Michal Synek

Souostrovím postižení nazýváme systém ústavů pro lidi označené za postižené, jejichž obyvateli jsou v České republice tisíce lidí. Náš etnografický výzkum potvrzuje, že ústavy jsou izolovaná, obtížně dostupná místa, protkaná těžko překročitelnými hranicemi oddělujícími obyvatele od zaměstnanců, obyčejný život od oficiálních strategií péče a údržby a lidi označené za postižené od nás ostatních, kteří za postižené označení nejsme. Souostroví postižení však není jen regionem vyloučení a vytěžování. Je zároveň prostorem problematizace, kde se shromažďují veřejnosti tvořené lidmi, kteří jsou působením ústavních režimů zasaženi. Tyto veřejnosti staví na poznání, že postižení, které člověka odsuzuje k životu v ústavech, není jedinou reálně uskutečnitelnou verzí postižení. Vedle etnografického popisu světa ústavů a empiricko-teoretického hledání odpovědi na otázku, jaká socio-materiální uspořádání a zájmy ho udržují při životě, tato kniha nabízí i naději na změnu: pragmaticky založenou vizi postižené veřejnosti coby proměnlivého otevřeného společenství, v němž je vyloučení nahrazeno sdílenou zasažeností a osvědčené způsoby zacházení s postižením kreativní nevědomostí.

Fotografie Petr Králík

As a starting point for this article, the concept of diplomatic ethnography inspired by the work of Bruno Latour is presented as an ideal: a model for 'good anthropology', which truthfully follows members' actions and the associations they form with others, simultaneously respecting their values. The workability of this ideal is then ethnographically tested in a research setting where direct communication with actors about the results of the researcher's work is inescapable, while arriving at a common description of networks and values is difficult, as one group of actors routinely disqualifies members of another group by including them in the strongly naturalised category of 'people with mental impairment'. How to understand and interpret the life of Pete, a resident of a 'home for persons with health impairment', who strives to rein in his hearty appetite while those taking care of him describe him as a 'wicked child' whose actions reflect only his syndrome? On the basis of my negotiations about his case, I come to the conclusion that the project of diplomatic ethnography is viable, if the obduracy of the ordering arrangements is duly taken into account and values are honoured, and, while arguing with members is inevitable under given circumstances, it is potentially productive for envisioning change in existing modes of ordering.

Public debates of religious specialists could be used as a study example of relations between dogmatic and political aspects of religions. However, as the nature of scriptural sources is socioeconomic , the interactions must be primarily studied not on the religious debates per se, but rather on interpretation of such events in historic and dogmatic sources. The aim of the present work is to demonstrate this thesis on the case of Lhasa debate, which took place in the 8 th century Tibet and which has left enduring traces in the Tibetan religious consciousness. Based on methodological principles derived from Luther H. Martin's essay History, Historiography and Christian Origins (2000: 69–89) and analysis of dBa' bzhed (2000), one of the earliest " propaganda " texts written about Lhasa debate, of the present work seeks to define hypothetic Samye tradition, as a socio-religious group responsible for the creation and transmitting the chronicle. The tradition is then placed in the cultural and political context of its time and situated in the contemporary doctrinal spectrum. While this method seems to be appropriate for the study of the circles responsible for the creation of the text, about the event described we learn practically nothing. This conclusion seems to be confirmed by a short comparison with Dunhuang document Dunwu dasheng zhengli jue, offering an alternative view of the controversy. Thus, not the actions of the participants of the historic event, but the creative act of the Tibetan and Chinese chronicles authors' constitute the res gestae of the student of religion investigating Lhasa debate.

Life stories for human rights are lived and told by people with disabilities who have spent their lives in total institutions. By their retelling and by sharing uncertainties about how to re-tell them we want to broaden the space for shared memories and response-abilities.

Life stories for human rights (www.zivotnipribehy.com) are stories lived, told and spread by and with people with disabilities, who have spent big part of their lives in total institutions. Among the rights which are denied to people using the services of the total institutions, the right to own one’s life story and to share it with others plays an important role. Our project offers people with disabilities an opportunity to form a research group together with academics, students, journalists, musicians and artists and to introduce their experiences and standpoints into the expert and public discourses. The outputs of the joint research will be utilised for creating a monograph and academic articles, as well as academic courses and a a lifelong learning course for social workers. Readers and listeners of accessible materials about human rights issues – of the graphic novel, the podcasts and the web page – will enjoy the opportunity to read, hear and see life stories which have never before influenced the public debate. By their retelling, and by sharing uncertainties about how to re-tell them best, we want to broaden the space of shared memories, response-abilities and speculations. Together, we will create discursive and political spaces favourable for exploring better versions of cohabitation, as well as point to concrete ways of breaking the silence engulfing lives of people with disabilities.

Life stories for human rights are stories lived, told and spread by and with people with disabilities, who have spent big part of their lives in total institutions. The asylums, creating unsurmountable gap between their „clients“ and the broader community, constitute one of major sources of discrimination and human rights abuse of the people identified as disabled. According to many eyewitness accounts and scholarly reports, the care repertoires, as they are performed in the institutions, are not favourable to living and thinking with people and things outside the asylums. Among the rights which are denied to people using the services of the total institutions, the right to own one‘s life story and to share it with other members of society plays an important role. The project Life stories for human rights enables people with disabilities to form a research group together with academics, students, journalists, musicians and artists and to introduce their experiences and standpoints into the expert and public discourses. Together we aim to add a missing link to the history of our country – the true „peoples‘ history“ of those gravely affected by the shortcomings or absence of individual and collective protection of the human rights.

As Dona Haraway reminds us, it is important what and whose stories tell stories (2019). No story stands by itself, all are born from comprehensive repertoires and practices of narrating, listening and re-telling. All are parts of other stories. Every story told by the members of our collective is different and will have different impact. But they have, or so it seems, at least one thing in common: they are born out of common human desire to speak, to be listened to, to break silences which hurt, and to inspire us to find new and better ways of relating.

The outputs of the joint research will be utilised for creating a monograph and academic articles, as well as academic courses and a a lifelong learning course for social workers. Readers and listeners of accessible materials about human rights issues – of the graphic novel, the podcasts and the web page – will enjoy the opportunity to read, hear and see life stories which have never before influenced the public debate. By their retelling, and by sharing uncertainties about how to re-tell them best, we want to broaden the space of shared memories, response-abilities and speculations. The re-telling of the life stories for human rights will create discursive and political spaces favourable for exploring better versions of cohabitation, as well as point to concrete ways of breaking the silence engulfing lives of people with disabilities.

In my presentation, I would like to reflect on some of the findings of a research and social innovation project whose aim was to improve serving of food in the residential institutions for people with the diagnosis of "mental impairment". These so-called "homes for people with health impairments", much like Erving Goffman's infamous asylums (1968), house big number of people and through the highly-orchestrated social care practices provide for much of their basic needs. As the observation which I am going to present to you today pertain mainly to the question of how to deal with bad situation-and perhaps also how to find something good in them-it is important to say right at the start that our project was from its very beginning based on a shared critical stance, namely, that food, as it is cooked and served in such "homes", is not good for the boarders, even though it is prepared and offered while paying special attention to their needs. At least some of the main actors-that is some of the regional government's representatives, some of the managers of the residential institutions, and most importantly, some of the people cooking and serving meals-agreed that the food they make and distribute is in fact impaired, in the sense that it doesn't nourish-nutritionally and socially-its consumers. After introducing the field of the inquiry, I will present three different routes that elaboration of this initial critical stance can take in research and in practice, together with some of the effects that taking these routes had, or could have had, on the serving of meals at the "homes" and on the closely related subjects. I will suggest that being true to the empirical data is only one-if crucial-aspect of this problem and that being good might be equally important. Of course, such presentation is based on an idea that experiences from the field might by re-told in various ways, each having different narrative, results and impact. As Dona Haraway famously put it: "It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with" (Haraway 2016, 12). Thus, when presenting the different approaches taken to describe repertoires of meal provision in residential institutions, I will argue for a privileged position of one of these approaches, without trying to suggest that it is the only one possible. To get a glimpse of the kind of practices we tried to explore and influence through our research and social innovation project, consider the following observation from the Home Z, one of residential institutions for "persons with health impairments": The lobster salad (made of celery) is served as a "meal of choice". This is no doubt one of those new meals-a part of Mediterranean week?-that the head of meal services is so proud of. It soon becomes evident that the meal doesn't work as it's supposed to. Clients who have ordered the meal do not know what to do with it. [...] The problem is that the care workers on duty did not cut the long white baguette into pieces and the unknown object looks strange and

In residential institutions for people identified as dependent on other peoples' support, maintenance and care are inextricably interwoven. The asylums' buildings need constant upkeep and to get necessary resources, they also need people to live in them, functioning thus as vacuous spaces drawing in inhabitants supplied by various disability labels. While providing shelter, they also complicate caring, as their "cultural" or "economic worth" prevents their transformation into places of dignified living. From a perspective of STS, this case presents twofold challenge. The first arises from difficulties to conceptualize failure. If we truthfully describe the existing modes of ordering maintenance and care, while respecting associated values, how to understand situations where one of these activities stand in a way of the other? Is strict differentiating between care and maintenance, based on valuing humans above non-humans, the only ethical solution? The second challenge consists of using alternative conceptualizations of maintenance and care to explore other, less radical versions of the controversy. If both processes are described as tinkering, which aspects of human/non-human relationships come into view? If both the buildings and people living in them are seen as fragile and mutable, could the edifices forming the disability Gulag (McBryde Johnson) become allies of disabled-identified? This paper combines strengths of diplomatic ethnography (Latour) and empirical ethics (Mol, Pols) to theorize maintenance (Cállen and Criado, Denis and Pontille) and care (Law, Mol, Moser) in situations of socio-material oppression and to envision more positive relationships between highly valued mutable buildings and disabled and fragile people.

WILLIAMS, Paul. TRIBE, Anthony. 2011. Buddhistické myšlení: Úplné uvedení do indické tradice. Trans. ZBAVITEL, Dušan. Praha: ExOriente. 301 stran. ISBN 978-80-904246-8-5. Orig. ed.: 2000. Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition. London and New York: Routledge.

In the Czech Republic, thousands of men and women identified as mentally impaired live in large residential institutions, many of them housing more than a hundred inhabitants. As part of the highly-institutionalized care routines followed by the staff of such “homes for people with health impairments”, they are served meals supposedly enhancing self-sufficiency and dignity and tailored to their “special needs”. However, despite the focus on individualisation and autonomy, the inhabitants of the asylums often get food that they cannot eat, or that they are forced to eat even if it does not suit them. The essays collected in this dissertation reflect upon six years of experience with a social invention project aimed at analysing and changing this situation. Through this reflection, the essays aim to enhance our understanding of the making of sociomaterially heterogeneous ‘objects’ – such as impaired food or mental impairment – in highly routinized everyday practices. Inspired by material semiotics, actor-network theory and disability studies, they investigate how different versions of mental impairment are enacted in repertoires of dining and how their encounters in the field of this activity disable/unable the various actors of residential care. Their main focus is on institutionalized care routines and their patterns, sociomateriality, force and durability, together with possibilities for formulating alternatives. Given the complex research environment riddled with numerous controversies regarding practices, ontologies and values, a praxiographic ethnography became the main research tool. Joint observations, interviews and discussions with communication partners were designed to comply with the key methodological rule of diplomatic ethnography: to “speak well to someone about something that really matters to that person”. This methodological dictum of Bruno Latour has been tested in a setting where some of the key actors not only meet considerable difficulties in voicing their matters of concern but are also disqualified as reliable witnesses by a strongly naturalised association with mental impairment. Staying true to the chosen approach meant paying heightened attention to the practical and embodied aspects of experience and sometimes also abandoning diplomatic negotiations for diplomatic arguing. It has been found that when the obduracy of the ordering arrangements is taken into account and values are honoured, the diplomatic argument might become a productive analytical tool. When discussing and doing “things that really matter”, the researchers and the communication partners discovered that among the many problems that are continually being addressed in residential institutions, a prominent role is played by “enhancing clients’ self-sufficiency when eating” and “professional blindness”, a characteristic of some of the staff members that allegedly hinders desirable interventions into the existing care routines. In our joint probing and intervening into “limited self-sufficiency” and “professional blindness”, neither of these qualities was found to be essential to the clients or the staff members. They appeared as heterogeneous quasi-objects/subjects, existing in a complex network of associations constituted by many human and non-human actors undergoing constant change. It has been found that “professional blindness” is not an impairment of sight or judgment, but an ordering of the network of care in which the space for promoting self-sufficiency is limited by existing regimes of haste, strongly influenced by the organizing object of mental impairment. In line with this insight, the main body of the research explores enactment of mental impairment in repertoires of dining, using diffraction of Annemarie Mol’s, Jeannette Pols’ and Ingunn Moser’s classical praxiographic studies as a means of analysis. In Hospital Z described in Mol’s book The Body Multiple, doctors, patients and various technical devices enact atherosclerosis, a disease to be cured. As almost everybody agrees that atherosclerosis is a useful object – in the sense that it enables treatment – its enactment could be described as the coordination and distribution of various versions of activities/objects. The object thus enacted is more than one and less than many. At Home Z in the Czech Republic, care workers, clients and various technologies and technical devices enact mental impairment, a disorder to be managed. The various different incarnations of the object in question – mental impairment enacted as a medical condition, as an object of care, as an opportunity for inclusion, as wickedness of the man-child, or as an object of critical attitude – are not made anew with the help of inscription devices, but are reiterated through many repertoires of care, including meal provision. Agreement on what mental impairment means is rare, and the utility of some of its versions is contested. Mental impairment is less than one and more than many, as none of its versions acquires coherence of a useful whole, and every practice of constructing it further multiplies incompatibilities. In addition to activities of coordination and distribution, which hold atherosclerosis together in Hospital Z, the infelicitous object of mental impairment is saved through thinking/acting from where one is (not), an activity which simultaneously relates to and denies multiplicity, often with disastrous effects on the intimately related subjects. But food, thanks to its fluid materiality, can become a space for enacting other ‘objects’ besides mental impairment. In efforts to change impaired meals into more a pleasurable experience, the home-like meal is supposed to infuse the residential institutions with home-like qualities. Staff members serving meals in “households”, organisational units built to provide domesticity, consider privacy and autonomy important characteristics of a home-like meal and strive to provide meals of the same qualities to the diners. At the same time, they consider this task impossible given the current orderings of the network of care. This discrepancy between the assessment of the current state of affairs and the desired ends in view is displaced by labelling the diners mentally impaired, in this specific case incapable of understanding and thus of enjoying the home-like meal. The text ends by retelling the story of one of the few former “home” residents. By leaving the institution but staying well-attached, he has enacted another version of home beyond the institutionalised discourses of communality and privacy, one conceptualized here as an intimate sphere. When evaluating the potential of different versions of home-like meal for driving reform, the conclusion is made that effective reform must be defined pragmatically, as one that cannot be pacified by the strategy of labelling. Like the repertoires of dining which it seeks to describe, this dissertation enacts mental impairment in a number of different and partially disparate ways. A methodological problem of re-telling accounts that nobody takes seriously, a rationale and an obstacle to heterogeneous socio-material practice of enhancing self-sufficiency, an unhappy object multiple held together by practices of adiaphora and by ghosts of the past, or a labelling strategy creating a semblance of home where there is none – all this is mental impairment as enacted by the individual chapters in this collection. If there is one single moral within this diversity, it is this: Mental impairment could be otherwise. Like many other biological entities aka scientific facts, it is not destiny. And the main objective of this collection is to open a path to this otherwise by deconstructing, as John Law puts it, the “commitment to visible singularity” that “not only hides the practice that enacts it, but also conceals the possibility that different constellations of practice and their hinterlands might make it possible to enact realities in different ways”.

Early Mormon foundational narratives – those relating the visions of the religion’s founder Joseph Smith and origins of the Mormon basic text, the Book of Mormon – confuse modern reader accustomed to the clear division between fantasy and reality with perplexing mixture of supernatural elements and common this-worldly facts. On one hand, these stories are populated by culturally postulated super-natural agents, like angels, godly personages and various magical instruments, and abound in descriptions of mystical visions, prophecies and divine truths, which could be substantiated only by faith. On the other hand, they intersperse these tales and base them upon narratives about fact-finding missions, rational analyses and experiments, concluded to obtain verifiable testimonies, evidence and proofs. The modern reader, faced with their intriguing double nature, seems to have only two options. Firstly, he could – if this option is available to him – take them for granted and embrace them without reservation on the basis of the supreme authority of their narrators and their protagonists. In such a case, their rational, empirical part does not matter much. Secondly, he could judge the evidence and logical arguments supplied by their authors by standards of secular modern epistemology. Looking at the Mormon early foundational narratives from this point of view, he could only deem their authors and propagators liars, or, more tolerantly, naive fools, whose thinking is hopelessly limited by medieval frame of mind and poor education. But none of these two stances – neither unconditional acceptance by faith, nor utter dismissal based on endogenous rational categories – constitute the right approach for a social scientist, seeking an accurate comprehension of religious belief.

"Kdykoli dojde k sepsání příručky, [předání] se promění v pouhé zmocnění a praxe jde stranou. Copak bych se něčeho takového mohl dopustit pro vlastní prospěch? To budu raději žebrákem, co se kostí přivázanou na konci své hole strefuje do psích čelistí!" (Phagpa Ö v Modrých análech). Instituci lungu, kterou Phagpa vnímá jako produkt profanace a zpovrchnění ústního způsobu předání nauky, způsobených proměnou orálního modu komunikace v modus literární, lze zároveň chápat jako začlenění psaného textu do orální kultury, jež hraje v předávání buddhistické nauky ústřední roli.

In the Czech Republic, thousands of men and women identified as mentally impaired live in large residential institutions, many of them housing more than a hundred inhabitants. As part of the highly- institutionalized care routines followed by the staff of such “homes for people with health impairments”, they are served meals supposedly enhancing self-sufficiency and dignity and tailored to their “special needs”. However, despite the focus on individualisation and autonomy, the inhabitants of the asylums often get food that they cannot eat, or that they are forced to eat even if it does not suit them.
The essays collected in this dissertation reflect upon six years of experience with a social invention project aimed at analysing and changing this situation. Through this reflection, the essays aim to enhance our understanding of the making of sociomaterially heterogeneous ‘objects’ – such as impaired food or mental impairment – in highly routinized everyday practices. Inspired by material semiotics, actor-network theory and disability studies, they investigate how different versions of mental impairment are enacted in repertoires of dining and how their encounters in the field of this activity disable/unable the various actors of residential care. Their main focus is on institutionalized care routines and their patterns, sociomateriality, force and durability, together with possibilities for formulating alternatives.
Given the complex research environment riddled with numerous controversies regarding practices, ontologies and values, a praxiographic ethnography became the main research tool. Joint observations, interviews and discussions with communication partners were designed to comply with the key methodological rule of diplomatic ethnography: to “speak well to someone about something that really matters to that person”. This methodological dictum of Bruno Latour has been tested in a setting where some of the key actors not only meet considerable difficulties in voicing their matters of concern but are also disqualified as reliable witnesses by a strongly naturalised association with mental impairment. Staying true to the chosen approach meant paying heightened attention to the practical and embodied aspects of experience and sometimes also abandoning diplomatic negotiations for diplomatic arguing. It has been found that when the obduracy of the ordering arrangements is taken into account and values are honoured, the diplomatic argument might become a productive analytical tool.
When discussing and doing “things that really matter”, the researchers and the communication partners discovered that among the many problems that are continually being addressed in residential institutions, a prominent role is played by “enhancing clients’ self-sufficiency when eating” and “professional blindness”, a characteristic of some of the staff members that allegedly hinders desirable interventions into the existing care routines. In our joint probing and intervening into “limited self- sufficiency” and “professional blindness”, neither of these qualities was found to be essential to the clients or the staff members. They appeared as heterogeneous quasi-objects/subjects, existing in a complex network of associations constituted by many human and non-human actors undergoing constant change. It has been found that “professional blindness” is not an impairment of sight or judgment, but an ordering of the network of care in which the space for promoting self-sufficiency is limited by existing regimes of haste, strongly influenced by the organizing object of mental impairment.
In line with this insight, the main body of the research explores enactment of mental impairment in repertoires of dining, using diffraction of Annemarie Mol’s, Jeannette Pols’ and Ingunn Moser’s classical praxiographic studies as a means of analysis.
In Hospital Z described in Mol’s book The Body Multiple, doctors, patients and various technical devices enact atherosclerosis, a disease to be cured. As almost everybody agrees that atherosclerosis is a useful object – in the sense that it enables treatment – its enactment could be described as the coordination and distribution of various versions of activities/objects. The object thus enacted is more than one and less than many. At Home Z in the Czech Republic, care workers, clients and various technologies and technical devices enact mental impairment, a disorder to be managed. The various different incarnations of the object in question – mental impairment enacted as a medical condition, as an object of care, as an opportunity for inclusion, as wickedness of the man-child, or as an object of critical attitude – are not made anew with the help of inscription devices, but are reiterated through many repertoires of care, including meal provision. Agreement on what mental impairment means is rare, and the utility of some of its versions is contested. Mental impairment is less than one and more than many, as none of its versions acquires coherence of a useful whole, and every practice of constructing it further multiplies incompatibilities. In addition to activities of coordination and distribution, which hold atherosclerosis together in Hospital Z, the infelicitous object of mental impairment is saved through thinking/acting from where one is (not), an activity which simultaneously relates to and denies multiplicity, often with disastrous effects on the intimately related subjects.
But food, thanks to its fluid materiality, can become a space for enacting other ‘objects’ besides mental impairment. In efforts to change impaired meals into more a pleasurable experience, the home-like meal is supposed to infuse the residential institutions with home-like qualities. Staff members serving meals in “households”, organisational units built to provide domesticity, consider privacy and autonomy important characteristics of a home-like meal and strive to provide meals of the same qualities to the diners. At the same time, they consider this task impossible given the current orderings of the network of care. This discrepancy between the assessment of the current state of affairs and the desired ends in view is displaced by labelling the diners mentally impaired, in this specific case incapable of understanding and thus of enjoying the home-like meal.
The text ends by retelling the story of one of the few former “home” residents. By leaving the institution but staying well-attached, he has enacted another version of home beyond the institutionalised discourses of communality and privacy, one conceptualized here as an intimate sphere. When evaluating the potential of different versions of home-like meal for driving reform, the conclusion is made that effective reform must be defined pragmatically, as one that cannot be pacified by the strategy of labelling.
Like the repertoires of dining which it seeks to describe, this dissertation enacts mental impairment in a number of different and partially disparate ways. A methodological problem of re-telling accounts that nobody takes seriously, a rationale and an obstacle to heterogeneous socio-material practice of enhancing self-sufficiency, an unhappy object multiple held together by practices of adiaphora and by ghosts of the past, or a labelling strategy creating a semblance of home where there is none – all this is mental impairment as enacted by the individual chapters in this collection. If there is one single moral within this diversity, it is this: Mental impairment could be otherwise. Like many other biological entities aka scientific facts, it is not destiny. And the main objective of this collection is to open a path to this otherwise by deconstructing, as John Law puts it, the “commitment to visible singularity” that “not only hides the practice that enacts it, but also conceals the possibility that different constellations of practice and their hinterlands might make it possible to enact realities in different ways”.

Translating Tibetan Dharma into contemporary Tibeto-European Buddhism: texts, objects, communities and other ways of transmission / The transmission of Dharma in European and North American countries in the 21st Century could be viewed as a translation of actors/networks facilitating its transmission in source communities by actors/networks localized in the new geographic and cultural space. If the basic metaphysical categories of classical translation theory – namely text, author and meaning – are bracketed out, the translation process could be defined as mobilisation of human and non-human actors, during which the actors are dislocated, transformed and embodied in new associations, and correspondence with the source text, equivalence of meaning, intelligibility for the target audience and other aspects of translation could be described as activities by which translators build the relevance of their interpretation of the source text. In my study I describe how such activities are shaped by members of Foundation for Preservation of Mahayana Tradition Translation Team and organizers of Dalai Lama’s commentary to the Atisa’s Lamp for the path to enlightenment, and on the basis of their analysis try to answer the question how a relevant translation of Tibetan dharma is being made into contemporary Tibeto-European Buddhism. My answer, offered to the reader in a form of a short manual of successful dharma translation, characterizes relevant translation as a text whose origin in the source text has been successfully negotiated by collective efforts aimed at building formal correspondence and equivalence of meaning, whose content has been successfully actualized through commentary, and which in the same time remains open enough to allow for further interpretation and individualization of the subject.

Veřejné debaty náboženských specialistů mohou badatelům v oblasti náboženství posloužit jako model vzájemných vztahů dogmatiky a politiky. Vzhledem k socio-kulturní povaze pramenů, z nichž se o náboženských debatách dozvídáme, však musíme vzájemné ovlivňování světa religiozity a politiky primárně sledovat nikoli na náboženských debatách per se, ale spíše na způsobu, jakým je o nich v historiografických a naukových pramenech pojednáváno. Cílem práce je demonstrovat tuto tezi na případě lhaské debaty, k níž došlo na počátku 90. let 8. století n. l. v Tibetu a která se hluboce zapsala do povědomí následovníků tibetského buddhismu. Na základě metodologických východisek odvozených ze stati Luthera H. Martina „History, Historiography and Christian Origins“ a rozboru kroniky dBa’ bzhed, jednoho z nejstarších „propagandistických“ pramenů týkajících se debaty, je definována hypotetická samjäská tradice, jako socio-náboženské uskupení zodpovědné za vznik a tradování kroniky. Tato tradice je posléze umístěna do kulturního a politického kontextu své doby a její hypotetické doktrinální zaměření je vymezeno v rámci dobového doktrinálního spektra. Zatímco jakožto metoda zkoumání kruhů zodpovědných za vznik našeho pramene se tento postup jeví jako použitelný, o popisované události samotné se nedovídáme prakticky nic. To se zdá potvrzovat krátké srovnání s tunchuangským dokumentem Dunwu dasheng zhengli jue, nabízejícím alternativní pohled na lhaskou debatu. Res gestae religionisty zabývajícího se touto událostí proto nemůže být jednání jejích účastníků, ale tvůrčí čin autorů tibetských a čínských letopisů, k němuž došlo v jistých společenských, kulturních a politických poměrech.

How to study care practices empirically as normative practices? In this text, I describe three shifts in relation to normativity in empirical research, away from pre-scriptive nor- mativity that provides directives on what to do, as well as from the idea that one can de- scribe the world as it is, thus separating norms from knowledge making. I locate the nor- mativity of research in the active work of ‘re-scribing’ one’s object of research. The first normative shift shows that values are not only part of human motivations and strivings, but are also embedded in socio-material objects such as technologies, social norms, re- search methods, and regulations. The second shift describes the intimate intertwinement of creating knowledge and normativity in research through the use of methods and con- cepts that include some things and leave others out. The third normative shift asks how the practices studied can benefit from diligent research work. If one re-scribes practices as attempts to do something good, how might this benefit care practices themselves? In trying to answer this question, I will depict the work of doing good through research as a complex practice in itself.

As a contribution to the field of valuation studies this article lays out a number of lessons that follow from an exploratory inquiry into 'good tomatoes'. We held interviews with tomato experts (developers, growers, sellers, processors, professional cooks and so-called consumers) in the Netherlands and analysed the transcriptions carefully. Grouping our informants' concerns with tomatoes into clusters, we differentiate between five registers of valuing. These have to do with money, handling, historical time, what it is to be natural, and sensual appeal. There are tensions between and within these registers, that lead to clashes and compromises. Accordingly, valuing tomatoes does not fit into inclusive formal schemes. Neither is it simply a matter of making judgements. Our informants told us how they know whether a tomato is good, but also revealed what they do to make tomatoes good. Their valuing includes activities such as pruning tomato plants and preparing tomato dishes. But if such activities are meant to make tomatoes good, success is never guaranteed. This prompts us to import the notion of care. Care does not offer control, but involves sustained and respectful tinkering towards improvement. Which is not to say in the end the tomatoes our informants care for are good. In the end these tomatoes get eaten. And while eating performs tomatoes as 'good to eat', it also finishes them off. Valuing may lead on to destruction. An important lesson for valuation studies indeed.