Facets of a Harmony

Unlike other anthropological studies focusing mainly on eastern Slovak settlements, Jan Ort chose as the target of his field research a village with a reputation for "smooth coexistence" among linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous inhabitants. The book offers an ethnographic critique of this idyllic notion and shows how the current state of affairs is related to historical transformation, the naturalization of symbolic and material inequalities, borders and hierarchies, but also to the ways in which they are negotiated. The result is a text full of interesting ethnographic descriptions and observations that, in sum, provide an answer to one of the main questions of the text: Who's local?