W poszukiwaniu pogranicza. Nowa lokalność na przykładzie miasta Włodawy i powiatu włodawskiego
In search of the borderland: New locality on the example of the city of Włodawa and Włodawa county

Summary/Abstract: The borderland is the subject of research interests of many scientific disciplines, and the capacity of the term, while making it difficult to define, allows for a variety of approaches and reflections. In this article, I draw attention to several problems that, regardless of the existing concepts and theories of borderland (anthropological, sociological or geographical), in my opinion should be acknowledged by researchers dealing with similar issues. I am not redefining the borderland, but pointing to those elements of culture that contribute to the fact that sometimes that what we think of as the borderland is merely an artificially created area to which such as status has been ascribed, if only by arbitrary political decisions. To illustrate this, I use the analysis of the results of my own research conducted in the city of Włodawa and the Włodawa district located in the Polish-Belarusian borderland, which showed, among other things, that the basic understanding of the term borderland in the spatial-geographical sense has long been considered insufficient, and that borderlandness has acquired new characteristics, such as fluidity, mobility or variability, which are becoming culturally common features nowadays.

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