Contested disciplines in New Europe: ethnology and sociocultural anthropology in Lithuania

The discipline of sociocultural anthropology has particular political and epistemological connotations in postsocialist Central/Eastern Europe. What are the contexts where certain ideologies and methodologies were produced and reproduced as well as contested in the field? This presentation is a participant informed reflection on professional practicing (by teaching and doing research) of this discipline(s) in the course of ongoing social and institutional changes in Lithuania during the last three decades. My aim is to link the local politics of the discipline of Lithuanian ethnology and the discipline of sociocultural anthropology with dominant discourses and national culture and research policies in the country of the period of the late socialist and post-socialist change. I will try to unpack the influence of dominant discourses and national identity politics on the research and teaching strategies of the discipline