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EDITOR’S NOTES: 

Barbara A. West (University of the Pacific)

During the East Europe subsection meeting 
during the AAAs in Washington DC last fall, 
somebody suggested that AEER should start 
focusing each issue on a particular theme.  This 
is what I’ve tried to do in this issue.  The theme 
this issue is The Body.  The inspiration for this 
theme came from the second meeting of the Fifth 
Regional Seminar on Gender and Culture at 
Central European University, Budapest, in 
March 2002.  I attended that seminar and, along 
with several authors in this issue, presented work 
that focused on East and Central European 
bodies during some historical period.  We would 
like to thank Susan Zimmerman, Susan Bandy, 
and Jasmina Lukic for all their help and support 
in organizing and putting on that seminar. 

 In addition to the overarching theme of 
The Body, several other threads tie some of these 
essays together.  First, I wanted to highlight the 
voices of people from this region, even if their 
work is not anthropology, strictly speaking.  So 
I’ve begun the issue with a series of short essays 
by a Hungarian ethnographer about her own 
bodily experiences and the meanings attributed 
to these bodily experiences in her world.  I thank 
Sara Kaiser for working so closely with this 
writer to bring us her material.  In addition to 
this local ethnography, I have also included work 
from some of anthropology’s cognate disciplines 
in Poland, Serbia, the Czech Republic, and 
Russia.  In these analyses from Polish drama, 
Serbian art history, Russian history, and Czech 
and Russian sociology, I found that many of the 
concerns addressed by anthropologists were 
likewise highlighted.  For example, Dorak 
explores the concept of gender as a performance 
both inside and outside the theatre, as well as the 
problem with the idea of ‘feminism’ in Poland.  
Cupic problematizes the concept of ‘orientalism’ 
in the Serbian context in ways that inform not 
only her own work in art history, but also that of 
anybody interested in the representation of 
‘Serbianness’ in any context.  Gradskova’s work 
on gender equality in post-revolutionary Russia, 
as she rightly addresses in her introduction and 
conclusion, is extremely important for setting the 
stage for us to understand contemporary relations 
between women and men, representation and 
experience, politics and domesticity in that 
country.  Finally, the sociological work from 

Haskova and Kalacheva also certainly fits into 
the general paradigm of work done currently by 
some anthropologists. 

 The second set of themes I’ve identified 
amongst these papers allow me to group the 
papers into meaningful units of two or three 
papers.  I begin the issue with three works (Gera, 
Belooussova, Haskova) that explore childbirth 
and the relationship between bodies, technology, 
and medical authority during different time 
periods in Hungary, Russia, and the Czech 
Republic.  The next group of three papers 
(Harvey, Dorak, Gradskova) all explore some of 
the difficulties in both analyzing and even 
defining gender equality in the region.  The next 
grouping of two papers (Smith, Gille) focus 
primarily on experiences of embodiment in post-
socialist Hungary, although Smith also works 
comparatively with material from Belarus.  The 
two papers in the next group (Kalacheva, West) 
look at the production of gender ideologies in 
women’s magazines in the postsocialist period in 
Russia and Hungary.  Finally, Cupic’s paper 
seems to stand alone in this issue.  Yet, at the 
same time, her concern with deconstructing the 
accepted conceptualization of ‘orientalism’ is 
similar to Harvey’s concern with establishing a 
definition of ‘womanism,’ Belooussova’s 
concern with the concept of what is ‘natural’ in 
Russia, and Gille’s concern with ‘Europe” as a 
meaningful term in Hungary.  All four papers 
seek to establish working definitions of Western 
jargon that are more appropriate for the history, 
politics, and societies of East and Central 
Europe. 

 Finally, I want to announce here that 
anybody working on research concerned with 
food in East-Central Europe should keep AEER 
in mind.  Krista Harper and I are editing a special 
issue on this topic next spring and would like to 
see work from as many different countries in the 
region, and as many time periods, as possible.  
Please send your inquiries by February 1, 2003 
to me at bwest@uop.edu or Krista at 
kharper@anthro.umass.edu.  We look forward to 
working with a large number of people working 
on food. 

Jen
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