Nowe idiomy Śląska Opolskiego? Działania społeczne kobiet jako problematyzacje
New Idioms of Opole Silesia? Social Activities of Women as Problematisations

Summary/Abstract: By the use of critical anthropological perspective, in this paper I unsettle specific theoretical and methodological premises of studies on Opole Silesia, which have in many ways determined resultant images of the region in scholarly literature. In this context, I find particularly problematic essentialised approaches toward “(Silesian) women,” and the more recent discourses of “disintegration,” which dwell on depopulation, migration, and collapsing social and family relations, or Silesian culture. To this end, I discuss social activities of women in the Dobrzeń Wielki commune, exemplified by an educational group focused on family issues, an association acting for a local community, a vocal ensemble, and a sporting team. Variously embedded in the late industrial condition, these activities are conceived as problematisations. Seen through this prism, they become significant contexts for emerging “norms and forms” of gender, Silesianity, and/or locality. At the same time, they encourage critical insights into such “norms and forms,” and their contribution to various idioms of Opole Silesia. Such problematisations allow therefore for revealing “discursive gaps” and “risks” (re)produced in the aforementioned literature on the region. By unsettling subjects and discursive forms with which it deals, the proposed ethnographic analysis turns into a tool for “generating surprises.”

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