"Miejscy wieśniacy" w metropolii : przypadek świętochłowickiej dzielnicy Lipiny

Abstract

The Silesian voivodeship is the most urbanised area of Poland, claiming for a metropolitan status. It has been the most industrialised region in Poland, where, from the mid-19th century, heavy industry gave the shape of everyday life of local communities, their internal organisation, professional habits, customs and rituals. For decennia the old workers communities of the Silesian voivodeship where a kind of ‘urban villages’, where one could observed a strong neighbourhood relationship, close family ties, attachment to traditional values and customs, and professional ethos. The economic transformation of the early 1990s and the beginning of the industrial decline were particularly important factors of the process of degradation of the former workers communities. In some cases the situation became dramatic, when the closing of local coal mines or steel factories was accompanied by the increase of unemployment and poverty. The sociological investigation show that for the inhabitants of former workers communities closing of their ‘mother pit’ or factory which for decennia was the main employer in the locality is defined mainly in the terms of dispossession and loss. This image of the former workers communities is far from being completed. The authors intended to demonstrate that even the most deprived areas in the industrial part of the Silesian voivodeship one could discover enclaves of ‘urban villagers’, spending most of their everyday activities within the limited space of the city district or street, with a specific underclass or poverty ‘culture’, functional to their sometimes very hard living conditions and lack of resources. Lipiny, a district of the town of Świętochłowice, is an ex-ample of such an ‘urban villagers’’ community.