An Ethnographic Chiefdom

The Czechoslovak academic discipline called Ethnography and Folklore Studies was impacted and influenced by the daily realities of state socialism in 19691989. This book examines the role of the planned economy, MarxistLeninist ideology, disciplinary hierarchies and clientelist networks, ultimately showing how state socialist features together brought about the disciplines epistemic stalling. It offers a fresh perspective on the long-standing debates purporting to capture the differences between the Central and Eastern European tradition of ethnology and Western sociocultural anthropology.