Issue 3, Vol. 110 (2023)

The study deals with public order protection in the countryside in the last decade before the fall of the communism n Czechoslovakia in 1989. The text focuses on the contact between the local community's shared social values and the principles which were governed by the state socialist state at the local level. The study discusses securing caring of good reputation and reflection of social hierarchy and stereotypical views based on it in the notes from meetings of public order commissions of the local and national committees. The text puts the caring of a decent municipality at the end of the 80s of 20 century to the broader contexts of social changes as a reaction to industrialization and modernization. The author concludes that principles of social control in late socialism did not contradict the social values of rural communities. Analysis of archive sources also shows the influence of the inefficiency of state socialist administration to be able to care for the public order.

In this study, I situate the phenomenon of intercultural religious encounters in a globalization perspective. I present it as a struggle of indigenous groups to carve out their own cultural space in the global scheme of things, as an effort to indigenize modernity and spirituality. Through a discursive analysis of a particular Maya lecture held in the Czech Republic, I trace the gradual formation and constitution of a global spiritual discourse that rises through the continuous connecting, merging or gluing together of diverse religious elements, through the likening as well as the delimiting of oneself to the dominant Euro-American culture. The aim of the text is to show that this is a deeply ambiguous process that entails both continuity and discontinuity, convergence and divergence, but also – and perhaps most importantly – equivocation; that it is a dynamic process of translation in which much is lost, but something is also found.

The notion of biopower signifies managing populations by regulating and controlling life-related processes. This power medicalizes society, and in the age of genetics, a unique role is played by genetic research, which has led to the discovery of new diseases, one of them being the LCHAD enzyme deficiency, which is relatively common in the Kashubian population. In this case study, I present the process of constructing this rare genetic disease into an ethnic disease. I argue that a significant role in this was played by doctors and journalists who, using cultural capital, symbolic violence, and the power wielded by news media, spread the term “Kashubian gene,” suggesting that it is a common disease in this ethnic-regional group. Despite adverse effects, the hype has also yielded some positive consequences: it contributed to introducing newborn screening tests aimed at diagnosing the disease, thus saving human lives.

The article analyzes the work of the first generation of Chinese anthropologists, who emulated the late-Qing intellectuals in indigenization of the colonial science through contacts with European and American colleagues, at the background of the historical, political and ideological context of the Republic of China (1911–1949). The analysis shows that although the Chinese historiography ex-post profiled them as members of two competing schools, anthropologists formed a fieldwork-oriented community of practice in which they opened up a discursive space not only for confrontation with the enemy during the Second Sino-Japanese War but also for a critical interrogation of the racial assimilationist ethnic policies of the ruling Kuomintang. Clinging to their different approaches, the debates produced various conceptualizations of their common goal: the unified Chinese nation. Contemporary Chinese ethnic policies also draw inspiration from the foundations of republican anthropology.

In today’s Mexico the Aztec dance (Danza Azteca) became an inseparable part of zócalos and other parts of Mexican cities. There are two main branches of the Danza Azteca –the syncretic Danza Azteca Conchera (or simply Danza Conchera) and its new version called Danza Azteca-Mexica, “purified of catholic elements” which developed from Danza Conchera. The article focuses on the syncretic ritual Danza Conchera in the Central Mexico and the process of so-called aztequization which consisted of implementing new Aztec elements in the ritual in order to approach the supposed original version of the ritual of the old Aztecs. As the aztequization played a crucial role in the subsequent formation of the Danza Azteca-Mexica groups and laid the foundations to its ritual, the article examines the key elements and figures as they are being remembered and recounted among present Concheros and Mexicas. It stems from author’s field research in the Central Mexico 2009-2017.