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Etnografia Polska
|
2011
|
vol. 55
|
issue 1-2
5-22
EN
The Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Ethnology and Cultural Education of Silesian University was created in 1995. Although it is one of the youngest ethnological academic centers in Poland, it has already created its specificity, much different than in other ethnological centers in Poland. Most of all this results from research interests of its employees who are concentrated on the issues of cultural and ethnical borderlands as well as on the issues of contemporary socio-cultural changes, including the role which is played by tradition in the life of modern society. The strong point of the Institute is research conducted in Poland, Central Europe (mostly Polish-Czech and Polish-Slovak borderlands), Africa (Sudan) and recently also in Serbia. Institute’s achievements over last 15 years oblige to further, consistent efforts to preserve its status on the map of Polish ethnological centers, to improve research efficiency and to strengthen the scope and the model of international cooperation. Being the implementation of the postulates to create the permanent ethnological research center in Silesia, it has the opportunity to become the important center integrating the research on cultural phenomena and processes in Central Europe.
EN
 It is impossible not to see consequences deriving from the lack of precision of the meaning of cultural heritage and notions connected to it in view of education called regional. It is easy to notice that cultural heritage both in ministry acts, publications on regional education and teachers’ and regionalists’ discourses is fairly freely used or even put in the form of imprecise generalities. An excessive inclination for differentiating between meanings ascribed to cultural heritage makes it very fluid and ambiguous. A characteristic of this phenomenon is a constant appearance of its new social and cultural features, which makes it difficult to predict its potential future specificity. If no significant processes of the destabilization of social life take place, we will witness the birth of a new content constituting cultural heritage. In this context, regional education is given a special role, whose one of the key tasks should be preparing the young for making a national evaluation of the cultural heritage content (yet it contains both the resources of the good and the evil), and making conscious choices therein in order to make them transform and adjust cultural heritage to the current needs in the future in a rational and reasonable way.
EN
 It is impossible not to see consequences deriving from the lack of precision of the meaning of cultural heritage and notions connected to it in view of education called regional. It is easy to notice that cultural heritage both in ministry acts, publications on regional education and teachers’ and regionalists’ discourses is fairly freely used or even put in the form of imprecise generalities. An excessive inclination for differentiating between meanings ascribed to cultural heritage makes it very fluid and ambiguous. A characteristic of this phenomenon is a constant appearance of its new social and cultural features, which makes it difficult to predict its potential future specificity. If no significant processes of the destabilization of social life take place, we will witness the birth of a new content constituting cultural heritage. In this context, regional education is given a special role, whose one of the key tasks should be preparing the young for making a national evaluation of the cultural heritage content (yet it contains both the resources of the good and the evil), and making conscious choices therein in order to make them transform and adjust cultural heritage to the current needs in the future in a rational and reasonable way.
EN
The academic center of ethnological research in Cieszyn has a clearly defined profile, which distinguishes it from other centers of this kind in Poland. Its specificity results primarily from the research interests of the staff, which focus on the issues of cultural and ethnic borderlands and on contemporary socio-cultural transformations, including the role of tradition in the life of postmodern communities. The rich and multifaceted achievements over the past twenty-five years of the center’s operation can be seen as an obligation on the part of the researchers encouraging them to make further consistent efforts to consolidate its position on the map of ethnological studies in Poland, to make their research more effective, and to enhance and broaden international cooperation. A materialization of the idea of creating a permanent ethnological research institution in Silesia, the center plays an important and admittedly unique role in integrating research on cultural phenomena and processes in Central Europe.
EN
The consequence of transformations induced systemic transformation and restructuring of the economy is the degradation of the Upper Silesian estates patronage. The inversion of the negative changes involves conducting the integrated process of the revitalization. Such a program cannot be directed only to the architectural-spatial sphere. Since not the historic character of the degraded quarters predestinates them to the revitalization but the particular accumulation of the social and economical problems. While the initialization and the realization of the revitalization generally lie with the local authorities, it cannot be fully successful without the support and the participation of the inhabitants.
EN
A small town is almost completely skipped in studies of Polish ethnologists. The main scientific output in this field constitute works by sociologists, demographers, geographers, historians and urbanists. The reason of ethnographers’ weaker interest in small town communities lies above all in the position of classical ethnography, functioning until recently, for which a traditional thread of research interest was the culture of farming village community. After all, a relatively small number, complex structure and sometimes complicated network of small social groups, people density, intensifying specific types of social interaction, concentration of different functions connected with urban organization and lifestyle are only some of premises reinforcing the attractiveness of small-town communities as a type of laboratory of ethnological studies and ethnological analyses. On the basis of an overview and short description of the research situation concerning the cultural issues of the small-town community as the research subject, one can see that there are many topics that are hardly examined or totally skipped in the studies. Still there are few works concentrating on the problems of attitudes, motivation of behaviours and interaction. The awareness aspects in the functioning of a small town as a collective community have been covered to a large extent. Thorough, regular and broader-scale studies on the phenomenon of cultural identity and local identification among the inhabitants of Polish small towns have not been conducted yet. After all the studies carried out with reference to a slightly big community, allowing for grasping all problems appearing in it, allow to explain the creation of social groups, their duration, development dynamics and coherence in a more precise and consistent way. It usually has a vital importance for formulating wider theoretical generalizations further on. A relative spacious isolation and closeness of social contacts enable the conditions to verify the already stated theses. What is more, a lot of interdependences existing within a small-town spacious-cultural system can constitute a basis for generalizations extrapolated on other levels and systems of a social life.
EN
The majority of aspects of the urban life concentrate in the public space, clearly separated from private spaces. The nature of the public space consists in the fact that it constitutes a joint urban space in the social sense, comprising different functions and meanings. It also constitutes the area where basically all inhabitants can feel free. The public space is a space of identity which makes it possible for the next generations of inhabitants to identify with the city. It makes the mutual communication and expression of people easier. It is a stage on which the mystery play of human life is played every day. In the public space, it is not only the past or the present that is coded, but also the new phe¬nomena reflecting deep transformations sometimes in the humanistic dimension of the urban space. A traditional space is the centre of the city, the most significant element and basic form of which is a centrally situated market - the market square - essential for the existence of both an individual and given social groups. Currently, shopping malls and hypermarkets are more often becoming a substitute of the public space. However, they are not a public space, but a private area only publically used. As long as the pub¬lic space is the sphere of freedom, it is the private space that usually undergoes numerous restrictions, control and social selection. Shopping malls usurp the right to “be the centre”, are a simulation of “the city in the city”. This way, they turn away a cultural code of the urban area - a traditional centre stops to exist or is the one only by name whereas the outskirts become “the centre”. In other words - a social life moves into the outskirts of the city. Such a situation is observed in Mysłowice - the city which was the subject of observations and inquiries. The opening of the Real hypermarket seven years ago has decreased the attractiveness of the city centre, especially the square market, as a trade, service, recreational or even cultural space. Real made, so to speak, an important reevaluation of an urban space of Mysłowice, decomposing its functional and symbolic dimension and determining human relations and behaviors in a direct way.
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