The shift of the name Kashubia towards the east is a commonly known historical fact, but the significance of this change has not been properly explained. I believe that the problem remains unsolved due to the limitations of the naturalistic or objectivist paradigm. Therefore, I propose looking for the solution to the problem within the framework of the anti-naturalistic paradigm, which means giving Kashubia the status of a social construct. Using anthropological findings, I set out to prove that the location of Kashubia in the geographical space, as well as its conceptualisation, had a social and cultural basis; specifically that it was conditioned by the German point of view. As such, the changes of Kashubia’s location on the map were a reflection of the dynamics of identity processes in the territory of broadly defined Pomerania and Mecklenburg.
The aim of this essay is to familiarize the reader with the very anthropological (ethnological) approach to the past. It will be done not by presenting or formulating any theoretical program, but by looking at how it is practiced, taking the intriguing group of Slovincians as a case study. A pretext for my anthropologically informed reading of history is given by a question: “why Slovincians do not want to talk?”, which emerges to be the most important one during my fieldwork on their contemporary life. The elaborated research strategy and its outcomes makes it possible to outline the difference between the anthropological and historical ways of studying the past.