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O potrzebie intensyfikacji badań nad strukturami demograficznymi rodzin na ziemiach polskich do początku XX wieku

Author(s): Cezary Kuklo / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article brings out a special attention paid by historians and demographers to the smallest demographic and social unit after the second world war. It resulted from the will to understand the transformation of the whole society in the past, which to a certain degree became possible thanks to the analyses of the ancient family structures, including the changes they had undergone and the trends that had been identified. Against the background of the basic achievements of the West-European historiography of historical demography, the author also emphasises a significant development of the Polish research in this sphere, yet he notices that it has been achieved mainly by the efforts of individual researchers, hardly linked to any institution. Generally speaking, in spite of some revival of the last 30 years the knowledge of the basic biological function of the family, i.e. fertility, is still not satisfactory. That is why the author stresses the need to intensify research on demographic structures of families in Polish lands from the beginning of the 20th century and presents its programme. At the same time he underlines that now some former restrictions, which somehow hindered Polish research in which L. Henry’s method was used, have disappeared. At the moment, there are no bigger obstacles to track down hundreds of register books of births, deaths, marriages and baptisms, as well as marriage records of the 19th century. What is more, in the era of laptops and other digital carriers, there are no restrictions as far as equipment is concerned; information may be collected and processed in no time. The author reminds that for the last 25 years there have appeared only a few valuable studies on the basic biological function of the family, its fertility (inter alia Cezary Kuklo, Krzysztof Makowski, Agnieszka Zielińska). The article indicates that future studies on demographic and historical statistics of the family should fall back on the research potential included in L. Henry’s method to a much wider degree. Thanks to a more common use of the method procreative attitudes of the inhabitants who lived in Polish lands before the end of the 19th century should become more wid ely known, and – at the same time – make it possible to answer the question whether the procreative strategies were conscious or not. Future investigations, according to the author, should also take into consideration the problem of mortality. In the presented research programme what has been strongly stressed is the postulate of a more detailed description of the smallest social cell through its socio-economic – as well as religious and ethnic – differentiation, wherever it is possible. The programme also takes into account the need to describe the relations between spouses and between parents and children, and other members of the ancient households.

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Demografia rodziny magnackiej w Wielkim Księstwie Litewskim na tle elit zachodnioeuropejskich. Wybrane problemy

Author(s): Marzena Liedke / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article presents the results of the research on the age of newlyweds, the length of marriages, the number of children in the family and life expectancy for the magnate family in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 16th–18th centuries, and the comparison of those numbers with the parameters established by West-European historical demographers for aristocratic elites from Britain, France, Germany and Portugal and the families that ruled in Europe.The demographic parameters for the magnate family have been obtained from the database that contains information on particular genealogical facts such as the date of birth, marriage and death, and the number of children (collected in library and archival queries for nine families) and they have been compared with the results arrived at by West-European researchers.The results for the magnate family indicate that the average age of men who contract marriage for the first time is included between over 23 to over 27 years; that is also the age range when European aristocrats contracted marriages, but the average age approached the upper limit more frequently. The age at which women from magnate families contracted marriage for the first time also correlates with the data concerning European female aristocrats, that is to say between 18 and 23–24, and approaches the upper limit of the interval. In the case of other parameters the magnate family were of lower value. The length of marriage in magnate families was shorter than in England, the number of children in a family also was smaller, and life expectancy was usually shorter both for men and women.When we compare the data concerning magnate families with the analogous parameters concerning the West-European elites we can see that the magnate families from Lithuania were generally less healthy. The increase of nearly all the demographic parameters in the 18th century in their case was after all inferior to the ones referring to similar social groups in England and France. There is a possibility that difficulties connected with obtaining complete data and – as a result – a less numerous research sample, as well as taking into consideration only the children that had grown to the adult age (in the West-European samples all the children that had been born were counted) have influenced the values of the parameters and made them less reliable. That is why it is a need to continue the research and to concentrate on other problems (which are important from the point of view of functioning of the family), such as the size of definite celibate in the group in question, the percentage of second and third marriages, the problem of illegitimate children, etc.

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Stan badań nad kobietami w miastach późnośredniowiecznych na ziemiach polskich

Author(s): Piotr Łozowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article contains a review of Polish scientific literature concerning the history of women in the towns in Polish lands in the late Middle Ages. The article fulfils two main objectives: to present the state of development and directions of the analyses, and to outline new research possibilities, especially the ones offered by urban judicial records. The present scientific output of Polish medievalists proves that they are not too much interested in the role of women in the urban communities. In addition to just a few articles that deal with that problem seriously (briefly presenting many spheres of how women functioned in towns), there is a group of studies that treat the subject in a more sophisticated way. At present, the question best analysed is the legal situation of female inhabitants of towns and the problems taking place in the marital relations; the two things are closely related. The question of the professional life of women in the form of their participation in the guilds and retail trade has also been touched on. A lot of space has been devoted to the religious life of townswomen expressed in numerous pilgrimages and donations to ecclesiastical institutions. Undoubtedly, the least investigated sphere is the economic activities of women such as their participation in the credit market, the real estate turnover and commerce.The basic statistical analyses of the material that has been available in the judicial books of Warsaw, Cracow and Wąwolnica has proved their enormous research value. The urban sources (depending on the size of the town in question) offer to researchers hundreds or even thousands of mentions and records that are testimony of women’s participation in various spheres of urban life. Therefore, it is becoming possible to get an insight not only into the women’s activities in credit and real estate markets, but also into the meanders of their family life (inheritance and the like), lawsuits concerning unpaid debts and links with the criminal world. Regrettably, the urban books are still rarely explored and in most cases the quantitative methods are not used.

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Opieka nad nieletnimi w rodzinach szlacheckich w Koronie w XVII wieku. Zarys problematyki i perspektywy badawcze

Author(s): Jacek Pielas / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article outlines the problems and research prospects of one of the most common legal institution that was typical of the old-Polish gentry families – the guardianship of minors, which has not been researched in the historical literature so far. The author reminds that in the ancient Polish law there were four ways of establishing the guardianship of minors, which were called: paternal, natural, official and autocratic. Each one of the four might commence only when the previous one had ceased. The author presents the most important findings made by law historians and underlines that they treat with the practical functioning of the guardianship in the reality of the 17th-century gentry of the Crown only superficially. We might familiarise with that practice thanks to other than normative sources, massive in character, namely the old-Polish last wills. In addition to establishing the guardianship, they contain many hints on how to educate and bring up minors.Undoubtedly, the most interesting question is what the guardians were actually doing. And here the essential question is whether their guardianship was good enough, whether they took care of the child (upkeep, upbringing, education) and of the child’s property. One of the objectives of the author of this article will be to present the most common activities undertaken by guardians, that is to say the ‘model’ behaviour of guardians. At the same time – wherever it is possible – it is worth attempting to present the reaction of the children to their guardians’ actions. In this context, there appears a fundamental problem of the scale and kinds of the abuses committed by the guardians, first of all concerning the minors’ land properties, including delaying the people they were in charge of entering into marriage in order to extend the period of their running their land property. An exceptionally important function of the institution of guardianship in the life of the gentry family combined with the research possibilities included in the 17th-century sources offer optimistic prospects for a comprehensive study, which would present the guardianship in gentry families and facilitate a better understanding of how the gentry family functioned in the Crown in the modern times.

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Badania nad rodziną w miastach zaboru pruskiego w XIX i na początku XX wieku. Stan obecny i perspektywy badawcze

Author(s): Agnieszka Zielińska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article deals with the problem of demographic changes that take place in thefamilies living in towns of the Prussian partition in the 19th century and at the beginningof the 20th. The most important populational parameters have been presented; on the basisof these parameters it is possible to observe trends and the directions of changes, whichare part of a much wider, pan-European process of demographic transformation. Theresearch has been carried out on the basis of the information concerning a few towns ofthe Prussian partition (Toruń, Poznań, Gdańsk, Elbląg, Starogard, Chojnice, Chełmża).A special attention has been paid to a decreasing age of newlyweds, disappearing barriersfor mixed (interfaith) marriages, loosening of social and professional requirements, andweakening of the territorial barrier while choosing the spouse. The fact worth noticing isthat the interval between the day of birth and the day of baptism was longer than before.Other facts that are of interest are: a decrease of the rate of birth/mortality, as well asof the coefficient of births and deaths at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Anothersphere that has been researched is the value of infant mortality, quite high in the 19thcentury and slowly diminishing afterwards. A combination of civilisational processes,mental changes of human beings and changes in their customs had a decisive impact onthe shape and size of the family. It was the beginning of essential transformations, whichare still taking place now and keep influencing the demographic situation of the population.The article also contains a proposal of further demographic research on the Jewishfamily in the towns of the Prussian partition, because that subject is often omitted. In theend, some new directions of research have been suggested and an introductory literaturehas been given, too.

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Epidemia cholery w Krakowie w 1866 roku. Analiza demograficzna i przestrzenna

Author(s): Konrad Wnęk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2015

The article presents the causes and effects of the epidemic of cholera that broke out in Cracow in 1866. The presentation is based on archival material collected when the epidemic was raging and when it was over. The basic source are tabular sheets and responses to a questionnaire sent to physicians by the Sanitary Commission just after the epidemic was over in 1867. The notes prepared by Cracow physicians are a splendid source for the research of that kind as they were made shortly after the epidemic.The article also presents a description of how the epidemic was approaching Cracow and its probable route along which it reached the city. The article includes various views on the aetiology of the epidemic and on various methods of curing it. In the article there is an analysis of the mortality rate according to sexes, faith and the place of treatment. The epidemic has been depicted as it was evolving in time and space; in order to make the depiction the author has used some geostatistical methods, including the method of hierarchical clustering. The incidence of cholera and its mortality rate have been presented on two maps, on which the clusters have been marked too.According to the research, in the case of Roman Catholics the disease attacked mainly the poor and malnourished social groups, who lived in poor housing conditions or were homeless. In the Jews the disease attacked various social groups, not only the poorest.The ability to survive has been analysed in two religious groups of Cracow: the Roman Catholics and the Jews. The results have not confirmed the statistical higher resistance of the Jews to cholera, which might have been suggested by the first data of the graph. In another part of the article Cox regression has been used to verify which factor was responsible for a higher mortality caused by cholera. The method of backward (stepwise) approach has not confirmed that such factors as sex, social class, faith or place of treatment influenced the probability of death. Among those factors the most doubtful one is the place of treatment, i.e. a hospital or a dwelling place, which has been rejected in the last step of the analysis. It may be the result of the fact that the sample was not big enough. The epidemic of 1866 was relatively mild, and the city council was well prepared; it was also important that there were many highly-qualified physicians engaged in the battle against the epidemic and access to medicines was not difficult.

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Zawieranie małżeństw na przedmieściach Szczecina w świetle akt stanu cywilnego z obwodu USC Gumieńce w latach 1875–1906. Część I. Roczne liczby małżeństw i sezonowość małżeństw

Author(s): Łukasz Kozłowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2015

In the last quarter of the 19th century in Western Pomerania some demographic and socio-economic processes took place at the same time: stabilisation of death rate and a decrease in reproduction, an agricultural crisis and a migration fever. After pulling down the city walls Szczecin (German: Stettin) started spreading in all directions. The main objective of the research has been to grasp the process of demographic changes, which were parallel to the socio-economic development of the Szczecin suburbs, as wellas to present the effects of the accelerated urbanisation and industrialisation of Pomorzany (German: Pommerensdorf), one of the Szczecin suburbs, in comparison to neighbouring settlements, where such changes occurred not so fast or even did not happen at all. For that reason on the basis of the Register Office’s certificates a list was made, which included 1357 matrimonies contracted in the years 1875–1906 within the jurisdiction of the Gumieńce Register Office (German: Standesamtbezirk Scheune). The aggregate method has been used to determine the annual numbers of matrimonies, seasonality of matrimonies and an average age of newly-weds. The research indicates that in the years 1875–1906, parallel to an increase of the inhabitants, in Pomorzany the number of contracted matrimonies and the matrimonial rate were increasing regularly, where as the annual seasonality rate was decreasing. In more remote settlements, in Gumieńce, Mierzyn (Möhringen) and Stobno (Stöven) agriculture was dominant, the number of matrimonies did not change significantly, and the annual seasonality rate had big fluctuations from month to month.

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Propozycja zasad prezentowania wyników analiz statystycznych w publikacjach naukowych z zakresu dziejów społeczno-gospodarczych

Author(s): Radosław Poniat / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2015

The article presents some proposals that might contribute towards improving quality while results of statistical analyses are presented in Polish publications within history and related disciplines. According to the author nowadays there are no clear standards determining the rules of such presentations, which often leads to a limited comparability of results and makes it impossible to apply the techniques of data meta-analysis, and insome cases also leads to serious methodological errors. The proposals included in the text consists of the following postulates: 1) to inform the reader of the number of the populations and subpopulations investigated; 2) to make a greater use of statistical measures that describe the distribution of the analysed communities; 3) to standardise the convention of recording such measures; 4) to inform the reader about the size of the standard errors; 5) to apply the commonly accepted rules concerning data grouping; 6) to take into account the spatial dimension of the analysed phenomenon, which should be presented in the form of maps and plans; 7) to urge the authors of academic texts to make public their data sets.

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Stan i perspektywy badań nad liczbą ludności Polski w późnym średniowieczu i w początkach epoki nowożytnej

Author(s): Piotr Guzowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article summarises the state of research on Poland’s population in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Early Modern Times; at the same time it indicates the necessity and possibility of correction of the present assessments. So far historical demographers have been concentrating on counting the country’s population at two temporal points: 1340 and 1580. In the first case they concentrated on the registers of Saint Peter’s pence, and in the other – on the tax registers. The two sources do not inform directly on the size of the population, but rather on the amount of paid taxes: per head, per household, the size of acreage or the value of property. For almost a hundred years a special methodology has been created to use those sources for the needs of demography, and in the literature there have appeared several conversion factors to assess the size of the population. In spite of all that and because of the imperfection of the source basis, a defective edition and different conversion factors applied by various researchers, the assessments of the size and structure of the population of the Kingdom of Poland in the late Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Early Modern Times that have been made so far, are not entirely satisfactory.

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Przeszłość przeliczników demograficznych dla szesnastowiecznych źródeł podatkowych

Author(s): Krzysztof Boroda / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article presents the demographic conversion factors that have been used for a hundred years in the research on Poland’s population of the second half of the 16th century. The forerunner of research in that sphere and the editor of basic sources was Adolf Pawiński; his proposal for the conversion factors was criticised by many researchers, among others Włodzimierz Czerkawski, Witold Kula, Irena Gieysztorowa. After a hundred-year discussion it may be said that «Źródła Dziejowe» and the method of computing urban populations used by Pawiński are not the recommended tools; similarly, demographic conversion factors for rural populations should be modified or specified.

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Przeliczniki demograficzne w szacunkach zaludnienia terenów wiejskich w Królestwie Polskim w drugiej połowie XVI wieku

Author(s): Krzysztof Boroda,Piotr Guzowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article presents methods of computing the size of the population in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Poland in the second half of the 16th century. As there are no sources such as censuses the assessments of the population have been carried out on the basis of indirect sources, which cannot be precise, such as registers of land taxes of the years 1578–1581; they give information on the number of mansi (a mansus, laneus, a field measurement equal to 16.8 hectares) in a village that belonged or were used by peasants, village headmen, impoverished gentry, innkeepers or were just empty mansi. In addition to that, the tax was supposed to be paid by landless lodgers (with and without cattle), craftsmen, millers, ore miners and representatives of other proto industrial professions. According to a suggestion made by Irena Gieysztorowa the authors compare the data of the tax collection of 1552 (from peasant’s households) with the chronologically closest ones of the 1560s (the land taxes), which allows to regionally differentiate the conversion factor of the number of peasant households in relation to the taxed mansi, representative also of the turn of the 1570s and the 1580s. Moreover, the authors have used the findings of historical demography of the last decades, among other things the conversion factors of the size of households of several groups of rural population. On the basis of the research on the 16th century economy the authors have established the conversion factors of how big was the demand of the farms for permanent hired workforce.

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Mobilność i migracje chłopów do miast polskich doby preindustrialnej. Z badań nad mikroregionem krakowskim

Author(s): Mateusz Wyżga / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The migrations of peasants to Polish towns, which are considered inside migrations, in the pre-industrial era were intensive and similar to the ones in the countries of Western Europe. The sources prove the existence of permanent multi-generational migration networks that ensured a better start of a new life in towns for peasants, and an input of reliable workforce for towns. The migration processes slowed down in the 18th century, which was the result of the intensification of secondary serfdom, closing of villages, an economic decline of Polish towns at the expense of the gentry and an overall economic depression. All that is clearly visible in Cracow, where all the municipal registers and a significant part of birth and death certificates have survived. It turns out that towns influenced the increase of peasant territorial and spatial mobility, generated an increase of peasants’ enterprise, helped them to differentiate towards activities not related to agriculture, and weakened the feudal relations.

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Wielkość rodziny i gospodarstwa domowego w miastach południowej Małopolski w XVII i XVIII wieku

Author(s): Piotr Miodunka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article presents the question of an average size of the biological family, the household, and an average population of a house in smaller towns of Southern Lesser Poland, and from 1772 the western part of Galicia. The presented problems have been researched on the basis of narrative sources (municipal court’s registers) and quantitative sources (inventories, military conscription lists, parish registers). The author has also used the method of family reconstruction (Wojnicz); and confirmed that the desired model of the family was a simple family, which is visible in young married couples’ aspirations for independence, as well as older parents’ aspirations for providing sufficient income to survive after making over their real property. A biological family was usually composed of 4 people. Not much bigger were the Old Polish burgher households, which were composed of 4.5–5 people on average in Christian families and about four in the Jewish ones. What is more, those households were clearly smaller than the peasant ones, but the houses in smaller towns more frequently than in the country were occupied by more than one household. Servants were common in households and lodgers in houses.

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Perspektywy badań nad populacją i rodziną województwa kijowskiego w XVIII wieku

Author(s): Konrad Rzemieniecki / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article assesses the prospects of the research on the population and family of the Kiev Voivodeship in the 18th century. The article has been based on the analysis of archival existing materials, which potentially might become a basis for such research (birth and death registers of various religions, censuses, state tax tables). The diversity and quantity of the research material makes it possible to work out detailed analytical methods. The second half of the century is especially rich in sources, and the condition of the existing materials allows a detailed analysis of the state and dynamics of changes in the population of the whole region at several points of time. Prospects of the research on the structure and size of the family and household of various social and ethnic groups seem promising. Among other things the materials concerning two censuses carried out by the Polish and Russian authorities have survived. In spite of the territorial and chronological incompatibility of the materials they offer many possibilities to analyse most of the potential research questions, especially the ones concerning the second half of the century.

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Wpływ I wojny światowej na stan i strukturę ludności miasta Krakowa. Badanie przy użyciu wariantowych projekcji demograficznych

Author(s): Bartosz Ogórek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2015

The article assesses the effects of the First World War on the population of Cracow, visible in the state and structure of the town’s population.The collected statistical materials (mainly the publications of the City’s Statistical Office) have been used to carry out an annual projection of the size and structure of the city’s population, separately for each sex for the years 1890–1921. The procedure, sometimes called cohort-component method population projection, is based on sectional (periodical) tables of mortality. In that way four projections have been constructed, which allows to separately assess the impact of the war mortality and reproduction on the state and structure of the population and to visualise a hypothetical growth of the city’s population, which would have taken place if the war had not broken out.Thanks to that it is possible to state that the potential population losses of Cracow in 1921 amounted to 8.45% of the 1910 population. Within those losses 7% were civil losses, and only 1.45% were the killed and the missing. The impact of the war on the population was much stronger through intensified mortality, and not through limited reproduction. The ratio between losses caused by changes in mortality and reproduction for the population of Cracow was 70:30. The use of demographic projections has also allowed to identify populational groups especially prone to the increased war mortality. Both in women and in men the biggest part of civil victims of the war were children and youngsters aged 3 to 19 years old and people over 50 years old. The war situation influenced also the values of the synthetic demographic indicators. The life expectancy for women decreased by 25% in 1918 (the record year), and the overall reproduction rate by 47%.In addition to strictly research conclusions, the article has a methodological value, as it shows how the use of demographic projections allows to present the effects of war in the sphere of the population.

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Rola Instytutu Mikołowskiego w upowszechnianiu przekładów literatury słoweńskiej w Polsce w ostatnich latach

Author(s): Monika Gawlak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

This article focuses on the dissemination of Slovenian literature in Polish by the Rafał Wojaczek’s Institute in Mikołów between 2012 and 2015. The author approaches the role of publishers in promoting literatures that are viewed from the Polish perspective as marginal using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of social fields. She points to the mechanisms and motivations of both the publisher and the translators, addresses issues related to graphic design, and examines the impact of paratextuality.

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Sploty

Author(s): Przemysław Czapliński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

Czapliński presents new research in the humanities of the last decade, identifying general deficiencies (mostly methodological ones) and general functions (the intertwining of researcher and subject, of the humanities with science, of science with society).

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Nowa humanistyka w Polsce: wstępne koniektury i refutacje

Author(s): Ryszard Nycz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

Nycz outlines the main trends in the New Humanities in the world – digital humanities, engaged humanities, cognitive humanities, posthumanism, art based research, as well as the main debates and misunderstandings that have emerged in the Polish context over the last decade. The evolution of ways of thinking and research is exemplified in literary-cultural studies, CTL. This acronym stands for various notions from cultural theory of literature to cultural-textual literacy.

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Etnografia i eksperymenty artystyczne. O powstawaniu nowych pól poznawczych we współczesnej antropologii

Author(s): Tomasz Rakowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

To what extent is it possible, in the humanities, to frame research in terms of pre-textual and non-textual ways of reading? Following the textual turn, which is mostly associated with semiotics as well as descriptive and interpretive orientations, ethnography is returning to more source-based and immediate endeavours. This is, however, a return to very demanding and uncertain methods, which are only now being examined, unearthed and tested. They emerged against the backdrop of the ontological turn in contemporary anthropology and the practical and action-based turn in the social sciences. In the research team that I direct, we are developing a definition of a creative ethnography that has the potential to create openings; although linked to the anthropology of art, it is also able to propose new languages and ways of grasping cultural facts. Thus I aim to outline a possible path for anthropology, where its unique ‘developmental cycle’ parallels the ontological turn and the action-based turn. A particularly important role in this development falls to the artistic experiment as a way of creating a new field of research and of reaching towards unforeseeable research situations.

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W sprawie polityczności polskiej humanistyki

Author(s): Michał Kuziak / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

How political are the humanities in Poland today? Kuziak examines the possibilities and limitations of this question in the discourse of humanities scholars. He focuses on the formula ‘reading Poland’ that reappears in these discourses, but also on projects of possible otherness and rescue history. The humanities’ political nature is shown to legitimize scholarly discourses in that it connects them to history and society.

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