Current issue

Language is a key element in the perception, formation, and reproduction of landscapes and group boundaries. It is effective in at least three dimensions: inner/cognitive, outward/appropriative, and collective/identitarian. The inner dimension refers to the fact that our perception of landscape and our spatial cognition are determined to a large extent by linguistic terms and grammatical structures specific to our language. The outward dimension refers to the capacity of language to project linguistically- and culturally-determined understandings into the physical world and create and appropriate places and landscapes by the act of naming. Finally, the collective dimension points to the importance of the linguistic delimitation of landscapes and their association with group identities. The article summarizes crucial recent findings in all three aforementioned dimensions and suggests possibilities for further research.

Argentinian Garden City Lomas del Palomar, formerly a socially and spatially very specific neighbourhood in Argentina, designed by German architect Zeyen in a human scale with self-contained community, has been undergoing a material and inner transformation. Elements such as high fences, security cameras and multi-storey buildings that do not respect the original character of the place have an impact on the residents´ attachment to the place of their home. Employing the theoretical approach of Setha Low spatialized culture (2017), the aim of this paper is to show how residents of the Garden City Ciudad Jardín Lomas del Palomar are attached to the place of their home and neighbourhood and how this attachment is reconceptualized through the current socio-spatial changes of the place. Based on an ethnographic research, this paper seeks to explore how these changes affect the spatialized culture of a place by resident´s everyday perception, understanding and experience of place.

Based on my ethnographic study on ‘western’ forms of contemporary shamanism in North-East Scotland, the article discusses the significant role that eremitism plays in folk healing systems, and particularly in shamanism. The tendency to live an isolated life is actually not only a key feature in traditional shamanic healing ways but can also be found in its contemporary manifestations. Two such cases are discussed in this article. Terry Mace and Norman Duncan are two contemporary shamanic healers, living and offering their services in the wider region of North-East Scotland, who, for different individually reasons, decided to self-consciously isolate themselves geographically, live simply and self-abundantly, and lead an eremitic way of life away from materialism and socialising. The article will, therefore, focus on examining the role of eremitism in the life of the two healers in an attempt to showcase the significance of the phenomenon in contemporary shamanisms as well.

Carpathian shepherding - seasonal mountain cattle breeding is an inseparable phenomenon of the highest parts of Eastern Moravia and Silesia in our territory, despite a number of discussions about its genesis and extent. The intertwining of purely mountain practices with the domestic peasant tradition is obvious, but also the use of this method of farming across social groups. In one of the numerous lithographs by the well-known Moravian painter and graphic artist František Kalivoda (1824–1859), an unusually large structure of a presumed sheepfold was recorded in the pasture location above Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, which has not yet been reflected in our ethnography. The research, which was based mainly on archival, ethnological and archaeological research, complements the well-known but very fragmented facts about mountain farming under manorial direction and reconstructs the architectural form of the building, including its functions.