This paper regards the urban street as social space, where different symbolic interactions occur between individuals and groups of people. The established social and political order within this space happens to be disturbed by different forms of protest. An article attempts to compare the course of riots in former times to those at present. The comparison implies that the functional grandness of the urban street belongs to the past. This is mainly caused by new legal regulations restricting freedom of assembly and the new tele-electronic media space, and by a deepening division of the Polish society into different groups of interest, and its consequent inability to consolidate. An indirect cause also is the new order and mentality developed in democratic societies and by a consumeristic lifestyle.
The phenomenon of the centre, covering a series of conceptions concerning given wholes on the scale of both a micro and macro‑cosmos is also visible in the architecture. The architecture, on the other hand, concerning a house or a temple or their concentrated multitude in the form of the city, reflects given mythic structures. In Middle‑aged cities surrounded by the walls, the localization of the centre was not a problem at all. Nowadays, the centre of a big, modern city may be not only difficult to locate, but also, as Aleksander Wallis points out, difficult to define. He tries to take the criterion of function, as a result of which several overlapping city centres, such as historical, trade, administrative ones can appear in the area of the city. In the process of city development one can observe a dynamics of the urban centres, dependent on economic, urbanist and cultural changes. An interesting example of this phenomenon is a double city Bielsko‑Biała, where in the area of the same city - Bielsko - a new centre appeared and the oldest centre was located in the place of the old market square in the last few years. Both centres constitute a cultural area. The difference between them lies in the fact that they refer to different value systems. What seems interesting is the fact the new centre of a trade, service, and recreational nature borrows the cultural functions associated with other places and institutions in the city, such as the theatre, the house of music, galleries. Undoubtedly, it distorts a cultural ecosystem of the urban space, especially in reference to a widely‑understood centre. A relationship of these two centres is defined by the state of rivalry and contradiction, but there are also such areas that complete each other. The attempt to unify the centre and establish its location is visible above all in symbolic forms and forms of realization of given functions. An existing divergence can be eradicated by the users of these spaces not only mentally, but also the architects and urbanists thanks to a further development of the new centre in a direction of the Old Town in Bielsko, which is indicated by the already defined projects. There exist the differences between generations in the perception of the centre, as well as between the inhabitants of Bielsko‑Biała and people commuting and coming from other places. As it was in reference to the Ancient and Middle‑aged cities, the acquaintance of the centre of the contemporary city is important in a description of many present‑day social and cultural phenomena.
W artykule opisana jest tradycja pokłonu feretronów jako przejaw niematerialnego dziedzictwa kulturowego oraz sposoby jej postrzegania, oceny i ochrony. Znaczący był w tym przypadku rok 2013, kiedy za sprawą amatorskiego, lecz intencjonalnie zmontowanego filmu opublikowanego w Internecie, pokłon feretronów został pokazany szerszej publiczności i doczekał się różnych, niekiedy skrajnie odmiennych opinii. Wtedy wzrosło też zainteresowanie pokłonem wśród badaczy, ekspertów i depozytariuszy, którzy starali się lepiej poznać oraz wyjaśnić sens i znaczenie tej tradycji. Autor wyróżnia w artykule pięć typów jakościowej recepcji pokłonu feretronów i analizuje ich uwarunkowania. Na koniec, odwołując się głównie do Konwencji UNESCO z 2003 r., rozważa także działania, które mogłyby pomóc w ochronie tej tradycji.
EN
The article describes the tradition of the obeisance of feretra as a manifestation of intangible cultural heritage, as well as the ways of perceiving, evaluating and protecting this tradition. The year 2013 was significant in this respect, since thanks to an amateur but intentionally edited video published on the Internet, the obeisance of feretra was shown to a wider audience and received various, sometimes radically different opinions. Simultaneously, a considerable increase in the interest in the obeisance was observed among researchers, experts and bearers of this tradition as they tried to learn more about it and explain its meaning. In the article, the author distinguishes five types of the evaluation of the obeisance of feretra and analyses their determinants. Relating primarily to the 2003 UNESCO Convention, the author also considers actions that could help to protect the tradition of the obeisance of feretra.
Pojęcie kosmosu ukształtowane w starożytnej filozofii greckiej ma współcześnie odmienną treść, co odzwierciedla porzucenie idei kosmosu jako ustanowionego przez bogów porządku. Autor artykułu, jako antropolog kulturowy i adept astronomii, opisuje ten problem, analizując wybrane koncepcje kosmosu oraz takich ciał niebieskich, jak Wenus czy Syriusz. Koncepcje te to przykłady alternatywnej wiedzy, która była ważnym składnikiem systemów kulturowych. Na drugim planie podjętych w tym artykule rozważań brane są pod uwagę kwestie dotyczące epistemologii i filozofii nauki.
EN
The concept of the cosmos, shaped in ancient Greek philosophy, has a different meaning today. This change of meaning reflects rejection of the idea of the cosmos as order established by the gods. The author of the article, as a cultural anthropologist and amateur astronomer, describes this problem by analyzing selected examples of the concepts of the cosmos and of celestial bodies, such as Venus and Sirius. These concepts are examples of alternative knowledge that was an important component of cultural systems. Also touched upon in the article are issues of epistemology and philosophy of science.
Researching the local space equals the preferences of the holistic attitude in the anthropology of the city. A strongly urbanized local space is marked by condensation of social and cultural phenomena which are reflected in various symbolic actions. Forms of graffiti, based on mythical structures of image or memory places constitute the semiotic space of the city. The semiotic space of the local area is not alike the space of the city as an urbanist whole although it is directly and indirectly connected with it. On the one hand, it is a collection of objectivised products of symbolic actions and on the other hand, the means of establishing social relations and articulating defined cultural phenomena. The phenomena taking place in the semiotic space of the city can be grouped into two main fields. The first one includes material objects of the sign type and objectivisd representations of particular value and idea, typical of sensori-motor perception. The second one would involve imaginative-notional objects, fulfilling the mythical function and referring to models of the world appearing in a given culture. Due to the diversity of the phenomena taking place in a semiotic space the research examining it should base on the application of various methods, paying special attention to the structural-semiotic method.