Issue 2, Vol. 103 (2016)

Anthropological practices are local in craft, intellectual and disciplinary tradition, and they are just as different. The article will discuss the ways in which ethnology and anthropology are understood, constitute their identity in Lithuania in historical retrospection and among the spectrum of scientific domains, and which aspects appear significant in the process of their institutionalization. It highlights the historical roots of ethnology and anthropology in Lithuania traced to the intellectual environment of Vilnius University of the late 18th century and early 19th century; emphasizes the influences of cultural evolutionism and the Vienna school; discusses the efforts to institutionalize the disciplines within the contemporary politics of science in Lithuania; and claims of the disciplines for the future. The article concludes with an emphasis on the methodological value of ethnography that witnesses the vitality of ethnological and anthropological thought in Lithuania, and affirms the paradigmatic uniqueness of ethnology and anthropology among the spectrum of sciences.

Anthropological practises are local in craft, intellectual and disciplinary tradition, and they are as much different. The article will discuss the ways in which ethnology and anthropology constitute their identity in Lithuania in historical retrospection and among the spectrum of scientific domains, and what aspects, agencies and conditions appear significant in the process of their institutionalisation. It highlights the historical roots of ethnology and anthropology in Lithuania traced to the intellectual environment of Vilnius University of the late 18th c. and early 19th c.; emphasizes the influences of cultural evolutionism and the Vienna school; discusses the contemporary politics of science in Lithuania that lays emphasis on technological development and R&D, and the claims of the social sciences and the humanities for future. The article concludes with emphasis on the methodological value of ethnography that witnesses the vitality of ethnological and anthropological thought in Lithuania, and affirms the paradigmatic uniqueness of ethnology and anthropology among the spectrum of sciences.

The aim of the article is to examine the consequences of resettlement of Romanian Czechs from the Banat region to Czechia after 1989. Special emphasis is put on the role of various (individual, institutional) transnational practices and relations, migration networks and the Czech origin of returnees in their migration-decision making and adaptation process. On the background of notions of ‘ancestral return’ or ‘counter-diasporic migration’, the study also discuss key questions whether the counter-diasporic migrants are rather returnees or the first migrant generation of Romanian Czechs, what the shared narratives of home are and how they, along with diasporic consciousness, affect migration of Romanian Czechs to the ancestral homeland. We argue that the experience with migration to the ancestral homeland exposes migrants to rethink their own identity as well as the relationship to a country of imagined exile and a country of imagined home. The study presents results of research conducted in Romania in 2012 and Czechia in 2013 and 2015 combining qualitative (monitoring, interviews with key informants, participant observation) and quantitative methods (questionnaire survey).

The Day of the Dead is a Mexican feast based on syncretism of Mezoamerican dead rituals and Roman Catholic feasts of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days. This paper researches the influence and role of this feast in relation to the construction and negotiation of Mexican national identity, which is related to the concept of lo mexicano. The concept of lo mexicano is a product of nationalist efforts to create an image of Mexican nation and the essence of Mexican identity, which has been the object of various historical and political debates for a long time. It is also clo-sely associated with the idea of death as a central symbol and specific of Mexican culture. There-fore, The Day of the Dead seems to be an important feast in sense of the image of what does it mean to be a Mexican, feast that is moreover supported by present Mexican nationalists through the state apparatus.