Stefania Skowron-Markowska

The young Polish anthropologist Stanisław Poniatowski undertook fieldwork in the Russian Far East in summer 1914. He collected almost five hundred various artifacts (objects, photographs, anthropometric measurement forms, etc.) and linguistic material from the local Nanai and Udege communities along the Amur River. The outbreak of World War I changed Poniatowski's plans and caused the separation (fragmentation) of his original collections, now housed at the Polish Ethnological Society in Wrocław, Poland and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in the US. The article describes a new multistep effort to digitally “reunite” Poniatowski's collections and convert them into a cultural resource for researchers, museum specialists, and Indigenous communities for heritage and language preservation.

The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the contribution of Stanisław Poniatowski to the ethnological study of Siberia - the region that has always attracted travelers and discoverers. Even those who had been exiled by the tsarist regime in the second half of the 19th century not only intended to survive in the new, harsh environment, but also frequently conducted their own geographic, ethnographic, or botanical research. The turn of the 19th and 20th centuries was also the time of the first academic expeditions to Siberia, such as the one led by Vladimir G. Bogoraz (1894-1896), a Russian ethnographer and linguist, during which systematic research in various fields of humanities and natural sciences was conducted. The scientific contribution of Stanisław Poniatowski to Siberian studies is based, in the first place on his extensive and detailed fieldwork which, nonetheless, would not be possible without the support given by the acclaimed Czech anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička. Thanks to his assistance, Poniatowski’s expedition could be carried on and produce unique ethnographic data on relatively unknown peoples of that region of Asia.

The aim of this article is to investigate the authenticity of Shaolin Temple and Chenjiagou Village in the context of intensified martial arts tourism and UNESCO documents. Desk research, structured interviews and participant observation were used to investigate the issue. The issue of cultural and natural heritage has become part of the modern image of a powerful new China. They particularly use these resources in cultural tourism, where boasting of heritage listed on UNESCO’s tangible and intangible heritage list is certainly an appropriate impression. The UNESCO intangible and tangible heritage list also includes objects related to martial arts tourism (Shaolin Temple, Chenjiagou Village). The article presents how Western (American, European) preferences and expectations are visible in the way of preserving and using these objects with an attempt to maintain UNESCO standards. It has been noticed that the added objects/events/shows are accepted by the Chinese as increasing the attractiveness of the place, even if they are not thematically and historically related to it. The authors checked whether a certain cultural compromise is possible or whether these places are a completely Westernized product, taking the form of theme parks or ethnoparks. For Western tourists, such phenomena are often synonymous with the commercialization and falsification of the authenticity of a place, which is why the role of cultural education is very important, both in China and in Western countries.

In this panel, five experts present their personal experiences in martial arts and combat sports (MA&CS) research. These experiences represent the two classic approaches to our studies: the quantitative and the qualitative. Above all, the panel aims to foster debate and reflection on the complementarity of these methods when trying to embrace the complexity of MA&CS.

This is a report covering the 5th Annual Martial Arts Studies Conference, held in Orange, California (USA) on May 23-24, 2019. There were a total of six parallel sessions comprised of 44 presentations. Although the conference theme was “martial arts, culture, and politics,” the thematic organization extended beyond this premise to all aspects of martial arts as a field of investigation. As a whole, the conference was impressively orchestrated and quite well attended by representatives from around the world and is notable as the first official Martial Arts Studies Research Network event to take place in North America.