Ladislav Holy and Ernest Gellner: Representatives of Two Incompatible Approaches to the Study of Central European Society?

Abstract

This study aims to compare the method of work employed in the Central European region by two outstanding British social anthropologists of Czech origin. Ernest Gellner & Ladislav Holy, the two personalities who are the focus of this study, were in terms of their opinions very different from one another. Central Europe had a distinct significance for each of them, & they addressed it with different questions. The purpose of this text is not merely to outline what it was that divided them, but also to seek points in which their thoughts converged; to determine whether the common field left any traces in the subject of their interest, & whether the results of their research corresponded in any way at all. Given that both Ladislav Holy & his ideas received much less attention after his death than the views of Ernest Gellner did, the article devotes more space to the theoretical viewpoints of the former. The ideas Holy presented in the Czech academic press during the early 1990s, which are poorly accessible to the international academic community, are especially highlighted.