Podlaski „Słoik” – mobilna grupa społeczna i mobilne medium tożsamości lokalnej
„Jars” from Podlasie Region – A Mobile Social Group and a Mobile Medium of Local Identity

Summary/Abstract: This article is devoted to migrants from Podlasie Region villages who move to large Polish towns in search of education and employment. In recent years, this group has been labelled „Słoiki” (Jars) in the popular and media discourse. Their mobility involves the transfer of material goods – foodstuffs, which become mobile media of local identity, reproducing the ties with people who stayed back home. Additionally, these food-transfers symbolically uphold the bonds and commensality with family as well as with local community. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the role of food in determining identity, and to show how food labelled “our own” („swoje”) – hence local food, produced in the home village, by family members – becomes an idiom of this identity. My research questions are centered around the ambiguous identity of „Słoiki”, both individual and regional (local), and the issue of how identity is constructed on the perceived difference between the village folk and the city folk and on the strong ties with the countryside. The analysis is based on ethnographic research (participant observation and c. 300 in-depth interviews) conducted among the local community of the town Dąbrowa Białostocka and surrounding villages.

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