Issue 4, Vol. 110 (2023)

The presented case study focuses on the reenactment of the ČSLA in the acting perspective of the current young generation. The author first presents real military reenactment as a specific subject of anthropological research and then addresses the basic categories (material and interactional credibility), on the basis of which the degree of historical authenticity is assessed in reenactment studies. The main focus is on the analysis and interpretation of semi-structured interviews with members of an unnamed military history club dealing with the reenactment of a specific military unit during the Cold War period (1960s–1980s).

This article is focused on mechanisms associated with social cohesion of Roman-Catholics in rural Slovakia. The article presents an analysis of ethnographic data gathered during field research in a municipality situated in White Carpathian mountains from June 2017 to July 2019. The data was collected from 38 residents of the selected denomination during semi-structured interviews. The primary aim of the article is to identify factors that help maintain social cohesion and factors that cause its disruption in concrete rural community in Slovakia. The data analysis based on the Grounded Theory method was performed in Atlas.ti. It showed that it is the help of friends, family, and neighbours, as well as family gatherings, religious tolerance, and baptism that contribute to the maintenance of social cohesion. The social cohesion is distorted by divorces, mobility of local inhabitants, ongoing industrialization, consumerism, and transformation of traditions.

Mountains as reservoirs of water have always been an immanent and crucial part of the Mesoamerican ritual landscape. Considered living beings, mountains are an important component of the core part of the Native worldview, which is particularly observable in Central Mexico, a region dominated by the highest peaks in Mesoamerica. Long before the Spanish conquest, the Nahua people who live in the area adopted and developed the ancient Mesoamerican tradition of sacred mountains, ritual landscapes and the agricultural cycle and have preserved it to this day, despite the efforts of Spanish missionaries after the conquest. This paper deals with the position of mountains within the framework of Nahua ritualism, as it has been preserved in Nahua communities in Central Mexico. The aim is to point out their central role as the structural axis of the Nahua worldview, as places where rituals associated with rainmaking, fertility and the agricultural cycle are performed.

Medieval and early modern accounts of ethnicity and ethnic genealogy drew on Old Testament, ancient, and Nordic sources. Given the nature of genealogical speculations as narratives that combined a rationalist approach with reference to a particular religious or mythological tradition and political or patriotic aspirations, they can be seen as examples of political myth in Hans Blumenberg’s sense, and the permanent reinterpretation of their narrative core can be understood as “working on myth”. The creative efforts of the authors of genealogical speculations, emphasizing the role and merits of imaginary Trojans, Goths, Sarmatians, Franks, Germans, Hyperboreans, or Celts, can be compared to the process of cultural hybridization. The hypothetical Aryans who emerged from the interaction between British colonial administration and Hindu tradition were better suited to the needs of modern times than the Scythians.