Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

The year 2022 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Helen Callaway and Judith Okely's edited anthology Anthropology and Autobiography. During that generational span, which roughly mirrors the life history of this journal, the book has had far-reaching influences, anchoring a legacy that few such conference collections can imagine for themselves. Indeed, the volume has become a classic reference work for scholars in all walks of the social sciences and humanities when it comes to considering a range of interrelated themes: the reflexive turn; personal encounters in the field; the literary influence of the biographical on ethnography; anthropology's ancestries/histories (Lohmann 2008; Pina-Cabral and Bowman 2020); and so on. Another aspect of this endeavour is looking at ‘anthropology at home’ (Jackson 1987), with all the implications that this brings for research (Peirano 1998), including the notion of ‘auto-anthropology’ (Rapport 2014: 24–35).

My anthropological journey has consisted in movement not only between different disciplines, but also between languages, countries and continents. This has involved stories of identity (imagined, constructed, or both), changes of place (teaching in six countries on three continents, and in four languages), searches for a safe haven, and belief in understanding the motives that govern human beings. In this wonderful journey, my coming to the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures seems almost an inevitable event. Or perhaps it is just a product of ‘chance and serendipity’. In retrospect, I look at my anthropological journey so far as a voyage of discovery – to different places, under different circumstances and in very different parts of the world.

In the 1980s, the theme for a future ASA conference had to be personally proposed by a potential organiser at the conference two years earlier. The proposer had to personally convince attending participants, who decided by a visible vote of hands. This recollection on the theme ’‘Anthropology and Autobiography’’ traces the successful 1987 vote for the 1989 conference proposed by myself with Helen Callaway. Before the vote, there were many negative comments claiming our proposal was mere ‘navel-gazing’ and a ‘feminist plot’. Inspired by the problematisation of the use of ‘I’ in Clifford and Marcus’ ‘Writing Culture’, we wanted further confrontation of the gender, age and personality of the participant observer. This article includes references to Malinowski's controversial Diary and the proposers’ struggles with earlier publishers. Comments are made about the photographs in the ensuing volume. Bizarrely, it is now taken for granted that the specificity of the fieldworker is crucial when it comes to the choice of subject and rapport with key individuals in the field.

This article employs an anthropology ‘at-home’ approach to discuss dimensions of social and cultural changes amongst women in post-transitional societies. By applying person-centred ethnography, we aim to provide rich insights into the socio-cultural context and individual development of a young woman in Croatia. We examine how a young woman reasons about what kind of a person she is and wants to become by comparing the different sets of basic values that she ascribes to her emancipatory efforts, with a focus on how she juxtaposes ‘traditional family roles’ and ‘feminist values’. The article thus describes how this woman (Jadranka) experiences life challenges and shapes social values in her everyday cultural settings.

This auto-ethnographic/biographical account deals with the experiences that a non-flying Northern-Ireland-born anthropologist living in the Baltic States has of mobility, infrastructure and connectedness, in particular with reference to academic and personal life. The article considers the movements which a career as an academic anthropologist requires, as well as the difficulties and intricacies that being located in Eastern Europe has for such land travel. Based on years of experience, it questions travel time and cost with particular reference to the seeming need to travel towards Western Europe in order to remain connected to the discipline's main ‘movements’. The article also examines solutions such as the Via Baltica, and looks forward to improvements that new infrastructure (such as high-speed railways) can bring.

This article discusses the usefulness of critical analytical auto-ethnography in studying migrant (im)mobilities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whereas the auto-ethnographic genre has boomed during COVID-19 times, the authors of auto-ethnographic texts usually focus on their own experiences of the pandemic, engaging in an evocative style of writing. Following an overview of auto-ethnographic writing genres, this article discusses complex issues of insider/outsider status in pandemic research. It calls for a critical and analytical auto-ethnographic approach to the study of migrations and mobilities in a context in which they are currently unevenly distributed.

A three-act session of storytelling, this visual essay explores the connection between photographs (and images at large) and death. A piece of authobiography, it follows the intimate journey of the author accompanying his father's departure first and his own grief later. The article positions photographs as objects that are more than mere representations. They are living things that accompany us during our lives. And photography, the author suggests by looking at photographs taken by himself, is a way for opening up time and acknowledging the present. Photographs are capable of bridging the gap between life and death.

A duo-biographical recollection of an encounter, this article comprises a dialogue between the authors. On the one hand, it is about a shared moment – a tandem ‘go-along’ tour of the Echo of the Urals exhibition in the Estonian National Museum. On the other, it is about certain similarities and differences in the disciplinary approaches to curating as well as to spectating an ‘inter-national’ museum space in Estonia's second-largest city, Tartu.

The beginnings of the interview date back to 2019, the year when we commemorated the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (Barth 1969). We used this event as a springboard for looking back at the rich professional trajectory of Professor Ulf Hannerz, in which ethnicity and other forms of collective identities play one of the key roles. The interview was started after a lecture by Professor Hannerz, ‘Fifty Years of Diversity Watching’, given at the Department of Ethnology of Charles University in Prague in September 2019, and it was finalised during the COVID-19 pandemic online via e-mailing the questions and answers back and forth between Stockholm and Prague.

Aleksandar Bošković (2021), William Robertson Smith (Oxford: Berghahn), 120 pp., Pbk $24.94. ISBN 781800731585, Hbk $145. ISBN 9781800731578.

Christiana Constantopoulou (ed) (2020), Crisis’ Representations: Frontiers and Identities in the Contemporary Media Narratives (Leiden: Brill), 190 pp., Ebk. $192 ISBN 9789004439559, Hbk. $192. ISBN 9789004439542.

Julie L. Drolet (ed) (2019), Rebuilding Lives Post-Disaster (New York: Oxford University Press), 263 pp., Pbk. $46.95 ISBN 9780190942199.

Eszter Krasznai Kovacs (ed) (2021), Politics and the Environment in Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers), 344 pp., Hbk. $82. ISBN 9781800641334.

Ulrich Kasten and Grażyna Kubica (2021), Das Männerlager im Frauen-Kz Ravensbrück, sowie Lagerbriefe und die Biografie des Häftlings Janek Błaszczyk (Fürstenberg, Germany: Verlag der Kulturstiftung Sibirien), 184 pp. Pbk. €18. ISBN 9783942883726.