Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

Shortly after being confirmed as the new co-editor of AJEC, I attended the annual meeting of the East Asian Anthropological Association. With an institutional base in Singapore, there are not many anthropology meetings within easy reach, but EAAA meets most autumns; and the meeting of 2023, held in Hong Kong, was the third meeting I had attended since 2018. This year's meeting started with an open forum, as the existing leadership announced its desire to recruit junior colleagues and set a fresh and vibrant agenda for the coming years. Many hands were raised; and as voices accented from across the globe spoke of the isolation of Asian perspectives on anthropology, and of the marginality of East Asia to the global discipline, I was reminded strongly of the many marginalities so often voiced by anthropologists of Europe.

Michael O'Regan (2023) starts the introduction to his guest-edited special issue on living ‘off grid’ with reference to the notion of ‘polycrisis’. This is especially apt for us to consider, because at the time the issue had gone to press, the world was learning about the horrific terrorist attacks by Hamas on 7 October 2023. These immediately resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and hostage captures. The ensuing escalation of war between Israel and Palestine, with a domino effect of retaliations, have afflicted thousands more, many of whom are also non-military personnel. For anyone who knows even a little about the recent history of the Middle East, off-grid is especially relevant, since it was at the sites of a festival and a few kibbutzim (Kfar Aza, Re'im and Be'eri) close to the Gaza border that the initial violent operations took place.

It has now been two decades since UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted. A ground-breaking treaty, the Convention brought recognition of heritage as a living, breathing element of human existence, but has it reached its full potential? This article acts as an introduction to our forum edition on the connection between climate change and intangible cultural heritage (ICH). We consider how debates on heritage, and in particular ICH, have increasingly focussed on intersections between tradition and present-day social concerns, including those around the environment. Throughout our introduction, we identify themes discussed by each of the authors in the forum. In doing so, we illustrate how ICH acts as an important method through which to illuminate and potentially tackle challenges around climate change and its impact on society and human culture.

Tradition helps local communities cope with the uncertainty of familiar and repetitive actions. What if tradition depends on variables and, in times of climate crisis, unstable factors? The Polish cultural landscape contains multiple traditions grounded in the human–environment relationship. This article presents the early results of ongoing research on the relationship between the practice of intangible cultural heritage in Poland and climate change. By drawing on ethnographic data, this article explores the implications of declining snow resources, alterations in the vegetation cycle, and hydrological drought on the tradition of winter horse-drawn carriage races and wickerwork. Based on the notions of ethnoclimatology and the anthropology of weather, the text draws attention to local perceptions of climate change and potential methods of safeguarding tradition as well as harnessing heritage into resilient actions in times of climate change.

Climate change is occurring worldwide, affecting everyday life and cultural traditions cherished for centuries. Intangible cultural heritage is vulnerable to climate change, as it depends on local resources and on the skills and knowledge of living in a certain environment. By studying the example of the lamprey fishing tradition in the village of Carnikava, Latvia, the article explores connections between climate change and intangible cultural heritage from the point of view of tradition-bearers, local community, local government, scientists and state institutions. This example shows that, when climate change equally affects both biological species and centuries-old fishing traditions specialised in harvesting these species, sustainable solutions are necessary to preserve both.

While the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention was adopted to safeguard domains where intangible cultural heritage manifests, such domains can be neglected in the communities they originate from – at least until their importance re-emerges when communities are put (or put themselves) at risk. This article examines such an occasion by presenting ethnographic material gathered during and in the wake of an environmental disaster that took place on Samothráki, a small and remote island in north-eastern Greece, in 2017. It revisits three aspects of (seemingly forgotten) traditional knowledge that the islanders reflected upon following the disaster in their attempt to re-approach their relationship with their surrounding environment. In so doing, it discusses how these can potentially contribute to mitigating the impact of the climate crisis on the island.

This article uses a decolonial climate imaginary to experiment with alternative approaches to heritage scholarship while analysing uses of intangible heritage within an environmental campaign in Ireland. A decolonial approach is used to examine the Save the Boyne campaign, contrasting the scientistic-materialist basis of the authorised heritage discourse with the relational heritage ontology centred on the myths which activists have deployed. A coalition including the Fairy Council of Ireland is objecting to a treated wastewater pipeline in County Meath that, if constructed, would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of a slaughterhouse yet discharge treated wastewater into the River Boyne. This article considers how a relational ontology might provoke a broadening of heritage conceptualisations and purposes in this time of planetary crisis.

This article examines the challenges associated with implementing and designing educational programmes on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) concerning environmental consciousness. These include (1) students being disconnected from the context of the ICH elements of the programmes; (2) teachers lacking adequate ICH training in designing and implementing the programmes; and (3) a Kafkaesque bureaucracy and incommensurability between actors. These programmes relate to a trend derived from UNESCO and European Union interests in transmitting ICH through education. Some of these challenges are surpassed by ‘avocational individuals’ who go beyond their job descriptions to enhance student learning. The article demonstrates how such programmes redefine human–environment relationships and make practical suggestions. Although the ethnographic examples are from Greece, the findings are arguably relevant to other places with a similar educational and social context.

This article presents a reflection on the adaptability of an age-old practice, dry stone walling, to address the loss of biodiversity precipitated by locally changing agricultural practices and a globally changing climate. The ‘Art of dry stone walling, knowledge and techniques’, inscribed in 2018 on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, involves building walls with locally sourced stones without the use of mortar. On relatively homogeneous agricultural land, walls offer precious surfaces, nooks and crannies, for plants and animals to grow on, nest in or move along from one patch of woods to the next. With a focus on practices in Switzerland, the article explores how a new awareness of the ecological potential of dry stone walls is shaping the craft and the composition of the communities of practice that have developed around them.

This article is about the interplay between the Soviet nationalities policy, ethnography and ethnic activism in in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It focusses on Aleksei Peterson, an Estonian ethnographer, and his relationship with two Finno-Ugric peoples he had studied for decades – the Veps and the Udmurt. Based on interviews, field diaries, official documents and other material, we claim that Peterson (and his Estonian colleagues) made an important contribution to the ethnic revival movements of the Veps and Udmurt. Peterson was primarily interested in the traditional folk culture of these peoples, and he considered it their ‘national heritage’ and used it to strengthen their ethnic identity.

During a pandemic situation, already existing health inequalities tend to worsen. This study explores the inequalities in health care experienced by members of two Roma communities during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania. In August–September 2021, we conducted thirty ethnographic interviews: twenty in two Roma communities in Mure County, and ten with various professionals working with these communities, such as health mediators. The interview guide was developed considering anthropological and sociological perspectives on health. We conducted a thematic analysis and identified three relevant issues: (a) scepticism about COVID-19 and the vaccine; (b) the role of the health mediator before and during the pandemic; and (c) discrimination suffered before and during the pandemic with regard to medical attention. During the pandemic situation in Romania, in which inequalities were increasing, the work of health mediators as cultural facilitators was remarkable. They were interlocutors between the state's health-care institutions and its minority groups, and the Roma mediators provided valuable knowledge on the reality lived by the Roma communities.

Adam Kuper (2023), The Museum of Other People: From Colonial Acquisitions to Cosmopolitan Exhibitions (London: Profile Books), xi +415 pp, £25 (Hb), ISBN 9781800810914.

Pavel Brunssen and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum (eds) (2021), Football and Discrimination: Antisemitism and Beyond (London: Routledge), 218 pp, £104.00 (Hb), ISBN: 9780367356590.

Francisco Martínez, Lili Di Puppo and Martin Demant Frederiksen (eds) (2021), Peripheral Methodologies: Unlearning, Not-Knowing and Ethnographic Limits (London: Routledge), 198 pp, £75.99 (hb), ISBN: 9781350173071.

Gérald Gaillard (2022), Françoise Héritier (New York: Berghahn Books), 193 pp, £107 (Hb), ISBN: 978-1-80073-334-3

Iliana Sarafian (2023), Contesting Moralities: Roma Identities, State and Kinship (New York: Berghahn Books), 144 pp, $135/£99 (Hb), ISBN: 978-1-80073-906-2, ISBN eBook: 978-1-80073-907-9, £23.95.

Freddy Foks (2023), Participant Observers: Anthropology, Colonial Development, and the Reinvention of Society in Britain (Oakland: University of California Press), 263 pp, £30.00 (pb), ISBN: 9780520390331.

Patrícia Ferraz de Matos (2023), Anthropology, Nationalism and Colonialism: Mendes Correia and the Porto School of Anthropology, translated by Ana Pinto Mendes (New York: Berghahn Books), xv +378 pp, $145 (Hb), ISBN: 9781800738751.