Lemko-Ukrainian family gathering hay in upper Wisłok, summer 1981 (the elder male passed away shortly after this photograph was taken, whereupon his son emigrated to Toronto)
Contributions to East European Anthropology
This collection is the product of Chris Hann's wide-ranging interests in Eastern European societies in the decades 1975-1995. The title expresses his view of the anthropologist's subversive role in the academic division of labour. Part One provides general introductions to key topics in the anthropology of Eastern Europe. Part Two sheds fresh light on the concrete experiences of fieldwork, including the community studies in Hungary and Poland for which the author is best known. These previously unpublished essays provide an important new resource for teaching the anthropology of Eastern Europe. Anthropologists will value this collection both for its demonstration of the contribution the subject can make to understanding key moments in contemporary history, and for the theoretical challenge posed by the encounter with a region so close to the west. Chris Hann was born and brought up in South Wales. He began to specialize in Eastern Europe as an undergraduate in Oxford, where he read Politics, Philosophy and Economics. After moving to Cambridge and converting to social anthropology, he carried out fieldwork in Hungary and Poland. He has also worked in Turkey and Xinjiang. In 1992 he took up the position of Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent, Canterbury.
Acknowledgements ix
Preface xi
1: Boundaries and Histories HTML version 1
The lands between: three regions and three sub-regions 4
The `second feudalism' in Poland 7
The `Asiatic mode of production' in the Balkans 11
State and society in Central-Eastern Europe 15
The socialist period 19
Conclusions 23
2: Transformations of Peasantries 29
The classical East European peasantry 31
The cooperative farm in theory and practice 35
Consumption in socialist rural society 41
Decollectivization 44
Conclusion: Karl Polanyi and market socialism 48
3: Religion and Ritual 51
Religion and politics between east and west: the Uniates 52
Religion and the peasantry: rural Poland 54
Ritual in a traditional context: the Macedonian slava 57
Folklore authenticated by the state 60
The battle of the symbols 63
Ritual and ideology in socialist societies 68
After socialism 71
4: Ethnicity and Nationalism 73
Ethnicity, Marxism and national minorities 73
Ethnic divisions of labour in Transylvania 77
Ethnic interaction in Burgenland and Bosnia 80
Strangers and pariahs: Jews and Gypsies 82
Disappearing groups: Saxons and Lemkos 85
Regional and local identities 88
Conclusions 90
5: Kinship and the Family 93
`Tribal' organization in Albania 94
The zadruga controversies 96
Spiritual kinship in the Balkans 99
Demographic transition and peasant adaptive strategies 100
Large households under socialism 104
Kin, state and nation in Berlin 107
After socialism 108
Conclusions 109
1. Hungary's internal frontier 113
2. The frontier community since 1945 121
3. A tanya zone in 1978 126
7: Rural Solidarity in Poland (1981-2) 135
1. The birth of the Farmers' Union 135
2. A rural angle on the crisis 142
3. Epilogue, 1982 148
8: Ethnic Consciousness in Lemkovina (1987) 151
Soviet ethnos theory 151
A short history of Lemkovina 153
The demise of Lemkovina 159
9: A Critique of Anthropological Self-Contemplation (1988) 163
1. Self and others in a village in Poland 163
2. The headman and I in a village in Hungary 174
10: Privatization and Free Markets in Hungary (1991-3) 181
1. A Tupolev with a Boeing interior (1991) 181
2. Ten Tázlár perspectives on decollectivization (1991) 185
3. The `receipt war' (1993) 192
11: When West Meets East : the Skeleton at the Feast (1993) 195
Frazer, Malinowski and Orientalism 195
Stereotypes around the Black Sea 199
The new Orientalism 203
Conclusions 207
12: In Transit (1995) 209
Projects in the provinces 209
Cocooned in the capital 214
Trafficking with transitologists 222
Appendix: Evaluation of Financial Assistance to Hungary 226
Bibliography 231
Lemko-Ukrainian family gathering hay in upper Wisłok, summer 1981
(the elder male passed away shortly after this photograph was taken, whereupon his son emigrated to Toronto)