The Journal of Ethnography 1/2003 deals most of its part with the issue of ethnic minorities. Václav Štěpánek provides a picture of a Czech minority, which in the 1820s settled in southern Banat, the most eastern part of the Austrian army border of that period (The Vanishing Minority. The History and Present of the Czechs in the Serbian Banat). Daniel Luther in his article focuses on the inter-ethnic relations in Bratislava after the establishing of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. (The Czechs and the Origins of the Ethnic Transformation of Bratislava. A Historical Ethnological Excursus). Martin Šimša finds interesting themes in the history of economic life of the Jews in the Vsetín region (Economic Activities of the Jews in the Vsetín Region). Peter Salner deals with issues of Judaism as well (The Present Forms of Judaism. An Example of Resurrection of a Jewish Cemetery). The last two studies on ethnic minorities are written by Jan Oriško, who supplied an article on an ethnographic group of so-called Moravci in Silesia (Silesian Moravci. A Less Visible Ethnographic Group of the Czech-Polish Border Area), and by Petr Kaleta respectively, with an article on cultural and scholarly activities of Lusatian Sorbs (The Lusatian Sorbs and their Cultural and Scholarly Activities).
The Transformation Tradition column offers notes from a vacation stay at the Czech minority in Romanian Banat (by A. Dunajová), and notes from a research of the present-day Easter (by J. Blahůšek and P. Šindelář). Social Chronicle remembers anniversaries of two outstanding female representatives of contemporary folklorism: organizer, narrator, and painter of decorated Easter eggs Marie Pachtová (born 1932), and folksinger Vlasta Grycová (born 1943). Obituaries are looking back to the life and activities of teacher, collector and folk song arranger Zdeněk Kašpar (1925-2002), and the life and work of musicologist Jiří Fukač (1936-2002).
Other regular columns bring conference and exhibition news, information on professional activities, and reviews of new books.
