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In many publications Zygmunt Bauman used a metaphor of a pendulum extendingbetween freedom and security. He claimed that the shape of the relationship betweenthese two values, which he considered both as opposite and complementary, was a goodindicator of social and cultural changes. In this regard he devoted much attentionto transformations of modernity. Bauman argued that the characteristic feature ofthe transition process from solid to liquid modernity was a definite appreciationof freedom in relation to security. However, the consequence of this situation wasdevelopment of the sense of insecurity, which was fuelled, according to Bauman, bythe ruling authorities perceiving these actions as one of the sources legitimizing theirpower. Such a situation caused that the pendulum has recently begun to swing overto the opposite side. In his opinion, in the era of growing social distances, terroristthreats and migration crisis, security is gaining more and more supporters. In thearticle I focus on the critical analysis of Bauman’s findings regarding both conceptsmentioned. In addition, I will indicate the way of establishing balance between themwhich he presented in his engaged sociology.
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This paper shows how changes to the appearance of a street after the revitalization process influence the perception of the street, its sensory landscape and atmosphere. The example of Cathedral Street (Ulica Tumska), the high street in Płock, an average-sized town in Poland, is used to prove that such changes may bring some unexpected results by evoking negative emotions among the residents. The results of the study conducted using focus groups show that the contemporary ambience of Cathedral Street cause negative sensations perceived in four dimensions: touchscape, seescape, soundscape, and smellscape. Those feelings seem to be even stronger taking under consideration positive memories of the street before revitalization. As a result of the negative atmosphere of Cathedral Street and the unpleasant emotions it evokes, the residents’ activities conducted on the street are reduced only to fulfilling the most necessary needs. Such conclusion results in a postulate that when designing or redesigning public spaces we should always be aware of the consequences for the ambience of the street and the need to generate positive emotions.
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Zaradi močnega vala urbanizacije in omejenih možnosti formalne zaposlitve v velikih azijskih mestih se čedalje bolj krepi ulična prodaja, ki je zaradi neodobrene uporabe javnega prostora pogosto sporna in nezakonita. Nedeljska tržnica v Kuteku v indonezijski občini Depok se je morala z lokacije zraven univerze, na kateri je bilo običajno polno ljudi, preseliti v razmeroma odmaknjeno stanovanjsko sosesko, kjer pa prodajalci še vedno precej dobro poslujejo. Študija primera, predstavljena v tem članku, temelji na obsežnih terenskih opazovanjih in intervjujih ter pojasnjuje, kako je bila izbrana nova lokacija tržnice in kako je prostorsko urejena, da lahko zadovoljuje potrebe prodajalcev, stanovalcev in kupcev. V članku je predstavljeno, kako so stanovalci in prodajalci razvili inovativen, odprt in samoorganiziran sistem upravljanja tržnice, ki se prilagaja spreminjajočemu se številu in lastnostim prodajalcev in kupcev. Čeprav sistem velja za učinkovito orodje, ki omogoča uspevanje sive ekonomije, zaradi omejenih načrtovalskih zmožnosti zahteva sodelovanje z drugimi deležniki, na podlagi česar se lahko rešujejo nepričakovani izzivi. Sodelovanje med deležniki je povečalo koristi in zmanjšalo slabosti sive ekonomije v javnem prostoru.
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The immense wave of urbanization and the limited formal job opportunities available in large Asian cities have led to the proliferation of street vending activities, which are often controversial and sometimes illegal due to their occupation of public space. The Kutek Sunday Market in Depok municipality, Indonesia was forced to move from a busy university location to a relatively secluded residential neighbourhood. Despite this disadvantage, the market has continued to attract sizeable business. This case study, based on extensive field observation and interviews, describes how the market location was selected and how it is spatially arranged to meet the needs of vendors, residents, and shoppers. The paper shows how local residents and vendors creatively developed an open-ended, self-organized system to manage the complex tasks involved in operating the market and to adapt to fluctuations in the number and characteristics of vendors and shoppers. Although the system is highly praised as an effective tool for informal economy survivability, its limited planning capacity requires cooperation with other parties to overcome unanticipated challenges. Cooperation among stakeholders has maximized the benefits and minimized the drawbacks of informal economic activities in a public space.
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The mid-nineteenth century witnessed the simultaneous emergence of two new types of iconic media: the photograph and the postage stamp. For the next 150 years the two moulded visual culture by defining its important practices. The photograph became the central theme of widely comprehended studies on the image and visual culture, but “postcard pictures” became enclosed in the intellectual ghetto of philately, on an extremely distant margin of interests pursued by culture studies.The topic of the article deals, therefore, with postal practices from the turn of the nineteenth century, discussed upon the example of France: the cultural consequences of phenomena treated, as a rule, solely as postal technology. This is an opening fragment of a book about the anthropology of the postage stamp.
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The author of the article interprets events that started in Chile on 18 October 2019 and are known as that country’s “awakening” or “Chilean spring”. They consisted of mass-scale demonstrations calling for, i.a. a new constitution, free-of-charge education and health service, and respect for the rights of women and the indigenous population. Attention is drawn to the fact that the semantics of the actual upsurge is intensified by parallels with the coup d’état of 11 September 1973 and the plight of thousands of desaparecidos. M. Barbaruk is of the opinion that the large-scale social mobilisation, the first to take place after 30 years, and its new martyrs (several score persons perished, hundreds lost their eyesight) calls for an epic poem that would describe the desired trajectory of transformations. In doing so she referred to Andrzej Leder’s remarks on “the unwritten epos” about Polish peasants. In the case of Chile the difficulty of writing an epos consists of linking the revolt with new media: video mapping (the dialogue of the Delight Lab artistic collective and President Sebastián Piñera), the Internet (amateur recordings of acts of violence, the use of YouTube) and short-lived “archives”, i.e. murals, which altered the appearance of the capital city, songs performed to the accompaniment of cacerolazo or new names given to assorted sites (Dignidad Square). In her interpretation the author resorts to conceptions launched by W.J.T. Mitchell (an analysis of the Occupy phenomenon) and R. Calasso, but its foundation consists of personal experiences from Chile.
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The text is about the unusual history of the creation of the archive and the characteristics of digitized materials from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Łódź creating a digital photo repository. The story of the creation of the collection and the forms of its sharing will be a reflection on the emergence of new contexts for the reception and interpretation of collected artifacts. From the family archive, through the Archives of Institutions (IEiAK UŁ) to the digital repository available on the Internet. At each of these levels, there is a transformation of content and ranges of impact and access to materials. I would like to look at these re-figurations, transformations, ways of using resources, read the changing formula of archiving, among others in the perspective of the Bruno Latour network theory-actor, treat the archive, repository as a laboratory of sources and research activities and servers, for example, as heterotopy.
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For centuries, socio-historical events have always been reflected in art. The only things changing were the cultural and historical context as well as the forms of expression used by artists. The architecture of churches and their interior design always harmonized with the religious content preached in them and the socio-historical context. Currently we can observe in Poland the creation of religious buildings that, apart from propagating religious substance, try to refer to the social events of contemporary Poland and Europe by means of their form and content. One of the most significant examples is the church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Star of the New Evangelization, and Saint John Paul II in Toruń.The authors analyse the architectural form and interior design plan of the titular church, focusing on both the church itself and its surroundings. In doing so they employ research methods used in history of art, anthropology, and theology and interpret the content conveyed in architectural forms, sculpture, stained glass, and paintings together with their social, religious, and spiritual context. The artistic program of the church refers to the concept of Poland as the “Christ of Europe”. The authors decipher particular threads of the narrative connected with the idea of the Third Covenant and the role of the Polish nation in future new evangelization as well as with Poland’s role as a bulwark of Christianity in the past. The narrative in question also relates to the concept of recognizing Poles as the chosen people (New Children of Israel) and the role of Polish saints and blessed in the evangelization of Europe and the world. The authors present a contemporary version of the role of art in the process of interpreting socio-historical events, and evoke historical references connected with the relationship between art and architecture. Next, they analyse the phenomenon of conveying a message based on highly syncretic and polystylistic means of communication, starting from traditional techniques and representation schemes, through various types of simulacra, and ending on modern multimedia. At the same time – just like in mediaeval and modern pilgrimage centres – the message corresponding to the perceptual and cognitive abilities of average recipients is cleverly and a well-conceived way combined with a highly complicated and coordinated ideological programme reflecting the basic assumptions of theology or updated political theology from the circle of the Toruń radio station. This is clear both on the micro scale, the level of individual realizations, and the macro scale – in the plan, axes, and dominants of the assumption. An observation of the build-up of interior design in the last few years entitles us to claim that it is a “work in progress” (or an open work) of sorts, evolving along with the changing political and social situation as well as the progression of the Polish and universal Church.
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Research focused on documents in the Security apparatus archive from the 1944–1954 period offers a depiction of relations between the Ministry and the local apparatus: voivodeship, county, and commune Security organs. Attempts at a reorganisation of the system of the functioning of the lowest links did not meet with the approval of the heads of the Ministry. The apparatus was regarded as inefficient and its size grew systematically. Nonetheless, the terror machine carried out its tasks of creating a new political and social system. Within this dialectic the “faulty” apparatus did not hamper the fulfilment of tasks imposed upon it, and thus was fully functional and useful. The creation of negative opinions about it “at the top” of the Ministry was a form of stimuli and pressure applied by superiors.
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Recent decades made it possible to notice the creation of new national pantheons in Roman Catholic churches across Poland. Pantheonisation was applied in the case of the St. Peter and Paul church in Cracow and the St. John cathedral in Warsaw; The Temple of Divine Providence in Wilanów also became a necropolis of eminent Poles. Symbolic pantheons, unconnected with a final resting place, have emerged and continue to be created – take the example of the one decorating the chancel arch wall in the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary Star of the New Evangelization and St. John Paul II in Toruń or the Upper Silesian Pantheon under construction in the crypts of the arch cathedral of Christ the King in Katowice. Pantheons are part of a tradition initiated in Rome, where the church of Santa Maria ad Martyres, place of the eternal rest of Raphael, became a necropolis of artists belonging to the St. Joseph Fraternity. In time, other Italian and then European towns erected similar cult sites commemorating great men, originally with a local range and then also a state one. From the nineteenth centre on national pantheons began to constitute an essential carrier of the national discourse, building a vision of the history of imaginary communities.
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„Metodologija društvenih nauka“ Akademska knjiga, 2019.
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