Series:Nauki społeczne

Urban Amazement

Urban Amazement

Author(s): / Language(s): English

Keywords: urban studies; urban culture; city; cultural studies; journey

“Cities are magical places, however their magic is not evenly distributed” - writes Chris Jenks in his general introduction to Urban Culture: Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies. As much as we agree with Jenks’s words, we believe that cities, first and foremost, are amazing spaces, and this belief finds reflection in the articles gathered in the present volume. The magic of the cities, together with the meandrous urban structure and the journey through the urban landscape are the interweaving aspects discussed in this book. The picture of the city that emerges from the articles contained in Urban Amazement is one of anintricate structure, involving an individual - a traveller, an inhabitant, a writer or a simple observer - into a network of images that is neverconstant or stable, yet always amazing one with its complexity. The numberand, most of all, the diversity of themes discussed in the consecutive studies seem to correspond to the multiplicity of impressions that the urban landscape appears to exert on the subjects examined in the presented texts. Moreover, just like the streets of the city constantly intersect, as some of the articles in the volume illustrate, the presented texts tend to converge at many recurrent aspects, such as the city’s labyrinthine structure, anxiety which the authors see as connected with the impenetrabilityof urban landscape, and the overwhelming sense of amazement which - in many of the presented studies - the urban space evokes in its residents and visitors.

Work – consumption – entrepreneurship. The economic awareness of the young generation

Praca – konsumpcja – przedsiębiorczość. Świadomość ekonomiczna młodego pokolenia

Author(s): / Language(s): English,Polish

Keywords: awareness; economic knowledge of the young generation; economic reality; work; consumption; entrepreneurship; Visegrad Group

The level and the course of economic and social development is determined by a number of various factors, such as the state of technological development or social awareness. The latter is the result of the economic knowledge of the younger generation, which is considered as a way of young people’s thinking and their referring to economic reality. What constitutes economic awareness is the understanding of economic processes, the system of values and economic aspirations, work and entrepreneurship, the attitude towards ownership, the attitude towards money and saving, consumption, determinants of success in life.While living in a particular reality, young people acquire knowledge about the surrounding economic processes. This is affected by both external factors (events and economic phenomena occurring in the country and in the world), as well as internal factors: the process of socialization in the family, observation of the immediate environment, making everyday economic decisions. All this influences the generation’s attitudes, values and knowledge that will build the economy in the future.These problems were the subject of multi-dimensional analysis and discussions at the conference “Work – Consumption – Entrepreneurship. The economic awareness of the young generation of the Visegrad Group”, which took place in 2015 in Katowice. This monograph is the result of that meeting. The papers dealt not only with the issues concerning the Visegrad Group, but also with the entirety of the issues related to the economy awareness of the young generation. The monograph has been divided into three parts: The economic awareness of the younger generation of the Visegrad Group;Work and entrepreneurship of the young generation; The position of consumption in the life of the young generation.

Us and Others – The Evolution of Images. Polish Press Discourse in the Light of Imagology and Collective Memory

My i Inni – ewolucja wyobrażeń. Polski dyskurs prasowy w świetle imagologii i pamięci zbiorowej

Author(s): Aleksandra Niewiara / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: imagology; collective memory; press discourse; national stereotypes;Polish national identity;

The book discusses issues from the area of imagology – interdisciplinary studies on the perceptions of nations and countries, documented both in texts and in the structures of languages, and of humanistic memorology – a field that describes processes of collective memorizing, forgetting, and recollecting facts of the past events that might have influenced the shaping of collective memory by means of methods available to humanists (philologists, linguists, and predominantly ethnolinguists and discourse researchers). The article’s primary aim is to depict the evolution of – characteristic of the 20thand 21st-century Polish linguistic culture – images of nations and countries, to present the ways they have been shaped by means of measures available in press discourse, as well as to capture a special role of historical data predestined by those who govern the discourse to remember or to forget. This is connected with perceptions of proper construction of canon of values and memory topoi of the Polish culture. (part of the summary)

Ralph Linton. Publishing series "The Laboratory of Culture” Vol. VII

Ralph Linton. Seria wydawnicza „Laboratorium Kultury” T. VII

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: Ralph Linton; history of anthropology; theory of culture; cultural patterns; the laboratory of culture

Another volume of the series Laboratory of Culture is devoted to the research output of Ralph Linton. It would be hard to overstate the achievements of the scholar in question, whose major contribution into the process of transferring anthropology from museal exhibition halls to national universities, was instrumental in making it an academic discipline. The Linton’s output, who is renowned in Poland mainly for The Cultural Background of Personality – which is worthwhile of separate discussion and in fact demands it. Therefore, we decided to create a monograph devoted to the American anthropologist in question. The volume includes both chapters which are premiere discussions of Lipton’s research biography in Poland and some analytical studies aimed at updating and utilizing his proposals as scietific tools by applying them to the new cultural material. An important theme of our publication is also the American and Polish reception of Lipton’s works.

Cultures and Landscapes of Memory

Kultury i krajobrazy pamięci

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Class and Cultural Narratives. The Upper Silesia Case

Class and Cultural Narratives. The Upper Silesia Case

Author(s): Paweł Ćwikła,Monika Gnieciak,Kazimiera Wódz / Language(s): English

The Silesian Voivodship exemplifies a region where the industrial past has left a permanent mark on spatial forms, social relations, institutions, patterns of culture as well as collective identifications and individual biographies (Wódz, 2013: 7). At the same time, the geographical location of Upper Silesia has determined its cultural character – in its over thousand years long history it belonged to various political, civilizational, economic, social and cultural orders: Polish, Czech, Prussian or German (Geisler, 2009: 67). Hence, Upper Silesia is a typical example of a borderland, where different ethnic groups and distinct cultural traditions intermingle (Wódz, K., Wódz, J., 2006: 12). Add to this the peculiarity of settling Upper Silesia in the time of the Polish People’s Republic, unification related to the dynamics of the national culture of every day and popular culture or ― in broader terms ― globalisation and the dissemination of definite patters and lifestyles that accompany it. All of these contribute to the validity of the question of the region’s contemporary cultural identity. (...)

The identity of the West and South Slavs in the light of the 20th-century discussions and polemics, Volume 2: Language

Tożsamość Słowian zachodnich i południowych w świetle XX-wiecznych dyskusji i polemik. T. 2 Język

Author(s): / Language(s): Bosnian,English,Bulgarian,Croatian,Polish,Slovenian,Ukrainian

Keywords: individual identity; collective (ethnic; national; regional; cultural) identity; language identity; mono- and multiculturalism; West and South Slavic language

Issues relating to identity are for humanities – which obviously encompasses Slavic studies – one of the central problem and research fields. The questions of national variations in identity are amongst the most complex and therefore atract attention of scholars representing various disciplines of knowledge. While putting to use variegated approaches and methodologies, we arrive at comprehensive image of identity problematics and can better understand its developmental specifics which is determined by historical, social, subjective, that is, cultural factors. Having been aware of this state of affairs was what drove the cunsecutive research in this field, including in linguistics, which among others results in the present publication. The presented issues have been undertaken, which coincided with the fourtieth anniversary of the Institute of Slavic Philology at the University of Silesia – linguists representing different academic centres in Poland and abroad, in particular: Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Czechia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. They responded to an invitation from the University which has a few decades of research experience by remaining aware of the weightiness of the problematics to be discussed which unveils ever new aspects and values actualized and created in languages undergoing current transformation. (A fragment from the Preface)

The city in the world of discourses

Miasto w świecie dyskursów

Author(s): Beata Duda / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: discourse analysis; urban discourse; city; the anthropology of the city

The subject matter of the monograph The city in the world of discourses focuses on the category of the city as well as the related issues which are located and considered within the framework of the text methodology and discourse linguistics, cultural linguistics, sociology and transdisciplinary paradigms: Critical Discourse Analysis and Urban Cultural Studies. The publication is a proposal for characterizing and outlining the framework of the discourse the scope of which would cover all the discourses whose reference subject is the city as an extremely complex and heterogeneous category. What has been subjected to scrutiny is the practice of metropolitan experience, perception issues and cultural intermediacy within the relation of man with this type of space. The analyses, which were connected to the reading of textual representations of contemporary Polish metropolises, brought about the formulation of the principles, norms and conventions of the urban discourse.

Partnership in communication

Partnerstwo w komunikacji

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Składamy na Państwa ręce niniejszą książkę poświęconą rozmaitym zdarzeniom komunikacyjnym zachodzącym w różnych przestrzeniach, z udziałem tradycyjnych i nowych środków wyrazu. Za sprawą zebranych tekstów pragniemy ukazać mechanizmy rządzące uczestnikami poszczególnych aktów komunikacyjnych, uwypuklając istotny dla tego zbioru pierwiastek współuczestniczenia. Zebrane przez nas głosy badaczy w dyskusji na temat kondycji JA i TY mogą stać się inspiracją do podejmowania dalszych działań zmierzających do tego, by partnerstwo nie pozostawało jedynie w przestrzeni idealizacji, ale miało realną szansę na zaistnienie we współczesnym świecie. (fragment Wstępu)We bring to you the book which is devoted to various communicative events that transpire across different spaces, involving both traditional and new means of expression. By the texts collected in our publication we wish to reveal mechanisms driving each and every participant of singular speech acts, while underscoring what seems relevant to each member of this set of participants, namely – co-participation. The voices of researchers presented herein refer mostly to the condition of MYSELF and YOURSELF and may prove to be stimulating for further activities that would aim at partnership becoming not merely a notion in ideal space, but rather have a real chance to be actualized in the world of today. (An excerpt from the Introduction)

Complex settlement pattern – traditional economic region – socio-cultural space

Złożony układ osadniczy – tradycyjny region ekonomiczny – przestrzeń społeczno‐kulturowa

Author(s): Jerzy Runge / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: complex settlement system; traditional economic region; socio-cultural space; Katowice conurbation; Silesian Voivodship

The first goal of the study is to outline the current state of knowledge of functional-spatial and socio-cultural transformations of complex settlement systems, especially the ones in traditional socio-economic regions. The second one is to propose several complementary model approaches (circular models of economic transformations and urbanization). The author's starting point is an attempt to model the origin and evolution of the economic base as a crucial element of the remaining changes in the socio-economic space. A model of economic change, like urbanization, is complementary to one another, reflecting both the centripetal and centrifugal forces conditioning transformation of the entire settlement system.

Educational and professional activation of inhabitants and the quality of life in peripheral cities

Aktywizacja edukacyjna i zawodowa mieszkańców a jakość życia w miastach peryferyjnych

Author(s): / Language(s): Polish

Keywords: human capital; social capital; small and medium-sized cities; activation factors; education; labor market; educational mobility; migrations; quality of life; adaptation strategies; cultural conditions of the local environment

The book „Educational and professional activation of inhabitants and the quality of life in peripheral cities” edited by Adam Bartoszek and Urszula Swadźba constitutes a comprehensive, and statistically based discussion of the problems of the activation of the so-called human capital in peripheral cities of Silesian and Opole voivodship in question. The article opening the volume entitled „Human capital in a local environment” by Adam Bartoszek is a theoretical introduction to the assumptions of studies on the problems of making the human capital active at the level of local communities. The article by Bożena Pactwa entitled „Human resources and demographic processes on selected peripheral cities of Silesian and Opole voivodships” stands for a demographic analysis based on statistical data from the yeares 1995—2008. A detailed analysis by Rafał Muster entitled “Problems of the activation of the human capital on local job markets in the light of statistical analyses and opinions of those in charge of public services of employment…” deals with the issue of the activation of the human capital on local job markets of Lubliniec, Racibórz, Nysa and Prudnik. Urszula Swadźba, in her article „Educational activity as an expression of local strategies and an innovative nature of human resources in small and middle-sized cities” deals with the problem of an educational activity of people inhabiting the places in question. Another article by Adam Bartoszek entitled „Educational and professional mobility of inhabitants and the quality of life in peripheral cities” presents the results of a survey conducted in four intentionally selected peripheral cities in the Upper Silesia (Racibórz, Nysa, Lubliniec and Głogówek). The analysis was structured as a comparative diagnosis contrasting the opinions of the heads of households with the opinions of the leaders of local communities, constituting a cross-sectional representation of various communities of small and mieddle-sized cities. The article by Marek Dziewierski entitled „An identity of place and adaptation strategies of the inhabitants of small and middle-sized cities” is a summary of the stage of qualitative studies. It deals with the issue of the relationships and interdependences between a social identity of the inhabitants of peripheral cities and their life choices connected with education, work or a preferable place of living. In the final chapter of the book, Adam Bartoszek and Urszula Swadźba summarize the consequences of the mobility of human capital for the quality of life in the studied cities.