„Górnośląskie Studia Socjologiczne. Seria Nowa” 2020, T. 11, s. 7—10

The article addresses the following topics: Cieszyn Silesia and its location at the crossroads of the most important trade and cultural routes, and their cultural significance, monastic and princely settlement; Vlachs as carriers of linguistic and cultural influences; the migration of the natives of Cieszyn motivated by the need to find work; the contacts of Cieszyn craftsmen with the neighboring regions and the consequences of these contacts in the sphere of cultural tradition.

The Lutheran community in Cieszyn Silesia is a perfect subject for memory studies within an anthropological approach, because it reveals the operation of complex mechanisms of memory work in a religious minority group strongly influenced by a nationalist discourse. In Poland, only Catholics are accepted as Poles in a way that is beyond doubt, and representatives of other denominations must constantly prove their Polishness. One of the results of this situation was concealment or erasure of the German heritage of Silesian Protestantism and appreciation (or even over-valuing) — of the Polish traditions. This is beginning to change. I analyze these processes, presenting the vicissitudes of commemoration of the figure of Theodor Haase (head of the Lutheran church in the Austrian times, social activist, German liberal politician). My empirical material comes from discussions with memory leaders of the Silesian-Cieszyn Lutheran community. I am trying to answer the question whether “the return of Pastor Haase” is a symptom of some change in the cultural memory of Silesian Lutherans and what are the causes of it (in a dominant culture). The theoretical framework for my project is is based on a critical engagement with the concept of cultural memory proposed by Jan and Aleida Assmann, as well as the concept of multidirectional memory of Michael Rothberg.

The multidimensionality and multifacetedness of relations between residents and the area they inhabit in the form of regionalism, as well as the activities of organizations aimed at the development of pro-regional attitudes have found themselves in the field of interest of various scholarly disciplines, including geography. Roman Matykowski’s aim in this article is to examine this phenomenon from the perspective of geography, which in various periods of its development also used the achievements of other disciplines (e.g., sociology). In the second part his article, Matykowski uses the perspective of social geography to present selected results of his research on the specific regionalism in Cieszyn Silesia.

The article analyses the issue of election activity of the Polish inhabitants of the Zaolzie region (the Czech Republic) in the 1990-2018 period referring to national elections (Lower Chamber of Parliament, Senate, President of the Czech Republic) as well as local and regional elections. The theoretical section offers analyses of national and ethnic minorities as (collective) political actors. The empirical part provides an in-depth analysis of the votes in particular elections, taking into consideration the communes with a significant rate of Polish inhabitants as well as those communes there the Polish ethnos was rather scarce. The ethnic affiliation has been considered as a vital independent variable of the choices made, however, other variables explaining election behaviour have also been indicated.

The article presents the process of introduction of double naming to the Cieszyn lands, later to Zaolzie. It presents this process in the space of time from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. It devotes attention to the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the interwar Czechoslovak Republic, post-war Czechoslovakia and the contemporary Czech Republic. In the context of dual naming, it draws attention to the legislative solutions of individual governments and to the use of dual naming in practice during specific periods. The article does not avoid describing sensitive issues such as the destruction of bilingual signs with double names of places and streets, or the growing wave of aversion towards Poles.

In her article, Katarzyna Szkaradnik analyses the memoirs of the pioneers of the Polish national movement in the area of Cieszyn Silesia, and also the memoirs of subsequent social, cultural, and educational activists written before the end of World War I. Szkaradnik examines these texts by focusing on the representations of the idea which the authors were spokesmen for, i.e., Polishness as a cultural legacy as well as Poland as a promised land where the people of Cieszyn Silesia
will gain due rights. The metaphors “awakening” and “rebirth” naturalized the bond between these people and Polishness, which was supposed to last thanks to, among other things, Polish religious publications, despite Silesia’s separation from so-called Motherland. In this respect, the memoirs have persuasive-didactic functions in that they help to build and strengthen the national identity. Szkaradnik examines the rhetorical strategies used by the activists (and scholars) of the said movement as well as the system of values which they propagate. The fact of the national activists’ being servants of an ideology is accompanied by their ideology of service, akin to the positivist idea of educational and economic work. Importantly, most of the authors descended from local people of humble origin and they gave up on the chance of social advancement in order to help their countrymates to attain social, political, and intellectual emancipation.

In her article, Berenika Dyczek analyzes the attitudes of high-school students of Polish origin from Cieszyn and Český Těšín towards cultural diversity. Dyczek distinguishes empathic, conformist, active, and passive tolerance and juxtaposes these types with origin, religion, membership in organizations, and linguistic and cultural competence to ask whether there are correlations. She has used quantitative research (a survey with an auditorium questionnaire), which has allowed her to formulate the following conclusions: high cultural and linguistic competences correlate favorably with empathic and active tolerance, while low cultural and linguistic competences correlate with conformist and passive tolerance.

Łukasz Wróblewski’s article is theoretical-empirical in character. In the first part, he focuses on a relatively recent and as yet underresearched category, that of the cross-border market. From the existing definitions of the market, Wróblewski derives a definition of the cross-border market of cultural services. He goes on to discuss the historical conditions of the creation of this market in the Cieszyn Silesia-Těšín Slezsko area. Next, he discusses the structure and specificity of the cross-border cultural product (CBCP). In the third part of the article, Wróblewski examines in detail the levels and nature of cooperation in the process of creating CBCP on the cross-border market of Cieszyn Silesia. He points out that local, regional, and Euroregional organizations and central authorities of the countries sharing the border are involved in the process of creating cultural products on the cross-border market.

In this study, Janusz Mariański first presents selected themes from the works of Jan Szczepański, the great representative of Polish sociological thought. These themes include: the moral condition of Polish society (the concept of man and society, the morality of public life, economy and work ethos, manifestations of moral evil, suffering) and moral revival as an idea and reality, with particular emphasis on the issues of individuality. On the basis of these findings, Mariański formulates some general conclusions regarding moral transformations in Polish society and a proposal for changes conducive to moral revival (moral reform, a revitalization of morality, moral education).

The main goal of the study is an attempt to show that rites, regardless of what areas of social life they concern, always occur in an interactive and axionormative context. They are universal in nature, but their content and manner of manifestation in individual and group behavior are changing. Attempts were made to demonstrate this from the perspective of Jan Szczepański’s childhood and his youth experiences, related not only to work but also to selected aspects of everyday life. A broad, processual understanding of the rite (ritualisation process) was adopted as a set of individual and group behaviors based on common beliefs and values, both practical and expressive. Efforts were made to demonstrate the basic types and functions of rites, especially contained in the practices of organizational culture, so distant from the practices related to the work performed by Szczepański on the farm of his parents. The analysis made it possible to show how much the work and everyday life of the adolescent Szczepański was framed by sacred rites creating a coherent, predictable and transcendent image of the world and people.

The article is an attempt to reconstruct the image of Cieszyn Silesia contained in the works of Jan Szczepański. The author presents the most important elements of the image of Silesia (the Polish part of Silesia, i.e. the Silesian Voivodeship at that time) drawn by Szczepański in the interwar period, and the image of Cieszyn Silesia in the post-war period. In his opinion, the essence of Silesian reality is conflict and struggle. Treating Cieszyn Silesia as a borderland area with a strongly outlined cultural, religious (Protestant) and aesthetic distinctiveness, he argues about its Polishness, emphasizing that it is a misunderstood region in Poland. The author believes that in Jan Szczepański’s deliberations on Cieszyn Silesia, it is not possible to identify a clear “thinking style”, while Szczepański’s way of thinking about Cieszyn Silesia, despite its fragmentary nature and many understatements, is part of the two most important research paradigms identified in the sociology of Silesia: borderland and multiculturalism.

Although after the political change in 1989 it is possible to scientifically study the phenomenon of religiosity also in post-communist countries, it should be humbly recognized that the authentic sociology of religion in Slovakia is still in statu nascendi. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that in the most famous Slovak sociological journal called “Sociology” only one issue has been devoted to the topic of religiosity during last 30 years (“Sociology”, 2001). We can claim, that researching of religiosity in Slovakia is almost like discovering a “virgin land”. At the same time it should be acknowledged that the development of research of religiosity in the Slovak reality was most positively influenced by the Polish school of sociology. The purpose of this study is to describe the outlined impact and emphasize its importance for researching of Slovakian religiosity.

Everyday Hardship. Patterns of Resilience in the Households Living in Poverty, red. nauk. Monika Gnieciak, Krzysztof Łęcki, Kazimiera Wódz, Wydawnictwo Naukowe „Śląsk”, Katowice 2020, 365 s.

Paweł Popieliński, Mniejszość niemiecka w III Rzeczypospolitej (1989—2019) w procesie integracji ze społeczeństwem większościowym, Wydawnictwo Instytutu Studiów Politycznych PAN, Warszawa 2020, 514 s.