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 article focuses on the basic question of what axiological perspectives are found in Polish and German deportation narratives from the second half of the twentieth century. Chwin also asks what kinds of axiological challenges mass deportation and expulsion has posed (and still poses) for literature. Numerous writers and chroniclers – witnesses as well as participants – have tackled the issue, and their writings continue to be published in Poland and in Germany. Chwin presents a preliminary typology of axiological perspectives that give direction to narratives of deportation in Polish and German literature of the second half of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. He isolates the following basic perspectives: 1. the Nemmersdorf axiology, 2. the axiology of biographical recapitulation, 3. the axiology of deportation and of the ‘ideological fatherland’, 4. the axiology of historical recapitulation of deportation and 5. the axiology of ‘alternative history’. The article passes over the axiology of reconciliation in Polish literature after 1989 – a topic that deserves a separate study.
More...
This article explores the role of the German in the literature of Lubusz Province in western Poland, which is treated as an exemplary Polish-German borderland. Mikołajczak argues that images of the Lubusz German evolve in a way that is contingent on transformations in national consciousness and the expectations of postwar politics, and that this development is also influenced by regional identity politics. What’s more, the German is both a regulator and a symptom of certain phenomena in the regional community. Finally, Mikołajczak points out three basic functions of this literary image – functions that are expressed at various stages in the development of Lubusz society, from Germanophobia to Germanophilia: integration, adaptation and compensation.
More...
The article deals with history of formation of the Russian enclave near Trekhrech’ye (Sanhe, the District of Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia, the People's Republic of China). Since the beginning of the 19th century, this area bordering on Transbaikalia became populated from the Russian side by Cossacks, Old Believers, crime fugitives, to mine gold men. From the middle of the 19th century, cause of hunger in the southern and central regions the Chinese settled there. There are more marriages registered between Chinese men and Russian women so the metis people were born ("half-bloods"). The events of the October revolution and the Russian Civil war strengthened an influx of the Russian emigrants to Trekhrech’ye. To the middle of the 1950th the Russian and "half-bloods" constituted the majority of the population Trekhrech’ya which living in traditions of the Russian country culture and speaking Russian.
More...
Review of a collective work written as a result of field research conducted by a group of young researchers from University of Warsaw under Wojciech Lipiński’s supervision. The texts are devoted to various aspects of life of an ethno-confessional minority, the Lipovans in Ukraine.
More...
The first part of the text reconstructs the key elements of Birmingham school theory of culture in the context of Gramsci’s conception of hegemonic power. the second part of the text focuses on applying the above mentioned interpretative tools to the selected case study – events which took place in Krakowskie Przedmieście after the Smolensk plane crash. The main purpose is to show how “the cross conflict” can be understood as a routine hegemonic practice. I will focus on: the role of the Polish Catholic Church in constructing hegemonic power; defenders of the cross as a counter‐hegemonic resource; “the cross conflict” in the context of other “culture wars” which took place in Poland; the role of religion as a way of constructing resistance in symbolic realm.
More...
The intellectual tradition of the “Birmingham school” is without a doubt one of the fundamental ingredients of Polish cultural studies. Nevertheless, it had been inscribed into the Polish leg of this complex discipline in a very specific, sometimes distorted manner. This text explores the political dimension of cultural studies and their potential as a useful critical approach in the epoch of neoliberal hegemony. In spite of the fact that British cultural studies of the CCCS (Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies) tradition and Polish academic approaches to modern culture had developed in very different political and social conditions and there had been very few, if any, direct interactions between them, they share many ideas. Today, the depoliticisation of Polish humanities, although not overwhelming, is remarkable. In the time of a multilayered crisis, researching culture should not be devoted only to the “politics of pleasure” but also to the relation between the contemporary politics, economics and culture in general. In this essay, the author proposes one of the potential ways of exit from this problematic situation which is based on juxtaposing and re‐examining the scientific and political heritage of the cultural studies, some elements of Polish anthropology, Marxism and their postmodern reinterpretations. It takes form of an open framework, the “emancipatory paradigm”. New look at the CCCS tradition is proposed as a tool that enables the recapturing of crucial elements of political critique such as class analysis which has been almost abandoned by the practitioners of Polish cultural studies due to its historical burden generated by the vulgarised Marxism under the communist regime.
More...
This article describes the cultural phenomenon of disco polo music from the perspective of poststructural cultural studies. Disco polo isn’t only a genre of popular music, but also a cultural practice which has had a strong impact on sociocultural life in Poland of 1990s. The article explores the influence of popular culture on society: referring to the history of disco polo and characteristics of the political transformation in Poland, the author analyses relations between culture and political system, the economy and social structure.
More...
The article deals with marketing strategies of films and cinemas in Berlin during the first years after World War II. The author analyses diverse visual presence in the ruined city. Special attention is paid to questions concerning the political situation (Berlin as an occupied and divided city) as well as the demographic situation. Given the huge surplus of women in the German population after 1945, cinema audiences reflected this fact very precisely – seeing as the cinema was one of the few leisure time activities in those years.
More...
In the article the author presents the preliminary results of her research project on blaxploitation movie‐going culture in Los Angeles in the 1970s oriented towards New Film History paradigm. The term blaxploitation describes the explosion of cheaply‐made black oriented b‐movies that was a consequence of grindhouse popularity and civil rights movement in the late 1960s.
More...
In this article I describe how “different” and “inclusion” act in texts of popular culture on example of the living dead concept. I claim that the living dead is a political category. There is a story about naked life which is designated to be a biopolitical substantiation. The paradigm for the concept of a living dead is a concentration camp.
More...
The issue of the freedom of movement and its relation to migrations is among the essential aspects of the theme of migrations. Migration is just a small segment of the total mobility. People move for different reasons and they can be classified in different categories: tourists, immigrants, foreign workers, refugees, students, pilgrims… It is more important that this leads to the formation of a cosmopolitan, racially/ethnically and culturally mixed society against the background of intensive civilisational exchanges. However, these processes are also reflected in acute social conflicts and confrontation.Archaic societies did not elaborate the legal foundations of the freedom of movement, which presuppose an international community of states, based on the general recognition of the principles of territorial sovereignty and equality of independent states before the law. That was to become possible with the emergence of the modern European state system. The problem of the free movement of people and its relevance to migrations as a form of mobility in antiquity has many aspects. The present paper analyses the issue of identity, which is closely related to the issues of otherness and to the big theme of the control over mobility by generating a restrictive system vis-à-vis the alien and the foreigners through a precise model of inclusion in and exclusion from the political and social community.
More...
Docudrama or semi‐documentary series are television programs that imitate documentary style and form while depicting fiction and using actors. They appeared in Poland in 2010 and were produced for and featured on the most popular Polish mainstream television channels, Polsat and TVN. Three years later their popularity has yet to peak. The success of the semi‐documentary series can be seen as a response to the economic and, perhaps, cultural crises of recent times. They certainly satisfy a particular need within many viewers for easy entertainment that is sensational and engaging yet lightweight and undemanding. While the genre’s lack of sophistication and its audience’s facile appreciation may draw criticism, they have attracted much attention beyond their first instance popularity, instigating various vlogs, parody videos on YouTube, Facebook fanpages and other instances of media and interaction. This paper will look at the causes underlying this recent cultural phenomenon and consider the extent of its reach.
More...
Taboo issue of the public sphere, understood as the “inarticulate” prohibition of the reflection of fundamental foundations of social discourse itself, is one of the principal elements that prevent conclusive analysis of the mechanisms of power in the symbolic space. Therefore, the main aim of the present paper is to reveal – by using the paradigm of methodological cosmopolitanism (Ulrich Beck) – the problematic areas of – what Pierre Bourdieu has called – symbolic violence, and what the proposed approach here is synonymous with the subtle and often di cult to articulate mechanism of power in a broad sense.
More...
We rarely realize that breaking taboos in public space can be done not only with the help of art. For a similar place where you can safely hide, at the same time allowing yourself to go beyond the generally accepted conventions, prohibitions and orders imposed on each member of the community, you can recognize the mask.
More...
The regional approach in researching the social and cultural differences, multiculturalism and the dimensions of cultural development has been analyzed through the example of the population of Mumbai Metropolitan Area. Different aspects and dimensions of relations and connections between ethnic groups and communities in this large city, transfer of cultures in the traditional Indian society and influence of globalization have been indicated. The influence of globalization on the social and cultural changes in society from the aspect of regional geography has been discussed in a separate part of the paper.
More...
Fashion, both in its manufacturing dimension and as a field of visual culture, remains morally involved. The article is an attempt to incorporate phenomena related to fashion in an ethical perspective. The first part of the article focuses on mass production practices: such as shipping, greenwashing, fur farm industry, or the negative environmental impact associated with production. The second part of the article is devoted to the practices related to the culture-producing dimension of fashion, as well as the total aesthetization of everyday life (and the resulting anesthetization), the falsification and the simularization of reality or fashion projects based on the use of motives rooted in culture or religion.
More...
An interpretation of „Better Shelter” by Ikea provides a point of departure for cultural analysis of the term „home”. By asking what design can do and how it affects different understandings of home territories, I prove that common meaning of „home” is a justification for the antagonistic division into us and them. As an alternative, I suggest that home territories should be seen as performative spaces (David Morley). I analyze „The Microbial Home” with reference to Judith Butler’s theory of bodies-as-living-set-of-relations in order to show that homes are analogous sets-of-relations. In this context, design would be a way of thinking that creates inclusive spaces and addresses social issues (i.e. global migrations, environmental degradation).
More...