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While we strive to develop existing research on fanzines in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), this article provides an introduction to the discussion about of fanzines and the specific historical contexts of CEE. This thematic issue aims to open a debate about CEE subcultures and alternative-press practices in the context of the relationship between the local and the global in contemporary history. With the cross-disciplinary view in this issue and the comparative view in the forthcoming issue we want to open up questions that go beyond the mainstream discourses in history and cultural heritage studies in CEE. The forming of a critical public, which often took place on the pages of fanzines, is reflected in the alternative narratives that undermine well-established stories of late socialism and post-socialism in CEE. Alternative scenes played a significant role in the transformation of CEE societies in recent decades, and their impact can be traced in the political and cultural debates of societies at large. Thus, research on fanzines can offer new insights from a “history from below” perspective. This article provides an overview of fanzine research and highlights three important contexts of fanzine analysis: the first is based on the interaction between creators, recipients, and their networks; the second highlights the special economic considerations of fanzine production and distribution; and the third focuses on the specific nature of the visuality and content of fanzines. We also discuss cultural transfer both between East and West and within the CEE.

In this article, I analyse Czech and Slovak fanzine-making during the transition from state socialism to post-socialism. The regime change ushered in new dominant forms of cultural production, and thus a situation emerged in which cultural hierarchies were being negotiated and new ways of collective action being formed. Fanzines played a crucial role in building up alternative communities in the new neoliberal system, when there was strong demand for Western subcultural styles and the need of safe space of domestic scenes. Independent publishing depends heavily upon that which it opposes, and when major social changes occur, fanzine-making provided a space for negotiating cultural hierarchies, resulting in specific ways in which fanzines help build and maintain alternative scenes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we introduce the theme of special issue focusing on sel-publishing activities In Central and Easter Europe from 1980s to 2000s. The articles presented in this issue offer an interdisciplinary view on the history of independent publishing in both the late socialist and post-socialist periods. We would like to enrich the scholarly debate beyond the dichotomies of communism/capitalism, socialism/post-socialism, East/West and samizdat/fanzine, respectively. Different variants of do-it-yourself cultural creativity highlight the space that lies between the established high-brow and popular low-brow cultures. Specifically, the intersections between the approaches of art history, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, literary history, and media studies constitute a representative spectrum for these reconciliations. We would like to highlight the observation of all our contributors that self-published press and books bring a specific value to the building of communities or scenes that are not only locally embedded, but also interlinked globally, and show how various cultural trends were established and developed in different sociocultural and national settings. They bring so-called hidden voices to the forefront, which allows the building of one's own creative space for different kind of activities with significant value also in our post-digital era. Our cases show that the socialist and post-socialist contexts enabled interesting shifts in the economic and social positioning of self-publishing activities. In this respect, we would see the most interesting cases for further research in situations when different agents from different parts of the cultural field meet together, connect different audiences, and foster new ways of creativity that can transgress the logic of late capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces a monothematic issue of Studia Ethnologica Pragensia by positing "kutilství" (a local variant of DIY) as a historically situated phenomenon and shows that despite a generally shared image of a late socialist, typically masculine handyman practice, "kutilství" has much deeper historical and cultural roots. The emergence of self-led manual activities as a response to the modernisation of society points to societal tensions that underpin "kutilství" (and DIY more broadly) since the beginning of the 20th century. The disciplination of independent production and consumption, which can be subsumed under the term "prosumption", has played an important role in relation to the formation of both State and Market, especially the segment targeting DIYers. The authors elucidate how pondering "kutilství" and DIY in general can become a starting point for scholars to understand and challenge modernist dichotomies that are transcended in the practice of "kutilství" / DIY -- dichotomies of work and leisure, market and non-market production as well as production and consumption, professionalization and amateurism, but also masculinity and femininity. The authors argue that situatedness of and hybridization enabled by "kutilství" should represent key axes of research of both "kutilství" and DIY and the theorization(s) derived from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article author suggests new possibilities in studying modern festivities based on thorough review of existing literature. His goal is to review and confront three disciplinary discourses that conceptualized social practices related to festive cultures. First, theories of ritual in social and cultural anthropology are analysed and assessed in relation to modern festivities. Second, the concepts of custom and habit used in the European ethnology, especially Central European tradition of Volkskunde (including Czech národopis), are presented and considered for research of modern festivities. Third, historical discourse about modern festivities is presented and theoretical challenges related to the historical perspective are introduced. On these grounds author proposes a conceptual framework based on performance studies that both reflects advantages of former three disciplinary discourses and overcomes their disadvantages. Finally, a set of new and innovative research questions is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Eastern Europe, which is the focus of our study, different national scholarly traditions assigned their own place to the study of culture. Although the influence of the kulturologia ("culturology") schools installed at Russian universities in the 1980s radiated out into Eastern European countries, local academic communities dictated the approach to the study of popular culture. While the Polish field of kulturoznawstwo was propelled by internal forces from the early 1970s onwards, in Czechoslovakia, kulturologie emerged as a new discipline around the fall of the Communist regime. Even so, it failed to take off and by 2012 had vanished completely from the Czech Republic. Central European countries were also affected by the German academic tradition of Kulturwissenschaften with its emphasis on philosophy and aesthetics. Our inquiry highlights the first international conference on cultural studies in the Czech Republic in 2013. It was during this event that a group of new postdocs from Charles University, including ourselves, raised the topic of changes in Eastern European popular culture due to the political transformation in 1989. This group had also arranged for Ann Gray, the final director of the UK Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) to give a keynote address at the conference, a gesture that clearly linked the CCCS with the group's own Centre for the Study of Popular Culture (CSPK) established three years earlier. From the outset, CSPK's organizers aimed to promote the Anglo-American tradition of cultural studies both in the academy and among the general public. At the same time, they sought to retain their independence from academic structures and funding systems that might restrict their political activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]