Book Description

From WW II until the Velvet Revolution, few outside anthropologists had access to Czechoslovakia, while only a handful of Czech and Slovak ethnologists published in Western journals. In recent years, anthropological interest in Slovakia and the Czech Republic has increased substantially. This volume brings together a broad sample of recent cutting-edge ethnographic studies by Czech and Slovak ethnographers as well as American and western European anthropologists. Contents: Raymond June on measuring “corruption” in Czech society; David Karjanen on structural violence and economic change in Slovakia; Karen Kapusta-Pofahl, Hana Hašková, and Marta Kolářová on women’s civic organizing; Rebecca Nash on Czech feelings about social support and welfare reform; Denise Kozikowski on women’s experience of breast cancer; Věra Sokolová on population policy and the sterilization of Romani women in Czechoslovakia, 1972-1989; James Quin on pornography and the commodification of queer bodies in Slovakia; Ben Hill Passmore on working women in a Moravian factory; Krista Hegburg on Roma social workers; Zdeněk Uherek and Kateřina Plochová on ethnic Czechs in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Leoš Šatava on ethnic identity and language among Sorbian youth; Haldis Haukanes on history and autobiography in a Czech village; Davide Torsello on memory, geography, and local history in southern Slovakia; Peter Skalník reviews Czech and Slovak community (re)studies in a European context. Afterword by Zdeněk Salzmann.