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1

THE MAN AT THE CULTURAL BORDERLAND

100%
Kabzinska I.
Kwartalnik Historii Kultury Materialnej
|
2006
|
vol. 54
|
issue 3-4
271-282
EN
Humanities have recently become increasingly interested in the issue of frontiers and borderlands. There is even a new subdiscipline, which ethnologists and anthropologists call 'anthropology of borderness' and sociologists - 'sociology of borderlands'. It investigates relations between communities living at various borderlands (national, ethnic, cultural or regional), factors influencing the character of those relations and their consequences. Borderlands can be investigated from different perspectives, including geographical, historical, political, ethnographic, social, economic and cultural ones. They are also perceived as providing environment for the emergence of new people and new cultures. Some researchers claim that the man of borderland shares the culture and tradition of two or more communities. He functions in several cultural spheres and is to some extent rooted in each. He is aware of the cultural identity of various groups ('us' and 'others') but he is not interested in cultural isolation. He treats 'otherness' and 'difference' as positive phenomena fostering integration and development and he is not prone to stereotypical thinking. The authoress argues that such an image of the man of borderland can only be considered an idealized model. People who actually live at borderland territories or experience borderland situations rarely fulfill the above-mentioned criteria. They are men of borderland only because of their place of residence, not because of their attitudes. They live in a world where various cultures meet, they make various choices, but they do not necessarily adapt to 'other' patterns of behaviour. Neither are they free from stereotypical thinking, concerning both 'others' and 'us'. Many people do not accept multicultural reality and express that through their behaviour, which is often aggressive. One of possible methods to research cultural borderlands and the man of borderland is to analyze various biographical materials. The authoress quotes examples of such an approach, asking how living in a borderland or experiencing a borderland situation influences human attitudes and shapes particular features of character. She means to initiate an interdisciplinary discussion of cultural borderlands and men of borderland. The topics might include sources and methods of research used in various disciplines, factors influencing relations between neighbouring groups, possibilities of making choices, the impact of living in a borderland on the fate of communities and individuals, people's attitudes to their own group of reference and actions undertaken to preserve its cultural limits (which is a method to oppose assimilation). Another important issue is the problem of changes in borderlands and the ways in which they are experienced by men of borderland.
2
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'THE CULTURE OF GRUMBLING', 'GLOBAL MEDIOCRITY', NATIONAL NEUROSIS' AND OTHER ELEMENTS OF THE IMAGE OF CONTEMPORARY POLES (IN PRESS ARTICLES). AN OUTLINE OF THE PROBLEM

100%
Kabzinska I.
Etnografia Polska
|
2005
|
vol. 49
|
issue 1-2
89-123
EN
Media arouse more and more interest of the ethnologists/cultural anthropologists. They make a good source for the study of contemporary social and political transformation. However, texts of this kind deserve thorough critical analysis.It seems necessary to consider them in broad socio-cultural context. What they show is usually a one-dimensional reality, the image they create is superficial, flat and more often than not- stereotypical. The texts presented and analysed in this article are good examples of such line of portraying social reality, together with creating and maintaining sterotypes. They have been published in several high-circulation Polish daily papers and weekly magazines ('Polityka', 'Gazeta Wyborcza', 'Zycie', 'Niedziela', 'Metropol', 'Fakt' and some other). The articles have been written both by journalists and social and political scientists. They mention Polish fears, complexes and faults and often use terms like: 'national neurosis', 'culture of grumbling'. They tell about people whom they refer to as: 'living beyond, or even against the national life'. The Poles are referred to as 'global mediocrity'. The article is the authoress' polemics with such views. Basing on both press publications and her own observation and research she calls some of those opinions into question suggesting at the same time different interpretation of the same data. One of the problems of her dissertation is how public feelings and public opinion are influenced by the media. The same influence concerns the fall of the society's confidence in public institutions and persons. Media contribute to the growth of frustration and fears in the society and that brings about particular consequences for the social and cultural life. She emphasizes that social fears aren't entirely Polish speciality.The concept of 'global community of fears' seems most appropriate for her. According to Zygmunt Bauman the ubiquoitous fear is related to decline of welfare states, and the prevalence of the global free market economy. The sociologist adds that nowadays the fears are commercialized, for example due to advertising industry. The authoress gives examples how fears become commercialized by pharmaceutical industry as well as by journalists, press photographers and even by some travel agencies. One of the essential principles of the media is: 'black sells better than white'. News with negative overtones have become the most desired commodity. If the world is presented by the media in negative aspects only, the audience is not able to notice the brighter side of life or at least it is difficult to them, as their attention is directed mainly towards the dark side. She wants to prove that even views of difficult social problems like unemployement, homelessness, impoverishment of great part of the society and forced emigration don't have to be one-sided. There are people who try to counteract, to limit the effects of such phenomena, to help, even if on individual scale. There are projects aimed at improvement of the situation, prepared by experts familiar with Polish realities. The interest in them ( not only in the media) is next to none.
3
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MEMORY, NOSTALGIA AND ENVY OF 'GOOD, OLD TIMES'

100%
Kabzinska I.
Etnografia Polska
|
2006
|
vol. 50
|
issue 1-2
177-196
EN
The notion of memory, perceived as an important cognitive category and basic concept in anthropological studies, has recently found its central place in the area of interest of ethnologists and anthropologists. They emphasize the importance of memory for the stability of communities, for cultural transmission as well as for preserving cultural heritage and cultural identity of groups. Worth mentioning is the analysis of the relationship between memory and narratives. Different kinds of memory have been distinguished here: memoria, post-memory, counter-memory, axiological memory, etc. According to the authoress' opinion the participants of the 'discourse on memory' in social sciences seem not to remember that, for researchers dealing with cultural studies, memory has always been considered a source of knowledge. However, it was treated in an instrumental way, its existence didn't require any deeper reflection. It was the content of tradition (both oral and written) that mattered. Particular parts of reality, which couldn't be reached by informant's memory and/or simply forgotten were pointed out as limitations not allowing to experience them. At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s the period of essential economic and social transformations began in Central and Eastern Europe (the Berlin Wall was pulled down, Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc collapsed). The transformations seem to continue till now. They are accompanied by the biographical boom and reflection not only on history of particular states and nations but also on narratives concerning that history. Need of 'filling in the missing pages' of history was often emphasized. Silence was broken concerning dramatic experiences of groups and individuals, before and during the WW II as well as in communist times. Not everybody wants to remember the past and doesn't aim at acquiring true knowledge about it. Moreover, different ways of perceiving the same historical events may cause divisions and conflicts. The example mentioned here is the case of Lithuanians and Poles living in the Republic of Lithuania. In all post-communist countries the first, euphoric period after the change of the system was followed by the phenomenon of nostalgia for the former socialist time. It is opposed to the present time and is presented as the happy days of welfare state when there was no unemployment and 'the ordinary man' was paid salary sufficient to buy more cheap goods than now. Another feature of that imagined past are good interpersonal relationships. However, the phenomenon of nostalgia is not limited to the countries belonging once to the Soviet bloc. Chantal Mouffe points out that it can be noticed in many different countries among those social groups that can't cope with the new reality. Many young people (20-30 years) interviewed by the authoress say that they would like to live in 'good socialist times'. First of all because of: lack of unemployment, social security, cheap goods, general predictability, hope for better future. Question arises, whether all the negative aspects of quite recent past were forgotten or the young people simply kept in their memory only what was important for them? What are the mechanisms determining the subject of a narrative and what remains in the memory of both the narrator and the listeners?
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