A proposal of a synthetic presentation of an urban anthropology project, which could constitute a conceptual framework for assorted empirical urban studies sufficiently extensive to encompass an anthropological interpretation of the 'world of the life' of a man of letters. The reflections are preceded by an outline of assorted stages in the moulding of the concept of urban anthropology, both in Poland and in Western science, which the authoress treats as a 'self-reflection' motif in urban anthropology (starting with the conception of 'expanding the object of ethnography' up to a change in the paradigm of anthropology). In a further part of her text the authoress seeks structures 'merging' numerous and divergent urban themes. The fundamental category of being - place, and in the dimension of the humanities - space and place, is a point of departure for anthropological motifs: the multiplicity of the senses and meanings of places in the town in their social, philosophical (the experiencing of 'being in space') and artistic dimension. The second keystone is time. The statement, recurring in 'town planning' literature in the manner of an axiom, namely, that the town is a permanent and complex temporal structure, creates a framework for an interpretation of a considerable part of urban experiences, collective conceptions and social practices: individual and collective memory, commemoration and annulment, revitalisation, nostalgia, etc. The temporal dimension discloses the connection between the town and culture, expressed in an ideological and literary discourse. Yet another fundamental concept of anthropology, i. e. the identity due to people and places, also refers to the past.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to describe towns while using historical categories, terms or ontological metaphors such as genius loci. Secular, fragmentary, and anomic post-industrial towns subjected to communication and information do not enroot us 'here', in our places, but change us into moving images of the consumer, the tourist, the passerby, the demonstrator, and the hardworking resident, and together with the images of the streets and squares transfer us 'elsewhere'. Despite the fact that today it is rather the product of marketing strategies than a live metaphor, genius loci continues to inspire researchers. What can be done so that its sense-creating force would not vanish while imprisoned in an historical costume? A proposal formulated in this text leads to a confrontation of the town genius loci with another metaphor - the oligopticon - with whose assistance B. Latour described Paris at the end of the twentieth century. Between genius loci and oligopticon there exists a bond based on a common meaning: both are known as the 'tireless guard'. By blending the social and technological aspects of life in the city, oligopticon, similarly to genius loci, extracts from urban space an endless number of sites (the multiple versions of Paris in Paris, Poznan in Poznan, Gdansk in Gdan sk), which together create a certain entity; true, it remains inaccessible for the sort of perception which has not been subjugated to the media, but it does not resemble anything else, and is mysterious and undefined.
In recent decades new theories and practices of urbanism and city planning have coalesced to form a highly visible domain of transdisciplinary discourses for studying cities as both distinct socio-cultural spaces as well as componential parts of wider networked systems, regional and global. One consequence of this development is an increasing awareness on the part of urban scholars that social processes are informed as much by symbolic and discursive practices as they are grounded in capitalist political economic practices. The Urban Imaginary and the Space of the City examines the ways in which the empirical city and its subjectively perceived image in Western culture endures as a complex and discontinuous site of convergent interests rather than a logically or conceptually clarified idea.
'Le Livre des passages' is strange work and must be read in an equally unusual manner: this is a book which opens itself on a page of its own choice and compels the eye of the reader-flâneur to delve into a certain fragment, particle or voice. A Book of Passages written by a tramp calls for a reader who is a vagabond, a brigand, and an assailant. For Benjamin, just as for Balzac, Nerval and Baudelaire, Paris was a book of signs endowed with an inexhaustible narration potential, resembling a generator of the senses, working incessantly and at top speed. The task of the poet-flâneur consists, therefore, of indicating the multi-voice, ungrasped and ungraspable richness of simultaneously transpiring narrations.
The presented essay contains a historical-literary outline of Polish adaptations of 'Les mysteres de Paris' by Eugene Sue during the second half of the nineteenth century. The authoress analysed 'Tajemnice Warszawy' (The Mysteries of Warsaw, 1908) by A. W. Koszutski, 'Tajemnice Krakowa' (The Mysteries of Cracow, 1870) by Michal Balucki, 'Tajemnice Nalewek' (The Mysteries of Nalewki, 1889) by Henryk Nagiel and 'Tajemnice Warszawy' (The Mysteries of Warsaw, 1887) by Bojomir Boncza within the context of the development of popular literature. The article indicates the fundamental elements of the genre: the fairy-tale structure with a morally satisfying end, the one-dimensional protagonists, the didactic commentaries and frequent passages addressed to the reader, the motif of love and money as the prime motor forces of the plot, the expanded dialogues and, first and foremost, the specific feature of mystery in the depiction of the city, the protagonist and their past. By resorting to the instruments used by the sociology of literature, the authoress proposes a critique of the assessment of the Polish mystery novel undertaken by Józef Abhors, and sketches the mechanism of the functioning of this genre of popular literature. In doing so, she shows the method of involving the reader into the course of the narration by means of a created illusion of reality, and thus discloses its persuasive strategy.
The authoress delves into the identity of a place in urban space exemplified by the Warsaw Housing Cooperative (WSM) in the district of Zoliborz - a model of the town planning tendencies of modernism, emerging from the retrospective accounts by its residents. The context for an attempt at evoking the subjective experiencing of this particular place is the discourse held until this day and concerning the foundations of such ideological projects as the WSM and their consistent realisation.
The activity of artists recently working in the Praga district comprises a unique cultural phenomenon. The authoress discusses various theatrical groups and is interested predominantly in overlapping artistic and social initiatives. The article shows that the socio-cultural animation conducted in the district is part of a current described as 'the theatre infected with anthropology'.
The sketch deals with the Warsaw district of Praga, the author's birthplace. In a presentation of less known historical facts from the turn of the nineteenth century he tries to evoke the daily ambiance of a noisy and busy part of town, always in a hurry. In doing so, he cites numerous descriptions by assorted publicists, poets and writers - the chroniclers of Warsaw and especially Praga.
The uniqueness and character of the Praga district in Warsaw are determined by a number of features, unchanged for centuries. Owing to its location the district remained in an unsymmetrical configuration vis-a-vis the City on the left bank of the Vistula, and in an outright opposition expressed in the social composition of the residents, the origin of the population (a large percentage of Russians and Jews), an increased crime rate, and specificity consisting of an intentional, frequently cultivated and stressed distinction compared to other parts of the capital. This phenomenon remains discernible up to this day: Praga, together with the fast disappearing but still existing Rózycki Bazaar, the domes of the Russian Orthodox church of St. Mary Magdalene, or the ludic atmosphere around the Zoo, is a separate world. The social climate and brogue of the local residents appear to hold their own, challenged by the process of transforming, right in front of our eyes, old factories into a cultural Mecca of the capital, thus offering the district a chance for promotion, which will either overwhelm it or became the reason why Praga will lose its natural ambiance without gaining a new image in its stead.
The author, a photographer working in the Warsaw district of Praga, discusses the works of Jacek Sielski - a press photographer documenting the life of the district from the 1970s on. 'Just as old love is recalled fondly even if it never had a happy end, so the photographs by Jacek Sielski, in the manner of an old ballad, lead us along the streets and lanes of Praga, producing tears of nostalgia', wrote the author, recalling the long lost world of his youth.
The Warsaw open-air market in the 'abandoned' Tenth Anniversary Sports Stadium is described as a cognitive figure of essential diagnostic value and not as an ethnographic oddity. According to the accepted interpretation, Stadion Bazar (the Stadium Bazaar) is a figure not of a relic, vanishing after the closure of the almost twenty-years old Europe Fair (Jarmark Europa), but of that which is emerging and anticipated in the form of intensifying trans-cultural processes. Stadion Bazar is a Polish localization of the well-known 'ethno-landscapes' by Arjun Appadurai, a sui generis laboratory of the forms and styles of Polish postmodernity. An important part is played by a recognition of the 'borderland syndrome' (the frontier between the East and the West) and the 'revolutionary' role (in relation to the central systems) performed by an informal and, simultaneously, powerful 'parallel economy' conducted in the open-air stalls of the bazaar. The author analyses the cultural consequences of the presence of Stadion Bazar in a capital city, and its influence on the transformations of the semantics of urban space and the dynamics of the styles of Polish pop-culture and consumption models.
The intention of this article is to analyse accounts by artists working in the Praga district and concerning this part of Warsaw. The titular artists ascribe to Praga a number of positive values, including authenticity and a 'conducive ambiance'. The authoress portrays the prime protagonists of the Prague 'colonisation', their relations with the original residents of Praga, the dynamically developing 'Neighbours for neighbours' festival', and a local artistic venue - 'Sklad Butelek'. By referring to the theory expounded by Pierre Bourdieu, A. Chelstowska demonstrates that Praga is becoming part of the game played by artists. She perceives the changes taking place in the district within the context of a global history of the emergence of art quarters in large cities. Moreover, she analyses the myth of the art quarter and Bohemia (her understanding of the myth is the same as Roland Barthes' conception of contemporary mythicality). Finally, the study describes a number of reflections about the value of authenticity and the similarities between the part played in culture by the artist and the ethnologist.
In his recently published autobiographical book: 'Istanbul: Memories and the City', Orhan Pamuk attempts to present a highly personal attitude to his birthplace where he spent a major part of his life. He seeks traces of Istanbul - as he would like to see it and remember it from his childhood - in texts, images and his own slightly enhanced experiences; in its present-day form the town appears to be nondescript, unworthy of attention and dilapidated. Istanbul is a journey to the past and a non-extant city, which, nonetheless, evokes a specific variety of Pamuk's favourite melancholy. It is a voyage amidst dusty stories by nineteenth-century authors-Orientalists and illustrations showing hills overgrown with cypresses. Finally, it is journey to a lost town -seized and overrun by successive tides of immigrants from the provinces, cultural aliens who, Pamuk seems to suggest, invaded his space, producing a specifically Istanbulian paradoxical feeling of a loss.
The purpose of this article is to outline an anthropological portrait of the Warsaw University Students' Dormitory no. 3 in 9/12 Kickiego Street - a place which in the course of its fifty years-long existence has become surrounded with numerous 'urban legends' and for many residents of Warsaw has made a permanent and indelible imprint on the map of the town. One of the elements of the Dormitory's real or imaginary exceptionality is its location on the right bank of the Vistula, in the very heart of Grochow, traditionally regarded as a workers' district, whose social label clearly differed from the one ascribed to the future 'elite of the nation', i. e. the students. The prime object of the authoress' interest are the eventual developments along the meeting point of those two communities, and the manner in which the Dormitory in Kickiego Street has for years remained a fragment of the space of the Praga South district. The point of departure for the ensuing analysis are the categories of 'homelessness and liminality in reference to the status of a student - mutually compatible albeit formulated by two different authors. The first part of the article concentrates on the traces of the presence of these categories in different spheres of collective life. The following part tries to indicate certain focal points which concentrated, or still do, the construction of the identity of a place.
The history of the titular edifice goes back to the first half of the seventeenth century when its construction was initiated by Zygmunt III Vasa. Originally, the building fulfilled the function of a suburban villa, regarded as a supplemement of the official royal residence at the Royal Castle. The palace was erected in the Baroque style, but successive redesigning changed its appearance to Late Baroque and Classicistic. Totally damaged by fire in 1944, the palace was reconstructed after the WW II. The large number of the transformations of the palace solid makes it impossible to recreate the sculpted decorations, but basing himself on archival information, iconographic material, and preserved elements of the embellishment the author brings the reader closer to this interesting iconographic programme.
In his 'Eine Reise in das Innere von Wien', Gerhard Roth accepted a historical perspective and combined two types of reflectiveness. By focusing on symbols, values and ideas, he filled his essays with a concentrated mixture of data, dates, figures and statistics. At the same time, he proposed a rather untypical journey to the innermost recesses of the Austrian capital. In its course, Roth reaches out for that which is concealed (in the subconscious) and thus creates a 'different' portrait of the city as a silent (although by no means mute) witness of tumultuous history. The past and the present assume the form of quarters, streets, squares and assorted buildings that house institutions, brimming with law and violence, war and festivities, amusement and malady. At the same time, Roth does not shy from maligning the history of the state, the authorities, the Church, etc. An in-depth reflection on history and culture is accompanied by demystification tendencies not devoid of political demonstration.
For several years 'Stadion 10-lecia' (the 10th Anniversary Stadium) in Warsaw was the site of an enormous market ('Jarmark Europa'), with traders from Asia, Africa and East Europe representing different nationalities, languages, religions and customs. The author discusses primarily two groups of the 'protagonists': the Vietnamese and the Africans, and upon the basis of observations and conversations proposes a 'thick description' of the examined phenomenon.
The authoress describes the art projects and undertakings carried out in Praga, as well as their tourist consequences, relevant for the revitalisation of this neglected part of town, additionally known for its ill repute. The text is a contribution to the experiencing and construction of urban space.
A brief introduction to the problems and range of the titular research project, realised as part of an ethnographic laboratory conducted in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Warsaw University in 2004-2006. The studies, concentrated on places with a diverse identity, were carried out in Warsaw and its environs. They include research by Agata Chelstowska, Katarzyna Gmachowska, Katarzyna Kuzko and Magdalena Majchrzak.
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