Anthropological Notebooks, XXIV/2, 2018
Barrera-González, Andrés, Monica Heintz and Anna Horolets (eds.) 2017. European Anthropologies. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. vi + 288 pages. Hb.: $130.00/ £92.00. ISBN: 9781785336072.
This is the second volume in the Berghahn Series Anthropology of Europe - an ambitiously conceived project that should make research in various local (national) European scholarly traditions more visible while pointing to specificities of different developments. The result is a book with an Introduction and eleven chapters, all of them tentatively structured in such a way as to incorporate some critical points of local developments, as well as the role of anthropology (here understood primarily as social or cultural anthropology and ethnology) in the process of education. The book is also part of the relatively recent interest in "world anthropologies", although it incorporates chapters on some of the major (dominant) national traditions of the history of the discipline, German (more precisely, the German language) and French.
The editors should be commended on assembling a group of excellent scholars from diverse traditions. Perhaps this diversity could have been a little bit better explained, as the examples from Norway and Sweden could have added an interesting twist to the considerations of "market" influencing the academic research. Also, at least two of the chapters (by Alexandra Bitusíková, Between Ethnography and Anthropology in Slovakia: Autobiographical Reflections, and by Jasna Capo and Valentina Gulin Zrnic, Grounding Contemporary Croatian Cultural Anthropology in its own Ethnology), could have added some data about the fact that both Slovakia (until 1992) and Croatia (until 1991) were parts of different countries (Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia). One would expect that there were some influences from within the country's traditions (in Croatia, exchanges between professors from Ljubljana and Zagreb were quite important). There are also some minor imprecisions: for example, readers of the chapter on Croatia might be surprised to learn that the 'Department of Ethnology was founded ... in the 1920s' (p. 233) since on the department's own web page it is clearly stated that it was founded in 1960 (http://www. ffzg.unizg.hr/etno/odsjek/povijest-odsjeka/).
In the first chapter, At the Portuguese Crossroads: Contemporary Anthropology and its History, Susana de Matos Viegas and Joäo de Pina-Cabral point to political and epistemological vectors that influenced the development of the discipline. As the linguistic barriers to being acquainted with "other anthropologies" increase, the authors also note that the Portuguese language is the exception here due to a massive increase in publications by Brazilian anthropologists. The authors conclude with an optimistic expectation that the future trends of development will pick up on 'the impetus acquired in the 1990s' (p. 43).
In the second chapter, When a Great Scholarly Tradition Modernizes: German-Language Ethnology in the Long Twentieth Century, John Eidson offers an encyclopedic overview of the history and current state of German-language anthropology. Given the scale of the research he undertook and the wealth of information included, it is a pity that he does not mention the existence of the seminar in ethnopsychoanalysis in Zürich, estab-
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lished by Paul Parin and his collaborators, as this was perhaps the most original German-language contribution to anthropology after the Second World War.
The third chapter, Anthropology in Russian: Tradition vs. Paradigm Shift, by Sergey Sokolovskiy, explains the ruptures that characterised the development of the anthropology in Russia. Pier Paolo Viazzo's fourth chapter, on the development and the current situation of anthropology and ethnology in Italy, will introduce readers to one of the lesser known continental traditions. There is a little bit of confusion here, as Viazzo mentions that the first chair in anthropology was established in 1869, as it was the position in physical anthropology (p. 111). However, the author explains that the holder of this position was interested in "the study of peoples," so the establishment of the first anthropological society quickly followed.
Writing on French anthropology in the fifth chapter, Sophie Chevalier focuses on the 2007 national assessment of ethnology and anthropology (both terms have a rich history in the French language, as she briefly explains (see p. 129)). While pointing to institutional weakness (in comparison to its international standing), the author also points to the role of anthropologists as interlocutors in the context of French focus on the knowledge presented through museums (pp. 135-36). It is interesting to note that she does not mention the "ontological turn" that seems to be quite fashionable in contemporary anthropology and whose main exponents are either French (Descola, Latour) or with very close ties to France (Viveiros de Castro).
Folklore, ethnology and anthropology are intertwined in the Finnish tradition, and it is the main subject of the sixth chapter, by Ulrika Wolf-Knuts and Pekka Hakamies. This is also perhaps the only chapter in the book in which the authors argue convincingly about the usefulness of keeping different terms in use. Vytis Ciubrinskas, writing on Lithuania in the seventh chapter, explores "the politics and the praxis" of the discipline oscillating between being a "national science" and "the study of the other." The author points to the resurgence of xenophobic attitudes in reaction to attempts to establish so-ciocultural anthropology and to promote the "national ethnology", a view that is very familiar to many researchers from the former socialist countries.
Following up on former socialist countries and their traditions, Michal Buchowski describes Moieties, Lineages and Clans in Polish Anthropology Before and After1989. It is a pity that his insightful presentation ends around the early 2000s; as a matter of fact, this seems to be a version of the paper that was already published in 2002 (p. 204).
I have already mentioned the ninth chapter (on Slovakia) at the beginning of this review. It should be added that a personal perspective incorporates an important note of auto-reflexivity into the whole book: something that is only implied (or hinted) in other chapters. The tenth chapter, also mentioned above, is the case in point, as one of its authors (Capo) has been a significant player in the development of the discipline in the last fifteen years (an important point not really present in the text).
Finally, it seems fitting that the final chapter, Anthropology in Greece: Dynamics, Difficulties and Challenges, was written by Aliki Angelidou, one of the representatives of the younger generation of European anthropologists. She expertly demonstrates
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different influences in the development of anthropology in Greece, especially noting the importance of the term laografia - and its subsequent incorporation in the scholarship of other neighbouring countries, like Bulgaria.
In conclusion, this is a rich and valuable book, which will serve as an essential resource for studying anthropology, as well as understanding the vital role that anthropology plays in the contemporary world. While the editors might have been too accommodating in some aspects (leaving the terminological pluralism intact, but see the contribution of Ciubrinskas for what a "national science" might produce), they also managed to bring together an impressive group of scholars, producing a volume that should become an indispensable reading in the courses dealing with the history of anthropology.
ALEKSANDAR BOSKOVIC
University of Belgrade and Institute of Social Sciences (Serbia)
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