This study uses participative research in ethnocartography. The aim of the study is to demonstrate possibilities in using maps in ethnology and anthropology and to introduce the potential of the interdisciplinary cooperation of cartographers and geographers with ethnologists and anthropologists. Besides that, the authors try to provide the influence of maps and visual information on the life of a local community and local education by examples. In their study, the authors show the results of field research which they carried out together in the Nungon community in Papua New Guinea. The authors show that sharing results of the research with participants may generate other research questions and bring new research topics in ethnocartography.
Immeasurable symbolic values of a local space constitute the basis and motive for designing mental maps. Mental maps consist of universal elements (e.g. communication paths, area borders) and particular geographical categories (e.g. world directions, known and characteristic towns). The latter are the centre of connotations, and the source of metaphors for characterising local cultural areas at the level of mental maps. The analysis of Bielsko-Biała reveals representations of this town as Manchester, Vienna, and Berlin, as well as the representations of the fragments of spaces of other town such as Paris and New York. In each scale and in each case, mental maps reflect the socio-cultural characteristic of the local space.
The image of the atheist and his place on the confessional map of the world in Cieszyn SilesiaThe aim of this article is to create an image of the atheist based on historical and contemporary sources. The history of the concept of the atheist is described on the basis of the regional press, the contemporary picture of the concept – on the basis of the results of a questionnaire and discussions on religious topics on regional websites. The analysis showed that the concept of the atheist is treated as a term equivalent to the terms of members of different churches. The research shows not only the image of the atheist, but also its place in the system of perception of religious differences. Wizerunek ateisty i jego miejsce na konfesyjnej mapie świata na Śląsku CieszyńskimCelem niniejszego artykułu jest stworzenie obrazu ateisty na podstawie źródeł historycznych i współczesnych. Historia pojęcia ateisty została opisana na podstawie prasy regionalnej, współczesny obraz – na podstawie wyników ankiet i dyskusji na tematy religijne na regionalnych stronach internetowych. Analiza wykazała, że pojęcie ateisty jest traktowane jako pojęcie równorzędne z określeniami członków różnych Kościołów. W wyniku badań przedstawiono nie tylko wizerunek ateisty, lecz także jego miejsce w systemie postrzegania różnic wyznaniowych.
Inner city perceptions create a mental representation from different approaches: a visual approach, carried out through observation and description; a second approach, focused on evaluation and analysis of a city; and a third approach, which integrates the feelings that a space evokes in individuals known as the sense of the place. In the final analysis the aforementioned approach condition the behaviour (action-decision) of individuals. Image capture mainly happens while people walk in, travel to or visit a city using different ways to get around and they organize a mental map of the city. University students were selected from two Spanish cities: Murcia (215 respondents) and Valencia (300 respondents) to reply to a survey and to draw a map of their city. Results of the images of the cities in which they were currently living also proved useful in providing guidelines on sustainable growth of cities and in detecting deficiencies in order to correct them. The research model could be used in other cities throughout the world.
Inner city perceptions create a mental representation from different approaches: a visual approach, carried out through observation and description; a second approach, focused on evaluation and analysis of a city; and a third approach, which integrates the feelings that a space evokes in individuals known as the sense of the place. In the final analysis the aforementioned approach condition the behaviour (action-decision) of individuals. Image capture mainly happens while people walk in, travel to or visit a city using different ways to get around and they organize a mental map of the city. University students were selected from two Spanish cities: Murcia (215 respondents) and Valencia (300 respondents) to reply to a survey and to draw a map of their city. Results of the images of the cities in which they were currently living also proved useful in providing guidelines on sustainable growth of cities and in detecting deficiencies in order to correct them. The research model could be used in other cities throughout the world.
Perception of space is an especially important part of research on urban fabric. The perception of a city is strongly correlated not only with a specific time and place but, first and foremost, with surveyed populations who, apart from having varying demographic features, frequently represent disparate community and cultural profiles. The objective of this study was to assess how the urban space of Szczecin (Poland) is perceived by its inhabitants and to ascertain the relations between various image elements. The example of Szczecin appears to be interesting, in as much as it is a peripheral city of a cross-border region with a historically and culturally diverse local community. The presented research used a method of analysing mental (image) maps based on the methodology proposed by Kevin Lynch (1960) and modified by the authors to incorporate in-depth interviews. Individual respondents' views were used to create a synthetic image of the city.
Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Southeast Europe as macro- region space concepts are not regions designable by physical geography; the geographical content of these concepts is drawn and re-drawn by historical, cultural and geopolitical processes. Debates on the extension and content of the macro-regions featured intensify every now and then, especially in crisis periods - it is enough to think of the years before, during and after the world wars, the regime change, and these days. Our paper, with the brief summary of the preliminaries, highlights, from the perspective of our age, the geopolitically determined transformation and demonstrates the findings of our empirical research. During our research we made a questionnaire survey in which we recorded mental maps of the university students of Hungary and its seven neighbour countries, looking at where the respondents put their own countries and what image of the respective macro-regions lived in their minds. Our findings may be subject to debates but clearly show the convergent or divergent directions of the respective countries, at least as regards the judgement by the youth.
The paper deals with the question of geographical imaginations of so-called Gallus Anonymus, as prevalent in his chronicle. The author sought to reconstruct the chronicler’s mental map of Europe, especially of Sclavonia (Slavonic countries), or, precisely, the concept of space (Raumkonzept) of his work, and the possible sources of his imaginations and knowledge. The author takes under consideration the possibilities of using the geographical data from the Chronicle in solving the controversy on Gallus’s place of origin. The conclusion is that, contrary to often-held opinions, the data itself does not allow us to indicate any specific place or region of Gallus’s birth and/or education.
There is a growing research interest in cultural spaces and their urban regeneration potential. Discussions about these spaces can be found in the literature under concepts such as: art spaces (Grodach, 2011), cultural spaces (Alexander, 2003), creative spaces (Becker et al, 2009), cultural laboratories, free spaces (Polleta, 1999), yet little research examines them from a dynamic perspective which integrates approaches from different disciplines. Through the methodological lens of bricolage and by mixing methods from mental geography, psychology and sociology, this study explores the alternative cultural spaces in terms of its pluralism, managing to identify a new conceptual framework, the fluxus space. Fluxus spaces are cultural spaces situated at the intersection of public-private, old-new, informal-formal, legal-illegal expressions, playing an important role in artistic development and in the urban and community regeneration processes.
The perception of danger represents a crucial component of everyday life (not only) in the city. The recording of the development of perception of danger in diachronic perspective of the twentieth century, as it reflected in the memory of the female inhabitants of Pilsen, enables to ascertain some changes that reflect the historical development. In its concrete parts, the research focused on the modes of „making“ of the urban space through the perception of danger (mental topography of danger), the perception of danger in general, as wall as the impact of the danger on the everyday life of the inhabitants. The qualitative methodology of the research included the making of mental maps and the half-structured interviews. The informers were nine women of age 80–91 years. For the purpose of presentation of the results of the research that aimed at ascertaining the ways of perceiving danger by the oldest generation of female inhabitants of Pilsen, the twentieth century was divided into several periods that to great degree reflected the political-historical development: the period before the Second World War; the period of the war; after-war period (1945–1960), the 1960s to 1980s and finally the period after the year 1990 up to the present. In the memory of the informers, these periods were characterized partly by differing types of danger (if danger at all) and their varying intensity. The perception of danger (or the absence of danger) was also influenced by the different development of life cycles in cases of concrete women. Besides individual differences, there was crucial influence of the general social development, the development of the city and the technological development, especially the increase of automobile transport and the media of communication.
The historical centre of the city of Gdańsk is the subject matter of the paper. The centre is full of historic objects which localized within a relatively small area create an urban space presenting its own, characteristic tourism attractiveness. The attractiveness is not homogeneous. There are differences in its intensity, and as a result it presents a specific spatial distribution. To describe the distribution, a method has been proposed in the paper based on the concept of mental map, which was used as the basis to evaluate how the tourism attractiveness is distributed over the area of historical Gdańsk.
PL
Przedmiotem artykułu jest historyczne centrum Gdańska, na terenie którego znajduje się znakomita większość jego historycznych zabytków. Ich zbiór określa zasięg miejskiej przestrzeni turystycznej. Zadaniem artykułu było ustalenie wartości jakie poszczególnym zabytkom przypisywali turyści z uwagi na ich turystyczną atrakcyjność. W oparciu o rozkład tych wartości sporządzono mapę atrakcyjności miejskiej przestrzeni turystycznej w obrębie historycznego centrum Gdańska.
Recenzja publikacji doktor Elżbiety Szot-Radziszewskej pt. Obraz wsi w wyobrażeniach mieszkańców. Miejsca i ludzie, wydanej przez Politechnikę Świętokrzyską w 2013 roku, stanowiącej podsumowanie wieloletnich badań prowadzonych w latach 2008-2013 z mieszkańcami Kielecczyzny. Podczas wywiadów rozmowa kierowana była na miejsca ważne dla rozmówców – zarówno dawniej, jak i dziś – oraz zdarzeń, opowieści i obrzędów mających z nimi związek. Respondenci opowiadali o wsi z czasów dzieciństwa i przekazów osób starszych, życiu religijnym, społeczno-gospodarczym i kulturalnym oraz transformacjach dokonujących się w XX wieku. Przedmiotem badań były bowiem wyobrażenia przestrzenne – obrazy mentalne – rozumiane jako fakt społeczny i znaczący składnik procesu poznawczego, a także efekt kontaktu zmysłowego z przedmiotem lub miejscem, powstające w wyniku percepcji i waloryzacji środowiska. Zarówno w etnograficznych badaniach terenowych, jak i podczas analizy materiału zastosowana została metoda mapowania poznawczego. Analizie poddane zostały opracowane na podstawie części zebranych materiałów antropologiczne mapy mentalne, opis miejsc i obiektów znaczących, postaw i zachowań ludzi w tych przestrzeniach, ponadto obrzędy i praktyki magiczno-religijne w nich wykonywane oraz opowieści o nich traktujące.
EN
The reviewed book of Dr. Elżbieta Szot-Radziszewska, Ph.D. entitled The Picture of a Village in the Imagination of its Residents. Places and People published by the Kielce University of Technology in 2013 is a summary of long-term researches conducted in 2008–2013 on residents of Kielce province. During the interviews the discussion was focused on places that were and still are important for the interviewed as well as events, stories and rituals connected with these places. The respondents talked about their village they knew from the times of their childhood and stories transferred from elderly residents, their religious, socio-economical and cultural life as well as transformations that happened in the 20th century. The subject of the study were imaginations – mental images – understood as a social fact, an important component of the cognitive process and the sensual contact with an object or place that occurs as a result of perception and valoralization of the environment. During the ethnographic field researches as well as during the analysis of the gathered material the author of the research used the method of a cognitive map. Furthermore, the study aimed at analysis of anthropological mental maps that were created on the basis of the part of the collected materials, description of places and objects, significant attitudes and behaviors of people in these areas, local rituals and magical and religious practices connected with them as well as stories treating about them.
Zmiany terytorialne po II wojnie światowej pociągnęły za sobą istotne zmiany demograficzne: w Elblągu wysiedlono Niemców, a osiedlono Polaków z dawnych ziem wschodnich. Nie tylko narodowa, ale i prywatna historia musiała być tworzona od podstaw. Poprzez badanie różnych rodzajów tekstów i map (wspomnienia, przewodniki turystyczne, literatura, wystawy), w artykule przeanalizowano rozbieżne narracje o mieście i sąsiedztwie z niemieckiej i polskiej perspektywy. Oprócz analizy głównych motywów i strategii narracyjnych, które opierają się na miejskiej wizualizacji pamięci, artykuł kwestionuje popularne pojęcie palimpsestu na rzecz dekolonialnej perspektywy przestrzeni miejskiej. Odpowiedź na pytanie o to, jak wyobrazić sobie miasto poza koncepcjami narodowymi, może stymulować ponowne rozważania na temat hierarchicznych struktur miast.
EN
Territorial shifts after World War II entailed critical demographic changes: Germans were expelled from Elbing; Poles from the eastern territories were supposed to take their place in Elbląg. Personal and national narratives had to be created from scratch. The article explores different forms of texts and maps – memoirs, tourist guides, literature, and an exhibition – to scrutinise different city and neighbourhood narratives from German and Polish standpoints. Besides analysing the central motifs and narrative strategies that rely on an urban visualisation of memory, it rejects the popular notion of a palimpsest in favour of a decolonial perspective on urban space. Proposing a way to imagine a city beyond nation-based concepts can stimulate reconsidering hierarchic city structures.
Artykuł zawiera wprowadzenie do założeń metodologicznych badań, których celem była identyfikacja map mentalnych zamieszkiwanej okolicy i zachowań terytorialnych osób doświadczających wykluczenia w różnych sferach życia. W tekście znalazły się także odniesienia do cząstkowych wyników badań, opracowanych na podstawie danych zebranych z wykorzystaniem poznawczej schematyzacji ścieżek, wspomaganej fotospacerem. Na tej podstawie wyróżniono typowe sposoby bycia w przestrzeni i doświadczania jej przez badanych. Autorki tekstu omawiają teoretyczne i metodologiczne implikacje sięgania po metody wizualne i mobilne w procesie wzbudzania i gromadzenia wiedzy o przestrzeni; na końcu – odwołując się do praktyki terenowej – wskazują na korzyści oraz ograniczenia w ich zastosowaniu.
EN
The article contains an introduction to the premises of methodological research which is aimed at identifying the ways in which people experiencing exclusion in various areas of life form mental maps of their neighborhood and exhibit territorial behaviors. It also refers to partial results of research developed on the basis of data collected with the use of cognitive schematization of paths aided by a photo-walk. This permitted the authors to identify typical ways of being in a space, as well as the manner in which the subjects of the research experienced the space. The authors then discuss theoretical and methodological implications of using visual and mobile methods in the process of producing and collecting knowledge about space, and finally, referring to the field research, point to the benefits and limitations of the application of these.
Enklawy biedy to przestrzenie społecznie napiętnowane, które mogą sprzyjać wykluczeniu lub wzmacniać jego wrażenie. Równocześnie to środowisko życia konkretnych ludzi, którzy je współdzielą i współtworzą; to przestrzenie domowe, bezpieczne, będące źródłem satysfakcji i identyfikacji. Okoliczności konstytuujące i wyróżniające te swoiste ekosystemy stanowiły inspirację do zrealizowania badań w latach 2014–2016 w enklawach ubóstwa zlokalizowanych w Polsce w dwóch dużych miastach oraz na terenach wiejskich, służących rozpoznaniu sposobu ich waloryzowania i mentalnego odwzorowywania przez zamieszkujących je ludzi. Bazując na wynikach badań własnych, w artykule omówiono trzy uzupełniające się wątki, obejmujące procesy identyfikacji przestrzeni, identyfikowania się z miejscem i tożsamości miejsca. Zwrócono uwagę na poznawczą i praktyczną wartość tego rodzaju ustaleń, które wychodzą poza uproszczone i generalizujące myślenie na temat enklaw biedy, ujawniają potencjały zróżnicowanych sąsiedztw i złożoność więzi ludzi z miejscem.
EN
Enclaves of poverty are spaces of social stigmatization that can foster exclusion as well as enhance the impression of it. At the same time, they are milieus in the lives of specific human beings who co-inhabit and co-create these spaces; they are a home base – a place of safety, one that is the source of satisfaction and identification. The circumstances constituting and distinguishing these specific ecosystems were the inspirations for research conducted in 2014–2016 in enclaves of poverty – located in two large cities and in rural areas in Poland – to identify the ways of valuing and mental mapping performed by people living there. Based on the results of the author’s research, the article discusses three complementary issues covering the ways of identifying a space, identifying with a place and place identity. It focuses on the cognitive and practical value of such findings, which go beyond simplified and generalized thinking about enclaves of poverty, revealing the potentials of various neighbourhoods and the complexity of people’s connections with a place.
Ziemia Święta, czyli obszar uważany za Terra Sancta przez żydów, chrześcijan i muzułmanów, jest bardzo dobrze znany, ale jej granice nie są dokładnie ustalone, ponieważ każdy we właściwy dla siebie sposób definiuje ten szczególny obszar. Mapa Ziemi Świętej jest mentalnym tworem istniejącym w wyobraźni, utworzonym w zależności od przekonań osób zajmujących się tym zagadnieniem. Szczególną cechą Ziemi Świętej jest, z jednej strony, uznanie jej za świętą przez trzy religie, z drugiej zaś fakt, że mamy do czynienia nie tylko z listą świętych miejsc, co jest czymś powszechnym na całym świecie, ale ze świętym obszarem, w którym te święte miejsca się znajdują. Tradycja żydowska wskazuje trzy różne granice, chrześcijańska granica natomiast nie jest dokładnie określona, muzułmańska zaś opinia jest prawie nieznana. Aktualne granice Izraela i Palestyny nie są granicami Ziemi Świętej, jakkolwiek pielgrzymi udający się na ten święty teren odwiedzają te współczesne państwa z przekonaniem, że jest to Ziemia Święta
EN
The Holy Land, the area considered to be Terra Sancta for Jews, Christians and Muslims, is very well known, but its exact limits are not fixed as everybody has his or her definition of that special area. The Holy Land is an imagined area and its map are mental map, established according the beliefs of those who deals with it. The Uniqueness of the Holy Land is one hand— its holiness for three religions, and, on the other hand, we deals not only with a list of holy places, which is common everywhere, but with the whole area in which those holy places are located. Even though, The Jewish tradition can present three different limits, the Christian one is not precise and the Muslim's view is nearly not known. As such, the modern boundaries of Israel and Palestine are not the boundaries of the Holy Land, although those, which made a pilgrimage to this holy area, visit these modern countries, with the view that they visit the Holy Land.
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