A crusade for social anthropology: an analysis of politics in post-socialist debates

This article aims to apply critical scrutiny to post-socialist discourse, an ongoing series of debates concerning the relationship between sociocultural anthropology and ethnology in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). To achieve my goal, I single out Petr Skalník’s writings and subject them to twofold scrutiny. In the first part of my article, I offer factual criticism and point out the factual shortcomings of his work. The second part of the article puts the writings under sociological scrutiny, based on what I call a ‘political reading’, and proceeding from the sociology of science of Pierre Bourdieu. This perspective shows how scholars’ concrete utterances in their factual accounts are related to power struggles within the scholarly community. This approach demonstrates how Skalník’s concrete factual misrepresentations intrinsically relate to his objective of establishing sociocultural anthropology in post-socialist Czechia and the associated struggles between Czech anthropologists and ethnologists. The present analysis, by extension, allows us to better understand the post-socialist transformation of CEE academia and casts doubt on the veracity of post-socialist discourse itself.