Wojciech Józef Burszta The metacultural wars and the metaculture

Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Wojciech Józef Burszta
The metacultural wars and the metaculture of newness
The article concentrates on metalinguistic uses of the notion of “culture“ in contemporary debates on collective identity. The author claims that metacultural consciousness shapes the horizon of contemporary social imagery, in the sense given
to this notion by Charles Taylor. The way of using the word and concept of culture
in the context of the metaculture of modernity and the metaculture of difference is
then contrasted with the phenomenon of a self-referential and self-interpreting unity
which the author entitles the metaculture of newness or simultaneity. A slogan provided by an advertising campaign of the clothing company Esprit, The World Is Our
Culture, describes accurately the global sense of its ambitions.
Key words: metaculture, newness, anthropology, ethnic studies, popular culture
Wojny metakulturowe a metakultura nowości
Artykuł podejmuje zagadnienie metajęzykowych zastosowań pojęcia „kultura” w toczącej się obecnie debacie na temat tożsamości zbiorowych. Zdaniem autora, świadomość metakulturowa kształtuje horyzont współczesnej wyobraźni
społecznej, w takim sensie, jaki nadaje temu pojęciu Charles Taylor. Sposób użycia
zarówno słowa, jak też pojęcia „kultura” w kontekście metakultury nowoczesności
i metakultury różnicy został zestawiony ze zjawiskiem samoreferencyjnej całości
nazwanej przez autora artykułu metakulturą nowości albo symultaniczności. Slogan „The world is our culture” (Świat jest naszą kulturą), jakim w swej kampanii
reklamowej posłużyła się firma Esprit, producent z branży odzieżowej, adekwatnie
oddaje globalny sens takich jej ambicji.
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Calin Cotoi
The Imagining of National Spaces in Interwar Romania.
The Case of Geopolitics
In interwar Romania, there was a large and important coming together of various intellectual disciplines under the sign of romanticism and reactionary modernism, a massive scientific, intellectual and cultural redefinition and reworking of different disciplinary canons.
The polemics on the topic of who held the right criteria for defining the “real,” the “authentic” national-identity, national spaces, national culture, etc. gained a central role. This paper
is focused on the “representative biography” of Anton Golopentia, a Romanian sociologist
and geopolitician strongly influenced by Hans Freyer’s sociology and philosophy of culture.
Anton Golopentia’s work is used as a test case for understanding how the common interwar
European “pool of ideas” is domesticated, adaptated and subverted at the periphery.
The problematic of the “national” is central in Romanian interwar sociology. Sociology
and geopolitics were understood as helping, in a neutral, “scientific” way, the state in the nation-building process through specific and applied knowledge. The national community was
implicitly and surreptitiously constructed through scientific discourses, hidding, in the process, the diffuse ideology of the organic, “primordial” character of the nation.
Key words: reactionary modernism, geopolitics, representative biography, imagined national
spaces, neo-cameralist sciences, conceptual transfer, political language
Wyobrażenie przestrzeni narodowych w międzywojennej Rumunii.
Przypadek geopolityki
W Rumunii okresu międzywojennego różne dyscypliny myśli w istotny i znaczący
sposób spotkały się pod znakiem romantyzmu i wstecznego modernizmu, w szerokiej
naukowej, intelektualnej i kulturowej redefinicji i reinterpretacji kanonów różnych dyscyplin. Polemika na temat: kto zachował właściwe kryteria definiowania „rzeczywistej”,
„autentycznej” tożsamości narodowej, przestrzeni narodowej, narodowej kultury itd.
zaczęła odgrywać centralną rolę. Niniejszy artykuł skupia się na „reprezentatywnej biografii” Antona Golopentii, rumuńskiego socjologa i geopolityka, pozostającego pod silnym wpływem socjologii i filozofii kultury Hansa Freyera. Dzieło Antona Golopentii
stanowi ilustrację próby zrozumienia, w jaki sposób jeden „wspólny zbiór idei” z okresu
Europy międzywojennej zostaje udomowiony, przysposobiony i zamknięty na peryferiach.
Problematyka „narodowościowa” zajęła centralne miejsce w rumuńskiej socjologii okresu
międzywojennego. Socjologię i geopolitykę postrzegano jako – w neutralny, „naukowy”
sposób – pomocne państwu w procesie budowania narodu (nation-building), poprzez
szczególną wiedzę stosowaną. Wspólnota narodowa pośrednio i ukradkiem konstruowała
się w dyskursie naukowym, ukrywając, w efekcie tak postępującego procesu, rozpuszczenie
się ideologii organicznego, „prymordialnego” charakteru narodu.
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Per Rudling
“For a Heroic Belarus!”: The Great Patriotic War as Identity Marker
in the Lukashenka and Soviet Belarusian Discourses
More than in any other European country, the modern history of Belarus is a
product of World War II. The unification, homogenization and Sovietization of that
country are all direct results of the war. World War II—or the Great Patriotic War,
as the conflict is still called in Belarus—built legitimacy and constituted the raison
d’etre for the political elite in the most conservative of the Soviet republics. The war
brought to power a leadership of pro-Soviet partisans who came to dominate the political stage for four decades.
Belarus unexpectedly became independent as the Soviet Union collapsed. In the
political vacuum that followed the collapse of the USSR Lukashenka was able to generate support by catering to Soviet nostalgia and symbolism, particularly by recycling old Stalinist myths of war and victory, suffering and redemption. As paternalistic guardian of the state, his skillful use of the war myth has not only re-branded
Soviet Belarusian patriotism and reclaimed the ground from the anti-communist
nationalist movement—Lukashenka has presented the anti-communist opposition
as fascists and traitors, stifled the opposition and accused the Polish minority of constituting a potential fifth column. The Great Patriotic War, or rather the myth of the
war, is very much alive in Belarus, and the use of these myths have become central to
Lukashenka’s consolidation of power and to the remolding of a post-Soviet emerging
democracy into an authoritarian autocracy of a kind unique in Europe.
Key words: Belarus, identity, nationalist myths
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
„Za Bohaterską Białoruś!”: Wielka Wojna narodowa jako wyznacznik
tożsamości w dyskursach Łukaszenki i sowiecko-białoruskim
Druga wojna światowa wywarła większy wpływ na współczesną historię
Białorusi niż jakiegokolwiek innego kraju w Europie. Unifikacja, homogenizacja i
sowietyzacja – wszystko to na Białorusi stanowiło bezpośrednio rezultat wojny. Druga wojna światowa – czy też Wielka Wojna Narodowa, jak wciąż jest ona nazywana
na Białorusi – stworzyła raison d’etre elity politycznej w tej najbardziej konserwatywnej z sowieckich republik i tę elitę uprawomocniła. Po wojnie władza dostała
się w ręce przywódców prosowieckiej partyzantki, którzy na cztery dekady zdominowali białoruską scenę polityczną.
Białoruś całkiem niespodziewanie uzyskała niezależność z chwilą upadku Związku Sowieckiego. W próżni politycznej, jaką pozostawił po sobie ZSSR,
Łukaszenko pozyskał szerokie poparcie, odwołując się do nostalgii i symbolizmu sowieckiego. Do jego sukcesu przyczyniło się zwłaszcza przywrócenie obiegu dawnych
stalinowskich mitów wojny i zwycięstwa, cierpienia i odkupienia. Łukaszenko,
jako paternalistyczny strażnik państwa, zręcznie posługując się mitem wojny, nie
tylko przeobraził prosowiecki patriotyzm Białorusinów i zawłaszczył podstawy
antykomunistycznego ruchu narodowego, ale jednocześnie przedstawił opozycję
antykomunistyczną jako faszystów i zdrajców, zablokował działania opozycji, a
polską mniejszość narodową oskarżył o tworzenie potencjalnej piątej kolumny.
Wielka Wojna Narodowa, czy też mit wojny, jest na Białorusi wciąż bardzo żywotny,
zaś wykorzystanie tych mitów nabrało zasadniczej wagi dla skonsolidowania władzy
w obozie Łukaszenki i przeobrażenia postsowieckiej demokracji w autorytarny system władzy autokratycznej, nigdzie indziej w Europie niespotykany.
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Piotr Eberhardt
The numbers and distribution of the Russian population
In the post-Soviet republics at the turn of the 21st century
The aim of the paper is to determine the number of the Russian population in the last
phase of existence of the Soviet Union, and then to show the demographic consequences of
the disintegration of this great empire. The spatial reference units are the federal republics,
which turned at the beginning of the 1990s into sovereign states. Statistical analysis was carried out, showing the increase of the Russian population in the second half of the 20th century. The analysis was based on the population censuses in the USSR in 1959, 1970, 1979, and
1989. According to the last of these censuses the territory of the Soviet Union was inhabited
by 286.1 million people, of whom 145.2 million declared to be of the Russian nationality.
Most of them inhabited the Russian SSR, namely 119.9 million. The remaining 25.2 million
of them were dispersed in the other 14 federal republics.
The collapse of the communist system led to a new political situation. The consequence
of the abrupt disintegration processes was appearance of the ethnic conflicts and mass migration movements. In the new sovereign countries the Russians did not play the hegemonic
role any more. The worsening of their citizenship status and economic hardships caused mass
exodus of the Russian population, leaving the new sovereign states. Russians moved primarily to the Russian Federation. These mass migrations, as well as the net result of the natural
demographic processes, affected the ethnic structures of the post-Soviet republics, and especially the numbers of Russians living there. Determination of the scale of this phenomenon
required a statistical analysis and then an evaluation from the point of view of the nature of
processes taking place. The basis with this respect was provided by the population census carried out in the Russian Federation in 2002, and the censuses in the other post-Soviet republics. It turned out that the population of the entire post-Soviet territory was stable, but this
was the effect of a significant demographic regress of the Slavonic countries, the Baltic states,
Moldavia, Armenia and Georgia, with the simultaneous significant increase of population
numbers in all the Muslim countries. Yet, the biggest changes in the numbers and in distribution affected the population of Russian nationality. During just a bit more than a decade the
number of the inhabitants declaring the Russian nationality dropped by close to 12 million,
of which—on the territory of the Russian Federation—by roughly 4 million, while in the remaining post-Soviet republics—by close to 8 million. This great demographic decrease was
territorially differentiated. The paper explains the respective phenomena. The problems, associated with migrations, lowered birth rates, high mortality, and ageing of the Russian population became the object of an extensive debate national in Russia. This debate is not limited
to only the demographic problems, and the economic, social, and especially the geopolitical
consequences are discussed, as well. Thus, the paper also provides relevant comments.
Key words: demography, post-Soviet area, Russian population
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Anna G. Piotrowska
Around ‘Gypsyness’ as an emanation of nationality in Hungarian music
National perspective in the writings on so-called Gypsy music, resulting from
the 19th century tendencies, dominated the musicological discourse. Due to the
1859 book by a renowned Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Des Bohémiens et de
leur musique en Hongrie, Gypsy music was proclaimed the only real source of Hungarian national music. Such a statement caused a lot of criticism in the intellectual
circles of Hungarian middle class preferring to perceive the repertoire performed by
Gypsy bands as purely Hungarian music. The misunderstanding rested, however, on
strong bases: Hungarians themselves were more than willing to allow Gypsy musicians entertain them with the compositions meeting their own requirements. The
ever growing, since the late 18th century, popularity of Gypsy musicians in Hungary
constituted yet another factor complicating the issue.
In the early 20th century, another Hungarian composer, Bela Bartok, presented
a new outlook on Hungarian national music and its relation to Gypsy music. He proclaimed Hungarian peasant music the most important part of Hungarian folk music while attributing Gipsy bands only the role of propagators of Hungarian urban
music.
Nowadays research on music by Hungarian Gypsy concentrates on the problems of interior variety of styles, different for various Roma groups living in Hungary, and the question of the transformation of their music due to the globalization
processes rather than on the issue to what extend Gypsy music should be considered
national in Hungarian context.
Key words: Gypsy music, Hungarian national music, Liszt, Bartok
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Aleksandra Rzepkowska
Interpersonal Relations in the world of exiles:
an anthropological analysis
In the years 2002-2005 I pursued a research project with main aim to collect
autobiographical narratives from people sentenced during the period 1940-1941 to
detention in various parts of the USSR. These people belong to a historical community of many thousand of Polish exiles to the East and are referred to, in accordance
with a national linguistic and cultural tradition, as Siberian deportees. I conducted
my research in the area of Łódź and its immediate vicinity.
The article aims to elaborate one of the most important issues in the stories collected, namely the problem of interpersonal relations in the world of exiles; their
form, character, their variable dynamics and their influence on my interviewees’
deportation biographies. Having chosen an anthropological point of view, I am not
interested in objective facts and events from the past recorded in autobiographical
narratives of Siberian deportees but in their own, deeply subjective views and ideas
from their lives in exile.
From the studies carried out it has become clear that interpersonal relations
were vital for survival in the period of exile. At the same time, family relationships
were the most important, closely followed by those between friends, acquaintances
and neighbours. These relations did not restrict themselves only to people coming
from the resettled community circle but often included also people of diffrent nationalities or religions, met in the “inhuman land.”
Key words: Siberian deportees, interpersonal relations, autobiographical narratives
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Michał Jarnecki
Czechs in Polish Volhynia, 1919-1939
A small number of Czech settlers arrived in Volhynia, the most rural province
in Western Russia, in the second half of the 20th century. The Russian authorities
favored this migration for one reason: they hoped that the Czech minority would
weaken the Polish community living there. The Czechs, who made up ca. 1,5-2% of
the entire population of Volhynia, soon recognized that only a loyal attitude towards
the Russian State and, in a later period the Polish State, could guarantee this numerically small ethnic group some success among the Polish and Ukrainian populations. The local administration in many ways supported the loyalty of ethnic minorities in Volhynia. Although economically the area was developing rather quickly,
upon the eve of the WW I, it was still an agricultural province, and the majority of
Czechs worked in this sector, with some owning arable land. Many of the Czechs
owned agricultural machines on their farms, and hop cultivation was the most important source of profit for the settlers.
The Czechs were active in social and cultural life. Settlements had newspapers,
orchestras, choirs, as well as their famous volunteer Fire Brigades. Education and
schooling was an important problem. Although the Polish authorities favored a system of polonization, many Czech children nevertheless attended bilingual schools.
Moreover, one of the settlers, Vladimir Meduna, was a member of Parliament in
the 1930s. In the same period, an honorary consulate opened in the small town of
Kwsilow, with Vladimir Svarovsky as its head. Unfortunately, the Czech settlements
in Volhynia negatively influenced Polish-Czechoslovak relations in the interwar
period.
Key words: Czechs, Polish Volhynia, national minorities
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Maciej Kurcz
The Sudanese Mosaic: an Ethnic Situation in Villages on the Nile
between III and IV cataract
Sudan is called “little Africa,” not only because of its geographical location but
also due to the large number of different peoples inhabiting it. Even the northern part
of the country, apparently homogenous with respect to ethnicity, and unified by Islam
and Arab culture, is a place where a variety of tribes have lived together for ages.
The article presents material from field research conducted by the author in
North Sudan in 2003 and 2004. Nubians, the native population of this corner of the
Nile Valley, have come under strong Arab influence which has absorbed both their
culture and their language. In the villages under investigation, relics of Nubian culture can now be found only in folklore customs, especially those connected with
crucial moments in human life, mostly related to women. The majority of the inhabitants of this part of the Nile Valley belong to Arab tribes, with two major groups,
Djaaliin and Djuhaina. The two groups differ significantly in their way of life. Arab
Djaliin are farmers who are settled the Nile Valley for good, while Arab Djuhaina
are predominantly nomad herdsmen. In mutual relations between the two tribes
there are many negative stereotypes and much antagonism, even more so because
of the immigration of other minorities, traditionally of a lower and marginalized
status, into the Nile Valley, such as Gipsies, Copts (Egyptian Christians) and the socalled Fellata (descendants of former slaves).
Key words: North Sudan, ethnography, field research, ethnicity
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Piotr Majewski
An Image of the Roma: The Other in books by Andrzej Stasiuk
The essay attempts to reconstruct the picture of the Roma people as drawn in
the work of Andrzej Stasiuk, a well-known and extremely influential contemporary
Polish writer. His books are one of the major sources of information about, among
other things, the Romani population of Central-East Europe. Starting from the theory of critical discourse analysis, the author of the essay shows that Stasiuk’s imagination of the Gypsy world is based on dangerous and dominant stereotypes which
could be compared to racist and apartheid ideologies.
Key words: Romani, ethnic stereotypes, the Other, Gypsy
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Jacek Drozda
Supporting ‘Britishness’.
On the identity of Polish Manchester City FC fans
In this essay the author briefly describes a group of Polish Manchester City
Football Club fans and presents the wide cultural context of their activities. Whereas most football-related scientific works usually focus on rather exploited aspects of
fandom and commercialism in sport, this text aims to combine various approaches
and to shed light on new genres of football supporters’ culture. The theoretical background used to illustrate these issues includes some esteemed works belonging to
the tradition of British cultural studies, as well as modern Polish popcultural analyses. The essay shows how some Polish football supporters remain on the margins of
standard football fandom. Still, rather than being a coherent group, they shift from
one style to another and submit themselves to different cultural inspirations. While
being far from hooliganism or even verbal violence, they attach great value to the
supporters’ ethos.
Key words: Manchester, football fans, pop-culture
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Piotr F. Borowski
German investment in banking sector in Poland
in light of polish-german relations
The article analyses macroeconomic environment influence on German investment in banking sector in Poland. The Polish-German relationships play very important role in improving investment climate, so one of the most important tasks
for State Government is to build the propitious investment climate. Foreign capital
play a helpful role in the process of economic growth; it can (1) support domestic development, (2) make the flow of know-how possible, and (3) contribute to increase
of knowledge. The collaboration between Poland and Germany is in friendly atmosphere. The sociocultural and political environment creates good climate for investment. The largest number of Germany’s foreign investment shows that relationships
between our countries promote development and economic growth.
Key words: macroeconomic environment, foreign investment, banking sector
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Walter Żelazny
Beurs: a new ethnic identity in France
The 1980s witnessed the emergence of a new and distinctive group, les Beurs,
who came to prominence in the context of rising racial tensions in France, and the
centrality of debates about immigration, integration, assimilation, the right to difference, etc. in French political life in the period 1980 to the present. The author
discusses some key questions and the term Beur itself as a new ethnonym associated
with a generation of young men and women with their own specific cultural identity
different from that of their North African parents as well as from that of their peers
of European descent. Democratic involvement on the part of the French Republic,
with the aim to achieve at least some assimilation of Beurs to the French society, is
thus a political challenge. New national and confessional dimensions in the Republic’s life are necessary in the light of the cultural difference or separation of Beurs
from French culture.
Key words: Beurs, ethnic identity, French Republic
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Sybilla Bidwell
Obligatory textbook for politicians
From Pregs Govender’s autobiography published under the title Love and Courage. A Story of Insubordination, by Jacana in Johannesburg 2007, we get to know
a lot about the South African political elite in the process of building democracy.
The author is a ANC activist. Ever since her teenage days she was politically active.
In 1994 after the fall of apartheid she became an MP. Fighting for many causes she
tried to remaind members of ANC what they stood for when still in opposition. She
considered that their main aim ought to be creating conditions for better life and
enrichment of the South African society. That was the reason for coming up with
the Women’s Budget, and also of her stand against HIV/AIDS denialism. She voted
against the ANC government when it asked the parliament to consent to an arms
deal, stressing that this money ought to help the deprived. Pregs Govender underlines the importance of insubordination for a politician, and the value of compassion and integrity. The book addresses the most important essential problems facing
politicians in many countries, but also annalists who noticed the drawbacks of party
loyalism and the contemporary party system.
Key words: Pregs Govender, Republic of South Africa, democracy, transition
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Tomasz Kamusella
Philologists: Scholars or Politicians?
On the basis of the review of the collection, The Study of Language and the Politics of Community in Global Context (edited by D. L. Hoyt and K. Oslund), the article reflects on the phenomenon of philology, an aspiring discipline of scholarship,
which oftentimes exchanged research for becoming a branch of national politics.
The abandonment of objectivity as the highest ideal in the study of language began
in the early 19th century when language was fashioned into an instrument of politics, and nationhood and statehood legitimization. In this scheme of things philologists easily became politicians, and numerous statesmen desired to be recognized as
linguists in their own right. This politicization of linguistics continues to this day,
especially in Eurasia (where ethnic nationalism seems to be the norm of state-building), but not only.
Key words: ethnolinguistic nationalism, philology, politicization of linguistics
Sprawy Narodowościowe. Seria nowa, 32 – Abstracts
Patryk Wasiak
A Foreigner in a Foreign Country: Japan in the World War II Period
through the Eyes of a French Journalist
In Western civilization there is a custom to describe one’s travels and meetings
with foreign cultures. Such accounts, with descriptions of local customs in Africa,
the Balkans, Russia or Japan, have been popular in the last two centuries. Tales of Japan seem to be the most interesting because they are not descriptions of a benighted
and backward civilization, similar to the Europe of a few hundred years ago, as is
the case with the Balkans. Japan was an entirely different space; foreigners visiting
this country were convinced they were watching an advanced but completely alien
civilization.
One such book about Japan in the period of World War II is From Pearl Harbor
to Hiroshima by Robert Guillain. It is mainly about Japanese politics in the war period, but far more important are the fragments about the nature of Japanese society
and culture. In Guillain’s vision, the Japanese are devoid of critical thinking because
of the nature of their language. This is why Japanese militarists and industrialists
were able to embroil the whole society in nationalist feelings and, finally, in the war
in the Pacific. We can observe how the author combines Marxism with ethnic issues.
It is a valuable source for an anthropologist, and unlike a depiction of Japan such as
in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, it is a story about constructing the image of
a foreign civilization in one’s mind.
Key words: Japan, WW II, foreigner, Western civilization, Robert Guillain