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The article concerns the issues of personal experience, friendship, commitment and intimacy in ethnographic field research. Their presence raises methodological and ethical problems. The authors answer two basic questions: Is friendship possible in the relationship between the researcher and the informant, and in what sense? What impact does it have on the results of anthropological research?
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The title of Adam Sikora’s film refers to one of the most important Catholic holidays. Lipiny (Silesia, near Katowice), where it was filmed, is famous for the colorful and spectacular procession that takes place on Corpus Christi day. However, the film focuses more on the idiom of everyday life, life in a place where extreme poverty has emerged as a result of industrial transformation. The author claims Sikora’s film is close to an ethnographic documentary, and while it shows poverty, it does not exoticize it. It portrays the harsh reality, but at the same time agency, ways of “coping with” and solidarity in a difficult situation. The author claims that the strength of the film lays not only in “meanings” (“thick description”), but also “thin description”, often ignored by anthropologists, what referring to Eelco Runia and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht could also be called “presence” . Thanks to the depiction of mise-en-scène, many “stowaways” – Runia’s term, who advocates greater metonymicity of descriptions – appear in the film. The author thus argues with Jill Godmilow, who stipulates a break with traditional documentary (Kill the Documentary as We Know It).
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What is overexpression in the cinema of Andrzej Żuławski? In my research, the most important issue is the specific form of expression that appears in the director’s work. What role does this overexpression play? Why does it take such forms? In the essay I try to answer these questions.
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Walter Burley, an English philosopher active in the first half of the fourteenth century, was a prolific writer interested in logic, philosophy of nature and practical philosophy. His commentaries on Aristotle’s Parva naturalia are dealing with problems lying on the borderland between physiology and psychology but also involving medicine and ethics, two practical disciplines benefiting from theoretical reflection in the field. Although the normative approach is not something that Burley consistently pursues in the commentary, it is possible to identify and analyse fragments, which contain advice concerning good, i.e., healthy life. Burley’s hygienic advice is based, just like the moral one, on the Aristotelian principle of golden mean. The paper discusses the cases of hygienic advice concerning diet, exercise and sleep to show how the principle is applied in this field.
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The subject of the considerations presented in the article is the table understood as an important element that co-creates the space of dwelling in different cultural environments. In Polish tradition, it has different meanings – sacralized, associated with ritual behaviors, functioning as a metaphor of meeting and a sign of hospitality. Involved in both everyday practices and celebrating holidays. In contemporary culture, it is treated primarily as a piece of furniture and a typical item of home furnishings, adjusted to the specific style of the interior and individual tastes of the users. Using the results of her own ethnographic studies inspired by the anthropology of design, conducted in the years 2020–2023, the author tries to answer the question of how the table is currently treated in Polish domestic spaces, what significance is attributed to it, how it is used in ordinary and special situations. This knowledge, in turn, may constitute a set of tips for design specialists, but also a documentation of the ways of living practiced in contemporary Polish society.
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This text presents the phenomenon of the so-called highland cuisine in the perspective of changes experienced by the traditional culture of Podhale from the second half of the 19th century to modern times. In the first part, it presents the basic ingredients and dishes of simple and very poor shepherd-peasant cuisine from the period of discovering Podhale and the creation of the myth of highlanders. Next, it analyzes the processes that determined the qualitative transformation of highlander cooking, which, although from the position of a classical ethnographer remains loosely connected with traditional cuisine, for tourists visiting Podhale, as well as the inhabitants themselves, becomes an important determinant of the local color and highlander identity.
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The article discusses the role of technological anthropology as a future-oriented research discipline. It analyzes the impact of technology, especially transhumanist ideas, on the condition of contemporary humans and future imaginings of post-biological beings. Theoretical perspectives from cyberpsychology, philosophy of technology, and humanics are cited, which can support anthropology in studying technological development and its social, cultural, and ethical consequences. The article emphasizes the need for anthropology to engage in broad public debate about the future of humanity, confronting imaginations with scientific reality, and collaborating with scientists, artists, and society in the context of rapid technological changes. Challenges related to transhumanism, the development of artificial intelligence, and the expansion of technology require an interdisciplinary research perspective and active participation of anthropologists in shaping the future of society.
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The authors of the text present the decolonization of imagination issue. They treat it as an interpretive tool, along with a critical reflection on this proposal and an attempt to apply it in the cultural context of the Global North. The authors’ attention focused on a case involving an intervention in natural space through land art. Their considerations and research were provided by a field case, i.e., the International Open-Air Wicker and Land-Art Forms held in Łódź. The authors’ methodological background is primarily cultural anthropology. They also included research on the land art, environment, and landscape; they also drew from considerations of the Anthropocene and anthropopressure. Besides, they were based on the degrowth approach, which is a key term for the decolonization of imagination. What deepens the interpretation challenge, in the authors’ opinion, is the location of these open-air events - an urban botanical garden. It is a biological system under human control. Artistic actions in such a place may be associated with another anthropo-interference, although a botanical garden, being artificially created, is generally susceptible to changes introduced primarily by human beings. Despite this, according to the authors, land art transforms the existing garden environment towards regaining and strengthening its own “naturalness” and becoming an entity per se, although this happens at points, in selected aspects and places.
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The area of the Kleszczów municipality has been the subject of ethnographic research since the 1960s. Ethnographers from Łódź attempted to research this area before the radical transformation of the landscape (discovery and exploitation of lignite). After 60 years, we returned to the field with a similar intention to capture through an ethnographic lens the moment before another change, this time related to the plan to close the mine. This article is primarily intended to present how residents imagine the future of the place where they live in connection with the upcoming change – the transformation of the „Big Hole” into an artificial water reservoir and giving this area a tourist character.
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The article presents the activities of the Workers’ Cultural Center in Łódź at 68 Przędzalniana Street, which operated at the largest cotton enterprise in Poland, i.e. Łódź Cotton Factories “Uniontex” in 1945–1976. The author presents the activities of this cultural center in the working-class environment, is focused on the issue of implementing – by the communist authorities in the Polish People’s Republic – the task of disseminating culture and art among working people adopted. An important element of the propaganda of the communist authorities was also the implementation of another task, which was to stimulate the creativity among the working mass. Undoubtedly, as the author has shown, this was intended to be achieved by amateur cultural institutions, as well as direct contact with remarkable artists.
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The author of this article presents her own perspective on the social phenomenon of reenactment. As historian and reenactor she argues with the thesis that the battles depicted are historical reconstructions, as they are only reminders of past events. As proof of this, she cites many arguments confirming that battle spectacles cannot be considered as exact reproductions of the past. Battles recreated today are intended to remind us of those that occurred and not to be accurately reproduced, as this is impossible for many reasons.
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The author of the article, based on the analysis of canonical and apocryphal texts, tries to answer the question whether Mary of Nazareth can be a model and an example for a modern woman. The author sees in her a femininity that cannot be reduced to being the Mother of God.
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The article concerns a rare type of gold pendant – a lunula from the Roman Iron Age, from Fiugajki (Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship). On the margin of this discovery, the author of the text presents a sketch of the changing attributions, contexts and meanings of this category of decorations in antiquity and the Middle Ages.
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Review of: Jenny White. Turkish Kaleidoscope: Fractured Lives in a Time of Violence. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2021 ISBN: 9780691205199 120 pages
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Jaimini’s Book of the Horse Sacrifice (Jaiminīya Āśvamēdhi- kaparvan) is a late mediaeval Vaiṣṇava text that is unusual for several rea- sons. In this article we examine the interplay of violence, devotion and ritual in the Sanskrit vorlage and its Kannada transfiguration—the Jaiminibhārata of Lakṣmīśa (ca. 1500 CE). Violent emotions or extreme feelings are deeply imbricated in South Asia religious discourse. Extreme feeling is entangled with the history of texts that emerged as a result of interreligious and in- tra-religious debate. Our article puts forth the idea of violence as a mode of bhakti devotion, and we historicize the emergence of violence-as-bhakti in the Vaiṣṇava context, using the tale of Mayūradhvaja from Jaimini’s Book.
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