IBERO-AMERICANA PRAGENSIA
IBERO-AMERICANA PRAGENSIA

Ibero-Americana Pragensia is a professional peer-reviewed journal, originally a yearbook, which has been published twice a year since 2017. The magazine focuses on the history and culture of Latin America, as well as on relations between the Western world and Latin America. It publishes scholarly studies, short articles, essays, annotated archival materials and reports on conferences as well as reviews of specialized literature and cultural events. All the published texts are authorial. Scholarly studies and essays are subject to review. The journal publishes texts of various methodological and thematic focus (e.g., history, literary science, linguistics, ethnology, political science, art history, translation studies, etc.), as well as annotated archival materials related to Latin American studies. It puts emphasis on primary research and is intended primarily for the professional public. The texts are published in Spanish, Portuguese and English. The objective of the journal is to raise public awareness of Latin American studies as a field, to profile it and to serve as a professional communication platform for controversies and discussions and, at the same time, what is happening in Latin America and its international relations and, hence, to contribute to a more detailed understanding of this region, its history and its culture.

The yearbook Ibero-Americana Pragensia was founded in 1967 as the first periodical published in the Spanish language in Central and Eastern Europe. The yearbook has gradually gained considerable prestige and since the early 1990s has been regularly mentioned in one of the most respected bibliographic journals, the Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía, published by the Organization of American States. The yearbook has been registered by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic as a reviewed title since 2008, and since 2017 has been peer-reviewed and published twice a year. The director of the magazine is Prof. PhDr. Josef Opatrný, CSc., the editor-in-chief PhDr. Simona Binková, CSc., and the executive editor Mgr. Monika Brenišínová, Ph.D. The magazine is led by the executive editor together with an editorial collective composed of scholars from Czech universities. The scholarly and professional level of the journal is further supervised by an international advisory board, which consists of academics from leading foreign universities.

Scholarly studies, short articles and essays are published after the double-blind peer review procedure and acceptance by the editorial board. Professional reviewers are scholars from domestic and foreign universities. The journal is open to cooperation and welcomes scholarly studies, short articles and essays, as well as reports from conferences and projects and reviews. Please send texts to email: monika.brenisinova@ff.cuni.cz.

Ibero-Americana Pragensia es una revista profesional bajo el sistema de revisión por pares, originalmente un anuario, que se publica dos veces al año desde 2017. La revista se centra en la historia y la cultura de América Latina, así como en las relaciones entre el mundo occidental y América Latina. Publica artículos y estudios breves especializados, fuentes y referencias, así como  informes de conferencias o reseñas tanto de libros como de eventos culturales. Todos los textos publicados pertenecen a sus autores. Los artículos de expertos y los estudios breves están sujetos a revisión. Se pone énfasis en investigaciones primarias. La revista publica textos de diversos enfoques metodológicos y temáticos (historia, ciencia literaria, lingüística, etnología, ciencias políticas, historia del arte, estudios de traducción, etc.), así como fuentes relacionadas con la temática iberoamericana. Está destinada principalmente al público profesional. Los textos se publican en español, inglés y portugués. El objetivo de la revista es dar a conocer la Iberoamericanística como disciplina científica, perfilarla y servir como plataforma de comunicación y discusión, dar a conocer lo que está sucediendo en América Latina y las relaciones internacionales con la región para contribuir así a un conocimiento más profundo de esta región, su historia y cultura.

El anuario Ibero-Americana Pragensia fue fundado en 1967 como la primera publicación periódica en español en Europa Central y Oriental. El anuario, publicado como un título revisado por pares académicos, ganó gradualmente un prestigio considerable y desde principios de la década de los noventa del siglo XX ha sido mencionado regularmente en una de las revistas bibliográficas más respetadas, Revista Interamericana de Bibliografía, publicada por la Organización de los Estados Americanos. Desde 2008, el anuario ha sido registrado por el Ministerio de Cultura de la República Checa como revista científica. En 2017, la revista comenzó a publicarse dos veces al año y los estudios profesionales se someten a la revisión anónima bajo la metodología de doble ciego. El director de la revista es el prof. PhDr. Josef Opatrný, CSc., la jefa de la redacción es PhDr. Simona Binková, CSc., y la redactora ejecutiva es Mgr. Monika Brenišínová, Ph.D. La revista está dirigida por la editora ejecutiva junto con el consejo de redacción, que actúa como un órgano asesor más amplio y está compuesto por expertos nacionales de las principales universidades checas. El nivel profesional de la revista es supervisado, además, por un consejo asesor, que está formado por expertos de prestigiosas universidades extranjeras.

Los artículos especializados se publican después de la revisión anónima por parte de dos evaluadores con la aceptación por parte del consejo de redacción. Los evaluadores son expertos de universidades nacionales y extranjeras. La revista está abierta a la cooperación y acepta tanto artículos profesionales como estudios breves, así como informes de congresos, proyectos y reseñas. Los textos deben enviarse al correo electrónico: monika.brenisinova@ff.cuni.cz.

IBERO-AMERICANA PRAGENSIA, Vol 49 No 1 (2021), 11–38

Between “Chaos” and “Order”: The Czech Anthropologist and his Experience in the Changes of Time

Marek Halbich

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/24647063.2024.1
published online: 22. 07. 2024

abstract

The main purpose of this text is to show how complex and long the disciplination or disciplinary practice of an anthropologist conducting his fieldwork in non-European areas can be. In the first part, the text is very much retrospective. I focus on my long formative period, during which my ideas about becoming a full-time ethnologist were born in a kind of unconscious vacuum. I revisit my first field entry among the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) people of northwestern Mexico and attempt to bring the reader up to speed on my determined efforts to reach out to native communities and my chaotic actions during this first field experience in a non-European setting as a then third-year ethnology student. This will be followed by a reflection on my next two field researches among the Tarahumara in 1996 and 2001, the first of which resulted in an M. A. thesis and the second in a dissertation. In this section, I try to show a certain shift in the approach to fieldwork, which was no longer mere chaos, but led to a more systematic organization of fieldwork findings and their elaboration into a more extensive qualifying thesis and several technical studies. While in the first part I go back into the deep past in order to show the complexities that a budding ethnologist can or must deal with if he wants to penetrate a completely different environment from his own, in the second part I discuss some of the methods of field research that I have not been familiar with in the past, or have used unconsciously or without better understanding of them. These I find useful in current and forthcoming return research among the Tarahumara. They resonate strongly in contemporary anthropology, and are constantly being refined. In this section I will also outline, with respect to methodological horizons, my current planned research project focusing on the human relationship to biodiversity in the context of environmental and climate change, which is increasingly impacting (not only) Tarahumara communities.

keywords: Mexico; Sierra Tarahumara; Tarahumara; methodology; ethnography; field research; global ethnography; extended case method; glocal ethnography; multi-sited ethnography; reflexivity

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