We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
This paper presents the application of the situational approach to the study of urban communities. This approach is particularly useful for the study of everyday life and is closely linked to network analysis. After presenting the theoretical assumptions of the approach, the author analyses three cases of situations from his field research conducted in Lomé, the capital of Togo. It appears that situational analysis combined with structural analysis provides an adequate picture of urban life.
More...
In the presented article, I outline the issues related to the night-time aspects of research in a city, and more broadly, the night-time dimensions of anthropological research which , due to its scope and interdisciplinary nature, requires methodological reflection. In an impressionistic form, I outline the problem areas, referring them to both theoretical considerations contained in the literature on the subject and to my own research experience. The text consists of seven fragments, excursions and impressions that are related and correspond to each other on various levels of abstraction.
More...
In any urban space there are those elements of it that have not been produced by man. In studies conducted by urban anthropologists, nature is rarely the subject of analysis. In the case of such research, we are faced with the question of what methodologies and what tools can be helpful and what dictionary of terms would be useful for describing and interpreting the nature present in the city. In this article, I consider the possible usefulness of two well-known concepts – those posed by Marc Auge and Ulf Hannerz, for the study of such fragments of urban spaces that completely belong to nature; they co-create the urban fabric, but bear witness to the interference of nature in the urban area.
More...
The article discusses the main assumptions and cultural and social parameters of urban public space. The example under analysis are city parks, with particular emphasis on the idea of pocket parks, which in contemporary urban planning are a response to the shortage of green areas in large, densely built-up cities. A short historical reconstruction of the city – nature – man relationship is accompanied by a description of selected urban projects and an attempt to place them in social contexts and the idea of the “right to the city”.
More...
The article proposes the category of discrete practices, understanding it as social practices that allow individuals to engage in actions of which others should not currently be aware. An example of this phenomenon, which is strongly present in the Polish context, is covertly drinking vodka from small glass bottles, known as “monkeys”, in public spaces. An analysis of that phenomenon allows to demonstrate how specific categories of consumers are excluded from the contemporary city simply because they consume alcohol in an improper manner, place, and time. Despite focusing on the “monkey” bottles, I also show why the category of discrete practices is cognitively functional and how it can help research the contemporary city, privacy, power relation and the processes of individualisation.
More...
The destruction of cities in times of war conflicts is usually accompanied by various forms of photographic recording. Such photos are created for various reasons and there is also a range of their subsequent uses. The 20th century is full of the histories of cities destroyed as a result of planned, massive attacks; among them, Warsaw occupies a special position. During the Second World War, its almost complete destruction took place in three stages: the German siege in 1939, the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943, and during the pacification of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Each of these tragic events has its photographic representation. The analysis of the three sets of photos is intended to answer several questions: for what purpose they were taken, how their meaning has changed over time, and what is their value as “reference points” and in John Tagg’s depiction of a symbolic “currency”.
More...
One of the hottest cultural trends of recent years is set-jetting, tourism to places we have come to know thanks to filmmakers. The cities in my anthropological story get their start from cinema. In the text I discuss one exemplification: Sandomierz, whose tourist revitalisation was achieved thanks to cinema. Jean Baudrillard and his theory of simulation and precession of simulacra helped me unravel the problem.
More...
Recent decades have seen an explosion of various “turns” in the humanities. Among these has been an interest in space and place as cultural categories. These concepts are related, but not the same. There are many ways to talk about place, but they are nevertheless united by a basic assumption – a place exists through a relationship with human beings. People’s actions, experiences, sensations and emotions and memory create the place, setting it apart from space and fixing it in time. The authors tell the story of a certain place in Cracow – a tenement house at 21 Szewska Street. Its material history is enlivened by people and the events they experienced. The writer Melchior Wańkowicz lived in this tenement house, the painters Piotr Stachiewicz and Wiesław Obrzydowski had their studios, the sculptor Jan Krzyczkowski, the graphic artist Ewa Siedlecka and her husband, the art critic Adam Kotula. Tadeusz Kantor created his unique Cricot Theatre here. The experience of the time and place in which they lived co-created their identity. At the same time, their actions left a trace in the historical memory, thus influencing the specificity of the place. From the crumbs of memory, the authors reconstruct the semantics of a place – its artistic genius loci. After all, as Michel de Certeau wrote, “the memorable is that which can be dreamed about a place”. The anthropological narrative tries to organise memories, experiences, dreams, into a certain whole and give it a unified form.
More...
The article is devoted to a historical, now non-existent building: the Orthodox cathedral of Saint Alexander Nevsky, which the Russians built in Warsaw’s Saski Square in the years 1894–1912. I treat this initiative as one of spatial practices aimed at demonstrating power and symbolically marking the subordinated space. I argue that the Russian initiators and builders of the cathedral treated this object instrumentally, as an opportunity to mark their dominance. This meant that in the new political reality, after Poland had regained its independence, the building was considered a negative heritage and was ultimately demolished.
More...
This article delves into the examination of Szklarska Poręba, a tourist town nestled at the foothills of the Giant Mountains in the region of Lower Silesia, which before the Second World War had been part of German territory and was called Schreiberhau, becoming a part of Poland during the post-war reshaping of borders. The study’s principal objective is to scrutinise practices concerning the complex legacy of a locale steeped in the global-local dynamics of the tourism industry. The paper explores the transplanting of Podhale highlander folklore into the Giant Mountains region, which is interpreted as a spectral continuation of the post-war colonisation of the western territories, as well as the quest for local references and the associated dilemmas of dealing with an inherited, unfamiliar heritage. Based on an analytical review of selected case studies and practices, the concept of “functional contradiction” is introduced, serving as an attempt to articulate and encapsulate the spectrum of phenomena concurrently present in Szklarska Poręba and thus contributing to a broader understanding of cultural dynamics in such settings.
More...
The article implements the concept of an anthropological return to the area where ethnographic research was carried out 13 years ago, before the revitalisation of the Tomaszów Mazowiecki town center. The author, inspired by a poem by Julian Tuwim, metaphorically calls the dynamics of the urban landscape “other people’s furniture in one’s own room”. The article is a contribution to research on the poetics of ethnographic return in socio-cultural anthropology.
More...
The article presents an analysis of name-day greetings card given in the environment of Łódź workers during the interwar period. The author treats greeting cards as a form of environmental folklore, with a specific genre specificity and a clear communication intention, connected with the holistic culture of Łódź workers form the 1920s and 1930s. She also tries to present research material of interest to her in the context of the specific implementation situation, which is the celebration of name-days, referring to the specificity of the celebration of this feast day presented in archival ethnographic materials. The subject of detailed analyses is a collection of name-day cards held at the Bronisława Kopczyńska-Jaworska Ethnographic Archive in Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Łódź.
More...
The term “folk costume” referred to the formal and festive dress of a rural population. The adjective “folk” indicated the costume’s connection to a place (the village) and to its wearers (village residents). However, among the regional examples of Polish folk costumes there are at least several instances of folk costumes that were, and still are, inextricably tied to cities. The folk costume has functioned as an indicator of regional identity or belonging to a certain community, of civil status, age, and in its most elaborate, festive and formal style, as a mark of status and social position of the wearer or the entire group. The present article addresses the following questions: what was the function of traditional folk costume in the urban space in the past and what it is today; what formal roles does it currently play; does it function as a “city trademark” and if yes, then how this is done. The research focuses on the Bamber folk costume of Poznań and the Biłgoraj-Tarnogród folk costume of the sieve makers, each characterised by different origin shaped by distinctive economic, environmental and social conditions. What they both share is the present vitality and high recognisability among the present urban residents as well as outsiders (e.g. tourists).
More...
The article outlines the most important events that took place in 1905 in Łódź. Against the backdrop of revolutionary disturbances, local doctors and social activists were preparing to fight the oncoming cholera epidemic. Poor sanitary conditions in the city and the poverty of a large part of its population caused fears that the epidemic would have a dramatic course.
More...
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Łódź was a place where different cultures, religions, languages and nationalities met. The impetus for this multinational melting pot was the textile industry, which attracted settlers from different parts of Europe. Within a few decades, Łódź developed from a small city into a large metropolis with multiculturalism as its distinguishing feature. Łódź was a multicultural city until the end of the Second World War. As a result of ethnic segregation, a large part of the German and Jewish population left the city. They nurtured their memory of Łódź in the new socio-political conditions, outside Poland, often in dispersion, in small clusters often concentrated around hometown societies. The article describes how various nationality groups (Poles, Germans, Jews) remembered the multicultural city after 1945, based mainly on memories and newspaper articles. The author also draws attention to the fact that they functioned in a range of socio-political realities, which determined their memory of the multicultural city.
More...
The study is based on the thesis that monuments are not only highly valuable in terms of art and history, but they also have specific meaning for certain groups of people (nations, minorities). It addresses the problem of what qualities were taken into account by the Czechoslovak state and the Jewish minority in the case of Jewish monuments in the Czech lands after the Second World War. The text concludes that although Czechoslovak elites declared the global artistic and historical significance of Jewish monuments (albeit only in Prague), they failed to provide them with adequate care. Thus, maintenance and repairs (often not entirely successful) were reserved for the Terezín concentration camp and select monuments, mainly in Prague. For the fraction of Jews that survived the Shoah, Jewish monuments became a source of self-esteem and new self-identification with the Czech space. However, not even the small number of Jewish religious communities could prevent the decay of synagogues, cemeteries and other monuments. The situation of poorly secured regional monuments was the most tragic. Jewish communities were often forced to sell them or rent them out. This unfavorable state of affairs worsened after the defeat of the Prague Spring (August 1968), when all hopes for improved monument care associated with the “Golden Sixties” vanished. The period of “normalisation” was then marked by the extensive and rapid demolition of a number of historically valuable buildings, which were forced to “give way to the public interest”.
More...
Sustainable food consumption is a crucial aspect of achieving a sustainable future. However, changing people’s attitudes towards food can be a difficult task. In this article, we will conduct a bibliometric literature review to explore the current state of research on shaping sustainable food consumption attitudes. The study uses a sample of 922 papers in various bibliometric analyses. The authors use citation and collaboration analysis to determine the most significant authors and journals, and examine the relationships between the main authors and institutions. Next, they conduct content analysis, using bibliographic coupling, to determine the main areasof research within sustainable food consumption attitudes. The chapter attempts to identify the most important authors, journals and trends in each field.
More...
Food waste is one of the major problems that humanity needs to solve. The gargantuan amount of food wasted each year, estimated at around 1 billion tonnes, creates a range of environmental, economic and ethical problems. Unfortunately, food is wasted to the greatest extent by households. To a lesser extent, food is wasted by producers or intermediaries. Therefore, the aim of this article is first and foremost to identify the causes of food waste by households. To do this,a conceptual framework has been adopted. It assumes that household food waste originates in three predictable stages—when shopping, storing and serving. In other words, households waste food because they do not prepare the food they purchase, they do not serve the food they prepare, and they do not consume the food they serve. The considerations in the paper are based on the available literature and secondary data.
More...
The main objective of this chapter is to present solutions designed in order to redistribute surplusfood as a food waste prevention tool. Food surpluses are generated both in supply chains andin households. This chapter presents the surplus food redistribution system structure in terms of entities included into it. Three main types of SFRS institutions will be presented: food banks operating both as front-line and warehouse entities, social supermarkets and food sharing systems, which work as initiatives based on some premises (physical places) where food may beleft and taken from, as well as initiatives operating thanks to Internet platforms. Three categories of these platforms are characterised in this chapter: the “sharing for money” model, which is primarily a B2C for-profit model to reduce waste and, at the same time, generate revenue, the “sharing for charity” model in which food is collected and given to non-profit organisations, and the “sharing for the community” model which is a B2C or C2C model where food is shared amongst consumers.
More...