Tożsamość kultury i w kulturze
The Cultural Identity and the Identity of a Culture

Summary/Abstract: The paper above is devoted to a discussion of some methodological issues concerning the research on ancient cultures and religions. The traditional approach to this field of scholarly investigation ignores the notion of a culture as a living process and it tends to consider its object as a rigid pattern of stable meanings and their vehicles. In this way it is certainly easier to convince the scholarly public that the object of our interest may be still actual, no matter how ancient it is. It also permits a scholar to examine the data in an indiscriminate manner, taking into account the facts from different periods and places if only they represent what could be arbitrarily defined as one specific culture. The praxeological approach, however, underlines the fact that the human behavior does not necessarily fit any rigid pattern. Although it may be described as well structured, it is important to take into account also the social actor’s strategies and tactics.

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