionals would this question cause a lively amusement. But among general public is this question considered as real as is the fact that the Sun sets every evening. To borrow C. P. Snow’s expression - there are two cultures - one is represented by the profess...