Suchergebnisse

This edited volume examines the critical issues of the 21st century through the prism of Ernest Gellners work. The contributors look critically at Gellners legacy, questioning whether he remains an inspiration for todays social theorists. Chapters proactively probe Gellners thoughts on a variety of pressing topicsmodernity, postcolonialsm, nationalism, and morewithout losing sight of current debates on these issues. This volume further brings these debates to life by having each chapter followed by a comment by an academic peer of the chapter author, thus transforming the text into a lively and dynamic conversation. Petr Skalnik is Emeritus Extraordinary Professor at the University of Wroclaw, Poland. Previously he taught at Comenius University, Leiden University, University of Cape Town, Charles University and the University of Pardubice. He has edited and co-edited over two dozen books over the course of his career, and is the 2006 recipient of the Chevalier dans lOrdre des Palmes Academiques. From 1992 to 1997 he served as the Ambassador of Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic to Lebanon, and from 2003 to 2013 he was Vice-President of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences.

Abstract
This short tribute to Ján Podolák comments on the space between two extremes: pure science and blind belief. If religion is not susceptible to scientific proof because it is a belief in an invisible world inhabited by spirits who influence human existence on earth then science in its strictest sense is the opposite of religion because it is not based on any beliefs but solely on provable facts. However, the anthropology of science should be based on the pluralism of knowledge and the seeking of truth in different cultural settings around the world. Everything human, also science, is a social and cultural phenomenon. This means that rationality is not a preserve of the Western mind only and that without falling into the trap of postmodernist excessive relativism, we should admit that rationality is not only universal but also not hierarchized evolutionistically or qualitatively by giving preference to its Western brand. Science thus ceases to be the only realm of rational knowledge. Religion in its turn is a kind of non-scientific knowledge.

ABSTRACT The contribution introduces a panel of six papers. Its aim is to assess the concept of early state both within the body of the overall anthropological theory and among the theories of political anthropology. The status of the early state concept is still best to be comprehended as part of the neo-evolutionist paradigm and as an extension of post-Marxist theorising. However, the question is to what extent is the neo-evolutionist paradigm recognized as influential within contemporary sociocultural anthropology and political anthropology in particular. How the theory of early state fares in the citation indexes and databases? The paper looks at the currently leading textbooks of anthropology, encyclopaedias, introductory texts on political anthropology as well as the major international collections, journals and monographs. The paper concludes that the power of the concepts is measured by their usefulness for ushering in new theoretical thought. The mere recognition of a concept within the contemporary context is not enough. Because the concept of the early state has been only very partially fulfilling these preconditions the conclusion is that it at best has been a catalyzer for some scholars in overcoming their theoretical stalemate while others have managed without it in building theory of political anthropology and of politics in general.