Patrycja Paula Gas, The Dayaks - Free People of Borneo. An Antropological Analysis of the Collective Identity of the Ngayau Dayaks in the Process of Yavanization and Globalization [Dajakowie - wolni ludzie z Borneo], Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2017.

The Dayaks - Free People of Borneo is the result of question-evoking travel, which was possible thanks to the one-year scholarship in Malangu on East Yava. A year after, equipped with the basic linguistic and linguistic competences, familiar with history, values, etiquette and contexts of the Indonesian culture, the author departed for Borneo, where she spent the next year. To paraphrase the traditional Polish proverb, the travels educate the educated, because Patrycja Gas - as a man of the West (the student of the Comparative Studies of Civilisations) - applied the method created by Comte and Spencer, Durkheim and Weber, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown and uncountable hosts of the less popular researchers. It is exactly this method which allows for reconstruction and understanding of the patterns behind the evolution and diffusion of culture.

The book has significant didactic valour. It is a good example of mixing the anthropology of travel with anthropology of dialogue and should be the required reading within Cultural Studies and similar programmes.

Prof. dr hab. Maria Flis

The table of contents (in Polish) can be accessed here.