Foreign homeland. Folklore and national attitudes of ethnic minorities

The article aims to present the relationship between folklore and the formation of national attitudes in members of ethnic minorities. The issue is considered on the example of two ethnic groups: Silesians from the Trans-Olza (Czech Republic) and Touts living in the region of Serbian Banat (Republic of Serbia). Folklore is presented from an anthropological perspective, as communication practices of specific communities, which manifest what the communicative community considers important in terms of content and form of communication, as well as what it regards as axiologically acceptable. Performing their world-forming function, texts of folklore have an impact not only on shaping cognitive habits, but also on forming collective memory or directing social moods. In the case of minority groups, it is inspiring to observe the nation-forming function of folklore, as well as the influence of folklore texts on defining the boundaries of an ethnic group.Artykuł ma na celu ukazanie zależności pomiędzy folklorem a kształtowaniem postaw narodowych członków mniejszości etnicznych. Problematyka ta będzie rozpatrywana na przykładzie dwu grup etnicznych: Ślązaków z Zaolzia (Republika Czeska) oraz Toutów zamieszkujących serbski Banat (Republika Serbii). Folklor jest tutaj ujmowany z perspektywy antropologicznej, jako praktyki komunikacyjne określonych społeczności, w których przejawia się to, co wspólnota komunikatywna uważa za istotne pod względem treści i formy przekazu, jak również to, co uznaje za aksjologicznie akceptowalne. Teksty folkloru, pełniąc funkcję światotwórczą, mają wpływ nie tylko na kształtowanie przyzwyczajeń poznawczych, ale też na formowanie pamięci zbiorowej czy ukierunkowanie nastrojów społecznych. W przypadku grup mniejszościowych inspirująca jest obserwacja narodowotwórczej funkcji folkloru, jak również wpływu tekstów folkloru na określanie granic grupy etnicznej

Ludowa wizja świata i człowieka w dorocznych praktykach obrzędowych na terenie Śląska Cieszyńskiego (na przykładzie Wisły)

Słowa Bronisława Malinowskiego — etnologa, socjologa, antropologa społecznego i teoretyka kultury — mogą być mottem nie tylko mojego referatu, ale też wszystkich wygłoszonych przede mną rozpraw. Zdajemy sobie bowiem sprawę z nieocenionej roli tradycji, rozumianej jako całokształt związków teraźniejszości z przeszłością, jesteśmy przywiązani do przekazywanych z pokolenia na pokolenie duchowych dóbr i cenimy sobie najdrobniejsze pozostałości nie istniejących już dzisiaj zachowań kulturowych.(fragment tekstu

Dekonstrukcja stałości i refleksja posthumanizmu. Sprawozdanie z SIEF 2021 15 th Congress, Helsinki, Finlandia, 19-24 czerwca 2021

"Mottem kongresu organizowanego w 2021 roku przez Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore (SIEF) – International Society for Ethnology and Folklore był cytat z powieści francuskiego pisarza renesansowego François Rabelais’ego: „Zawsze bowiem dążymy do rzeczy zabronionych i pragniemy tego, czego nam odmówiono” (Gargantua i Pantagruel, tłum. Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński). Zdanie to zapowiadało tematykę obrad, które zaplanowane były w Helskinkach, ale ostatecznie odbyły się w przestrzeni wirtualnej, na skutek zaostrzenia środków bezpieczeństwa z powodu pandemii COVID-19. Organizatorzy postawili sobie za cel skupienie uwagi etnologów, antropologów, folklorystów oraz naukowców z pokrewnych dyscyplin na dyskursach i praktykach tworzenia, łamania, reinterpretacji i przekraczania zasad. Sam tytuł kongresu – „Breaking the rules? Power, participation, transgression” sugerował zainteresowanie środowiska akademickiego badaniem przyczyn i skutków łamania, naginania i przekraczania norm oraz skłaniał do ponownego przyjrzenia się pojęciom władzy, partycypacji i transgresji." (fragm.

Autoidentyfikacja cieszyńskich Ślązaków we współczesnym dyskursie publicznym : echa pierwszej wojny światowej

Konsekwencją wybuchu I wojny światowej dla mieszkańców Śląska Cieszyńskiego było ukształtowanie państw narodowych i ustalenie polsko-czeskiej granicy na rzece Olzie. W efekcie tych działań do Czechosłowacji włączony został obszar zamieszkały przez autochtoniczną ludność polską, zwany Zaolziem. Współcześnie dochodzi tam do symbolicznej „wojny o autoidentyfikację” w ramach znaczeń przypisywanych przez poszczególne wspólnoty przestrzeniom, a za ich pośrednictwem historii, postaciom i artefaktom. Zobrazowaniu omawianych zjawisk społecznych służą przykłady dyskursu publicznego, na płaszczyźnie którego obserwujemy negocjowanie tożsamości w środowisku mniejszości polskiej (przygotowania do spisu powszechnego) i otwarte konflikty o symboliczną dominację (wznoszenie pomników, tworzenie map) pomiędzy czeską większością i autochtoniczną ludnością polsk

O folklorze dziecięcym

Review of the publication: Barbara Żebrowska-Mazur, Słowny ludowy folklor dziecięcy. Część 1: Istota folkloru dziecięcego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2020.Recenzja publikacji: Barbara Żebrowska-Mazur, Słowny ludowy folklor dziecięcy. Część 1: Istota folkloru dziecięcego, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Kraków 2020

Interetniczność w folklorze dzieci na pograniczu polsko-czeskim

The study is devoted to oral, anonymous and collective works of Polish children in Cieszyn Silesia, on both sides of the Polish-Czech national borderline. A special emphasis was put on the repertoire functioning in the environment of Polish minority in Zaolzie, in the Czech Republic. Here, I aim at discussing the interethnic specificity of verbal play by Polish children from Zaolzie by means of a comparison with ethnically Polish store of folklore on the Polish side of the borderline in Cieszyn Silesia and with ethnically Czech texts. Verbal works of Polish national minority in the Czech Republic develops under the constant influence of ethnically foreign culture, language, literature and mass media. The analysis of specific genres of child folklore — rhymes — showed that the texts are marked by the interference of two languages and cultures. It is, however, the proportions between the elements borrowed from other culture and the parent one that bring about the ethnic nature. Borrowings, though, are not taken on passively and mechanically, but are modeled according to the principles of one’s own anonymous works. The influences of Czech enrich the Polish-speaking works of children, are adapted to the poetic system in accordance with the principles of one’s own anonymous works. Verbal play, developing in the situation of a direct presence of the sender and receiver, are incredibly precious for maintaining identity of a child living in the multicultural environment. Spontaneous reactions when playing do not only integrate peer environment, but give the sense of security deriving from the belief that the remaining participants of the act of communication have an analogous system of values, represent a similar worldview, and have a similar sense of aesthetics. A spoken word is a symbol of a live and dynamic culture, which realizes the needs of a group in a natural way. In the system of culture shaped in such a way foreign ethnic influences can only enrich it brings about its interethnic specificity

Kształtowanie wyznaczników etniczności i redefinicja tożsamości w grupie etnicznej Wiślan z Ostojićeva (Banat, Serbia)

The aim of this study is to show the contemporary transformations of identity of minority ethnic group whose ancestors came from Wisła (Silesia, Poland) to Ostojićevo (Banat, Serbia) in the 19th century. Those changes of identity are directly related to the organizational changes taking place in this ethnic group today. I show the aspects of the cultural and artistic associations, whose activities affect the redefinition of the identity of this minority community in a multiethnic environment. The village of Ostojićevo lies an area which has a diverse ethnic structure, so the boundaries between groups of people are constantly negotiated. Interactions between them lead in effect to changes both in the organizational group and, in the symbolic dimension, at the level of identification. The article is based on field research conducted in Ostojićevo in November 2016

Foreign homeland. Folklore and national attitudes of ethnic minorities

The article aims to present the relationship between folklore and the formation of national attitudes in members of ethnic minorities. The issue is considered on the example of two ethnic groups: Silesians from the Trans-Olza (Czech Republic) and Touts living in the region of Serbian Banat (Republic of Serbia). Folklore is presented from an anthropological perspective, as communication practices of specific communities, which manifest what the communicative community considers important in terms of content and form of communication, as well as what it regards as axiologically acceptable. Performing their world-forming function, texts of folklore have an impact not only on shaping cognitive habits, but also on forming collective memory or directing social moods. In the case of minority groups, it is inspiring to observe the nation-forming function of folklore, as well as the influence of folklore texts on defining the boundaries of an ethnic group

Toutowie : język i pamięć w ustanawianiu wspólnoty Wiślan w Banacie

The monograph is devoted to the issue of collective memory of an ethnic minority living in the Ostojićevo village in the Serbian Banat, whose roots trace back to the town of Wisła, located in the Cieszyn County. The members of this community are the descendants of 19th-century labor migrants who mined and brewed saltpeter for the purposes of the Austrian army, moving within the borders of one country from the Austrian Silesia to the southern reaches of the Habsburg dominion. With time, Evangelical saltpeter brewers started to settle in Banat, where the local Hungarian community named the newcomers the Touts, a moniker which comes from the word Tōth, used to denote settlers from Slovakia. It is estimated that currently, the size of this community oscillates between 120 and 150 people. The publication aligns itself with research on the relationship between language, culture and society, underscoring the determining role of language in one’s perception of the world, interpretation of social and cultural phenomena as well as its function in consolidating communities. Linguistics of memory, adopted as the research perspective, aims to showcase the interdependence between language as a medium of memory as well as a means of its preservation, and between the culture of a particular language community and its discourses (including the discourses of memory) that shape collective identification. The monograph shows — in the context of the transformations in the Tout collective memory — the way in which the language code influences the shape of that memory, as well as the way in which language, as a memory-shaping tool, can also serve as a tool of shedding inherited trauma, which, in turn, results in a transformation of the group’s identity. Due to the numerous factors that influence language as a tool in the process of shaping the collective memory of the community, which, as a result, influences the way the members of that community identify, the analysis has been conducted within a very precisely defined social context, taking into account historical determinants that constitute the foundation of the current social and political situation of the Tout community, as well as the inter-ethnic relationships in the local community. To provide a background for the analysis of the social memory of the Touts, the monograph describes the linguistic and cultural conditions of the multiethnic community of Ostojićevo. It discusses the linguistic competence of the minority group, taking into account their social arrangement, which includes different spheres of life: the Vistula dialect is characteristic of the sphere of family life; Slovak is the domain of the religious sphere; Hungarian is used in contact with neighbors and colleagues; Serbian is the official language of education and media, while Polish is used when interacting with the citizens of Poland as well as the officials at the Polish Embassy in Belgrade. The description of cultural practices (on the example of wedding customs) as well as inter-ethnic relationships in the rural society, on the other hand, unveils the dynamics of the transformation of objective markers of identity and the functioning of cultural patterns in specific instances of contact with others, which result in partial assimilation of the Tout community with the majority groups. The description of the communicative memory of the Touts, passed down in narratives of the past from generation to generation constitutes a major part of the monograph. It discusses stories of the ancestors, recorded during ethnographic field research, which — next to denomination and language — shape the Tout community. Intergenerational transfer, which solidifies the ethos of the Tout Evangelicals, allows them to participate in the collective knowledge and memory, which constitute the foundation of constructing the awareness of collective belonging. Moreover, the monograph describes the process of folklorization of remembrance stories, which has emerged as a result of conventionalization and objectivization of intergenerational transfer. The current transformations of communicative memory into cultural memory result in changes in the ethnic identity of the Ostojićevo Vistulans from local to national—Polish. The internalization of a new collective memory based on the Polish national symbolic universe is the result of actions on the part of various institutions of power, understood as various institutions of public life. As a result, new ways of affirming the Polish national identity appear, including linguistic tools (poems and songs in Polish) and creating new places of memory (Polish House) or introducing ways to differentiate between us and them (costumes for Polish folk music groups). The monograph is supplemented by an analysis of the rhetoric of memory in media messages, including Serbian television and documentaries, which, as multimedia texts of culture, emerge as carriers of memory, playing a large role in the shaping of collective identity. Memory, which reveals itself in narratives and discourses about the past as one of the ways to categorize the world (owing to the collectively sanctioned selection of what should be remembered and what should be forgotten), constitutes the basis of inculturation and identity creation among the members of a community. It should be noted, moreover, that the further we reach with our memory, the more difficult it becomes to verify the memories against reality, and the easier it become to notice the influence of language and culture on the picture it paints. The observation of the transitional stage between communicative memory and cultural memory, which can be currently witnessed in the Ostojićevo Vistulan community allows us to witness the role of language (understood in the broader communicative and cultural context) in transformation of memory and the following changes in identification

Dyskusja o badaniach nad pamięcią 12 czerwca 2016 roku, Berlin

"Dyskusja panelowa „Wspólne pamiętanie historii / pamiętanie wspólnej historii? Dyskusja o przyszłości badań nad pamięcią” zakończyła 12 czerwca 2016 roku międzynarodowy projekt realizowany przez Centrum Badań Historycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk w Berlinie, dotyczący polsko-niemieckich miejsc pamięci. Na zaproszenie prof. Roberta Traby, dyrektora CBH PAN, w wydarzeniu uczestniczyły dr Anna Drożdż i dr Katarzyna Marcol z Instytutu Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej Uniwersytetu Śląskiego." [...] (fragm.