The article presents selected aspects of relations between cultural heritage and human personality. The main hypothesis is a belief that there exists a tight connection between the place of birth and growing up and the development of human personality. Political manipulation, aiming at distorting historical facts concerning the history of places that were subject to different authorities as a result of territorial changes in order to legitimize authorities, constitutes an important barrier in personality development. Its consequence is the so called suspended identity. An important role of a homeland in human personality was illustrated on the example of an Upper‑Silesian Evangelic community. Its members live in dispersion in Germany nowadays. They create however a community based on a cultural bond shaped in the past in a home village and continued today in various forms of meetings, action and journeys to Heimat. In the case of this community, religion, apart from forms of cultivating bonds with a homeland, plays an important role in the process of rationalization of traumatic experiences from childhood and youth times, and, hence, in maintaining a mental balance through a consolidation of a social bond. Conclusions on the very relation between cultural heritage and personality are drawn in the final part of the text. They are philosophical as well as psychological‑anthropological in nature.

The cultural studies analyses basing on a socio‑regulating conception of culture understand culture and cultural heritage in a very similar way. The difference could consist in perceiving culture more „procedurally” and cultural heritage more „subjectively”. The former would refer to the thought reality, the latter to its content. However, in both cases, they take on the form of cultural regulations that is why the division suggested is fairly arbitrary in nature. The main subject of considerations is the problem of complex relations between the means of a conscious development of the cultural heritage and its dependence of objective conditions. In the light of theory‑cultural assumptions, worldview valorizations influence the ultimate form of cultural heritage less significantly than the demand of social practice. Despite it, the components of socio‑subjective regulators are mental in character, and depend directly on their previous historical forms. Thus, one cannot totally abandon or overcome cultural heritage. Even though particular regulating beliefs or their whole units deactualize in culture, they can exist in social awareness after the meaningful recontextualization under the label of precious „cultural traces” or relics deprived of symbolic values.

 It is impossible not to see consequences deriving from the lack of precision of the meaning of cultural heritage and notions connected to it in view of education called regional. It is easy to notice that cultural heritage both in ministry acts, publications on regional education and teachers’ and regionalists’ discourses is fairly freely used or even put in the form of imprecise generalities. An excessive inclination for differentiating between meanings ascribed to cultural heritage makes it very fluid and ambiguous. A characteristic of this phenomenon is a constant appearance of its new social and cultural features, which makes it difficult to predict its potential future specificity. If no significant processes of the destabilization of social life take place, we will witness the birth of a new content constituting cultural heritage. In this context, regional education is given a special role, whose one of the key tasks should be preparing the young for making a national evaluation of the cultural heritage content (yet it contains both the resources of the good and the evil), and making conscious choices therein in order to make them transform and adjust cultural heritage to the current needs in the future in a rational and reasonable way.

 It is impossible not to see consequences deriving from the lack of precision of the meaning of cultural heritage and notions connected to it in view of education called regional. It is easy to notice that cultural heritage both in ministry acts, publications on regional education and teachers’ and regionalists’ discourses is fairly freely used or even put in the form of imprecise generalities. An excessive inclination for differentiating between meanings ascribed to cultural heritage makes it very fluid and ambiguous. A characteristic of this phenomenon is a constant appearance of its new social and cultural features, which makes it difficult to predict its potential future specificity. If no significant processes of the destabilization of social life take place, we will witness the birth of a new content constituting cultural heritage. In this context, regional education is given a special role, whose one of the key tasks should be preparing the young for making a national evaluation of the cultural heritage content (yet it contains both the resources of the good and the evil), and making conscious choices therein in order to make them transform and adjust cultural heritage to the current needs in the future in a rational and reasonable way.

A basic question that should be answered in the context of cultural heritage concerns its reinforcement in a social practice in line with all political implications. In view of the collapse of great narrations and a postmodernist distance of any engagement, directing towards an „identity constantly built”, the only form of a real engagement is cynical distance. The same is true of characters created for the purposes of a virtual game; their emotions are not simply false, but on the contrary, they sometimes reflect the state of their creators. At the same time, a virtual reality allows for maintaining a minimum of a distance thanks to the fact that we can withdraw from it any time we want. This distance is crucial when it comes to shaping a cultural identity these days. When we look at the functioning of local societies wielding power over an identity discourse of a community, two relationships appear. The first one consists in the functioning of regional societies in a social practice as original disponent of memory and identity. The second describes the attitude to societies of remaining inhabitants who, due to transferring the pleasure of awareness of their subjectivity to a local organization can deal with other issues. The very relationship is known as interpassivity. Political and ideological implications of both of them have been traced on the basis of Nie wszystko jest oczywiste, a book by Czesław Robotycki. A theoretician should notice here two important political reservations. Firstly, transferring of the pleasure of one’s own awareness is accompanied by the renouncement of making decisions on its shape so even though we convince ourselves that we are independent subjects (a cynical distance), in a social practice, objectively speaking, we behave as if we believed because of some “other” (local organizations). Secondly, building a local identity must be based on a tough theoretical basis because otherwise it will boil down to just folklore curiosities and ethnographic relics (though, in a conscious politics they are very important). The aim of my considerations is, thus, the evaluation of something that is as enigmatic as a cultural heritage in the context of modernity, and showing political dangers in the renouncement of one’s own subjectivity.

The article concerns cultural heritage in terms of identifying cultural codes with their market applications. The very subject-matter is presented in the context of modern socio-civilizational changes. The leading premises of the studies on culture in the light of the market applications of cultural codes are the strengthening process of permeating the world of culture and the world of market, as well as the phenomenon of globalization. The article is based on the assumption that understanding the nature of modern cultural changes needs a multidisciplinary approach. In order to define the conditions of cultural and consumerist patterns three selected conceptions included in qualitative market studies were taken into account. After bringing the premises of a qualitative method closer, methods and techniques constituting the tools of the research on attitudes and preferences culturally-conditioned were discussed. The text closes with an attempt to reflect on the role of science and studies on cultural conditions of behaviours in terms of chances and threats deriving from the exploration of cultural heritage.

The borderlands perceived as borderlines, peripheries, a small homeland form a discourse of multiculturalism, one of the strongest discourses successfully functioning in the light of others, an anthropological, sociological or historical one nowadays. It was 1989 that made us aware of not only rich traditions of what was traditionally called the borderlands, but confronted Poles with the existence of the “Other” and “Foreign”, as well as discovered a series of relations that joined us with them. The awareness of cultural, social and traditional differences slowly overlapped with a belief that the freedom of Poland is not only the result of their dedicated battle, and martyrdom inscribed into our patriotic genotype. Apart from pride, Poles strongly felt the sense of injustice for territorial, cultural and economic loss, unjust accusations of our neighbours, but also a hidden sense of guilt, Poles’ co‑responsibility for the Holocaust or our colonization past. A discourse of multiculturalism is considered to be the product of passion and power, needs, anxieties, projects and longings. Searching joint experiences with our neighbours, we establish our existence according to the latest biding criteria. We use politics to hear “Polishness” when saying “multiculturalism”. A multicultural pot included accusations of xenophobia and arguments against it, our openness to the “Other”, tolerance of various ethnoses, joint historical experiences. Multiculturalism is an answer to Jews’, Lithuanians’, Ukrainians’ or Germans’ grudges telling their own history in a way totally different from our versions. Collapsing borderland projects discover a new space of multivoicing, without ideological benefits for the Polish culture. The problem of the “Other” is becoming a suggestion to find a real self, deprived of an embarrassing heritage and „overload of everyday life” in its face.

The article is an attempt to present ways of perceiving a post-German cultural space in Warmia and Mazuria. The very issue is dealt with from the point of view of existing historical, political and ethnic discontinuity as the main feature defining the modern nature of the region. Also, the succession of generations in post‑migration society typical of all regained lands described by Zdzisław Macha is used here. The text deals with the issue of a social imagination as the starting point in shaping the imagination of the past. The emphasis is put on the architecture, spacious order, popular iconographic representations of the past and post‑German symbolism. The role of nostalgia as a dominating way of perceiving what is gone is also elaborated on.

The subject-matter of considerations is a presentation based on memories reports of the cultural process of accustoming Lower-Silesia villages by the population from the Eastern borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland. The basis of this work constitutes empirical studies conducted between 1989 and 2009. The analyses cover the first period of Pole relocation, namely from 1945 to 1946. What has been assumed is a colloquial way the relocated understand their history, according to which the timeline is broadened and comprises the period from the World War II breakout and, subsequently, so called occupations (a Soviet, German and again Soviet one) to the moment of their arrival to the Western lands. In accordance with such an understanding of their own fate, cultural accustomation of new spaces is analysed through trauma and experiences of these people starting from a luminal period, it being a death of Poland in September 1939. This kind of a subjective perception of the history of one’s own group is extremely attractive for an anthropological analysis. It enables tracing not only subsequent political changes and prosecution of the Polish people connected with it, but also cultural changes, and new competence gain. It is them that, in consequence, determined a qualitatively different way of a dialogue with a changing reality and one’s won cultural heritage despite the permanence of many traditional cultural structures. It was a totally new phenomenon, and unknown to this population. Objectively speaking, it required the renouncement of many cultural canons biding so far and working out categorically new mediation structures under the circumstances of a dismantled borderline. It derived from particularly a political, but also cultural status of the Polish borderline people in this area. The experiences constituted the basis for the formation of a new social and cultural capital. As a result, it decided on particular ways of a cultural accustomation of the people in an extreme situation. The text paid attention to such issues as the first contact with a foreign land, new, multidimensional challenges, and, consequently, accustoming homestead, farmstead, fields, chapels and roadside crosses, and, finally, the whole village space.

The author makes an attempt to culturally analyse the Upper-Silesian mosaic formed after the World War II. As a result of political arrangements, the line of the already-existing borders of Poland changed. The effect of these “shifts” was mass and forced relocations of Polish people from the Eastern borderlands of the Second Republic of Poland to the West, the so called regained lands, as well as forcing Germans to go outside the western border. At the same time, Opole Silesia, among others, became the arena of dramatic changes in 1945. A radical violation of the everyday reality happened here. The settlers from the east deprived of almost all material and spirituals values came there. The Silesians who did not leave their small homeland also found themselves in this socio-cultural setting. It turned out that these two ethnic groups have to somehow re-work out their joint everyday life, and assimilate different cultural patterns. The very process underwent big hardships due to a fairly often and strong opposition of both groups. Everyday differences, discerned almost immediately, such as clothing, food or language additionally made the process of adaptation and integration complex, as well as brought about conflict-rising situations. The element having a negative influence on intergroup relations and facilitating stereotype generation was also beliefs and rightness of both groups, e.g. the borderlanders looked for a kind of compensation for damages experiences during the war in this new reality. A cultural integration seemed possible, as it seems, when the oldest generation of passed away, who cherished the borderland traditions to a large extent. Their descendants, born in Opole Silesia treat the land of their ancestors in a different way as it is simply foreign to them. An early stage of socialization (e.g. kindergarten or school) seems to be a factor facilitating the process of integration teaching tolerance towards a multicoloured Silesian everyday life.

Relocation in space has accompanied people for ages. Searching for food, new possibilities of the settlement, work, education or religious cult places have become the aim of first excursions and journeys. It is difficult, though, to regard the communities at that time as travel and their activity as the development of tourism. There exist many definitions of tourism, and the majority of them underlines the importance of a free, and spacious mobility of people connected with changing places of residence, environment or the rhythm of life. Irrespective of definitional propositions, tourism is without a doubt a complex psychological, social, economic, spacious and cultural phenomenon. Special attention is to be paid to connections between tourism and culture. Tourism protects, enriches and popularizes cultural goods while culture inspires the development of tourism. Enabling culture meetings, tourism is becoming a more important factor of cultural changes. A revival of locality, growing criticism of mass civilization, and technizational idealism observed in recent years, formed a type of nostalgia for the past, and influenced a significant growth of interest in cultural, or put it more precisely, ethnic tourism. Ethnic tourisms is identified with alternative, rural, folklore, adventurous or sentimental tourism. Its present shape, however, has become yet another example of cultural non-transparency of modern reality. On the one hand, we observe a clear demand for typical ethnically-foreign tourist elements and a valorization of our own traditions, and a conscious development of a native group identity on the other.

Cultural heritage constitutes one of the most important constituent elements of a modern tourist product. When explaining the phenomena connected to the phenomenon of modern travelling, understanding interactions co‑creating a tourist offer seems to be a key task not only from the academic point of view, but also a potential development of the region. Tourist souvenirs can be perceived as a certain product of cultural narration, social expectations and hard laws of economy. Can they lead to a better “plunge” in culture or rather they oversimplify a rich understanding of tradition boiling it down to popculture artefacts? A semiotic-cultural analysis presented in the very article is to introduce the circle of issues connected to the dynamics of relations between cultural heritage and tourist souvenirs, as well as bringing processes lying at the bottom of the so called tourism culturalisation closer.

The memory of the past in a modern society finds its shelter in the walls of lieux de memoire, such as libraries, archives or museums. It is these institutions that we shift our responsibility for registering and storing everything that should be retained for future generations on. From this perspective, a museum can be perceived as a unit responsible for creating a social definition of heritage. Museologists, tidying a local, regional or national memory in an exhibition space, impose the vision of events and evaluation of past achievements on the audience. In a conscious or unconscious way, they participate in defining the truth about the past biding in a particular historical moment. A careful observation of changes happening in ways and styles of life in societies of late modernity shows limitations resulting from the Enlightenment museum discourse. A postmodernist blurring of a borderline between a high and low culture constitutes a starting point for going beyond fixed modes of thinking about museums as just dignified art institutions and temples of knowledge, and facilitates search for new tools in order to create a museum discourse using popular culture. Thus, museologists make efforts to make new exhibition arrangements adjusted to the present‑day expectations of the audience building and supporting bonds with the visitors, encouraging for discovering a potential of the artefacts presented, stimulating for a discussion with a suggested vision of the world or, generally speaking, to encourage undertaking cultural practices.

The article presents considerations on a domestic space, its functional division and ways of arrangement, the analysis of which is to illustrate both the continuation of old cultural patterns, and various types of changes proved by the attempts to transfer new social trends to homes. The author underlines that an overview of the ways of living in a given culture can reflect the dynamics of the rhythm of a particular culture. The way of organizing and functioning a house has always been influenced by such factors as the level of a technical development, economy type, values and ideals of a dominant culture, as well as a political system and social ideology. However, nowadays, a big influence on shaping a domestic space is ascribed to the culture dominated by the market laws and common consumerism, as well as a marketing policy of big market chains and commercial messages promoting their offer. An example of this commercial message which influences certain ways of arranging and using a flat interior design is in socio-cultural conditions in Poland these days, is a catalogue of IKEA shopping chains which, in these considerations, constitutes the basic material subject to analysis (the IKEA catalogues published in Poland between 2004—2011 more specifically). As the analysis conducted has it, the IKEA marketing materials treat house as one of the most appreciated values. What is more, it is a domestic space and its arrangement that is to be one of the most important elements defining an identity of an individual, but also revealing the quality of their everyday life. Thinking about a home designed in an IKEA style refers both to cultural traditions, presenting a vision of living in the contemporary world deriving from a material heritage of various world cultures, and grows from the rules of the market governing the economy of modern societies. Thus, IKEA, in its marketing practices, aims at developing a new life style meaning a particular relationship of traditions and material heritage with culture based on the market and commercial laws, but also deriving from a modern thinking about man’s identity these days.

Against the background of a dramatic and complicated post-war past of Warmia and Mazuria, the author of the article makes an attempt to show area impoverishment being the result of among others the ignorance, and often, a methodical distortion of a historic substance, constituting an element of foreign heritage. In an outline, she presents a difficult process of regaining the awareness of a multicultural heritage of these lands, underlining a contribution of the Borussia Cultural Community to the development of a different culture of inheritance than the one before the political transformation. A work of art being a carrier of historical and aesthetic values is also a memory of the place. Especially the architecture monuments realize this mission combining the present with the past. They remind of their old identity performing a new function today. Basing on the example of the project Mendelson’s House, realized by Borussia in Olsztyn, the possibilities of the restoration of the very object connected with the history of East-Prussian Jews and an activity of Erich Mendelson, a world-famous architect from Olsztyn were presented. The project realized by Borussia seems to be a solution adjusted to the contemporary needs connected with the acquisition of cultural heritage and places of memory. In view of its aesthetic values, art is a special carrier of memory and cultural good building, as attempted to be shown, the sense of a region al identity inscribing into the idea of an open regionalism. The art of this region is perceived as dominants of the cultural memory when exploring and acquiring a multicultural heritage of Warmia and Mazuria.

In the light of a deepening globalization and degradation of a cultural diversification of societies, many actions aiming at maintaining their unique nature are taken. The very activity concentrates especially on intangible representations of cultural heritage which are particularly susceptible to depreciation, and, consequently, loss as a result of modern civilization processes such as uncontrolled urbanization and destruction of rural areas. The awareness of constantly progressing dangers enforces taking proper actions and engaging the international society. Out of concern for maintaining the most precious elements of the world intangible heritage, a series of programmes, among whom the ones conducted by UNESCO should be paid special attention to. One of them is the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the result of which is among others creating The Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. UNESCO’s convention was approved of enthusiastically as an important step to maintaining cultural heritage. At the same time, the actions undertaken initiated many debates, mainly in the circle of ethnologists, culturologists, animators or pedagogues. The voices of polemics touch upon many aspects of The Convention: from theoretical-methodological to those concerning particular means of realizing given tasks. The article concentrates on several selected issues that need reflection, or even, verification of opinions made so far. The findings in question are very important especially in the light of ratifying The Convention by the Republic of Poland in 2011.

Cultural and art heritage of Slovakia has been since 2007 one of the priorities in research and development. As a consequence of growing globalization and acculturation there is a real danger of the loss of traditional cultural values. That is why it is crucial to pay special attention to the research of cultural and art heritage. Application of knowledge on cultural heritage in the educational process is highly important because the level of national and ethnic identity and pride of young generation is not connected with cultural and art traditions of Slovakia.

The article presents an over 65-year history and output of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas, treated as an invaluable source of information on the Polish traditional culture. The main challenge to be currently faced by the Atlas Studio, is actions in favour of the maintenance and promotion of cultural heritage included in the materials from the field studies. The very materials prove the elements of cultural heritage comprising information on disappearing beliefs, traditions, ceremonies, social and economic behaviours such as agriculture, farming, rural construction, or traditional craft. Thus, what becomes necessity is digitalization allowing for maintaining and popularizing Atlas. Making digital copies and their availability is extremely important for maintaining cultural heritage for future generations. On the other hand, it will protect this part of the output of Polish ethnology, namely a valuable and unique collection of the materials of the Polish Ethnographic Atlas.