Stan i potrzeby etnologicznych badań śląskoznawczych

Abstract

The text is an attempt to sum up the state of ethnological studies in Silesia. The author, emphasizing the fact that knowledge on the so called traditional folk culture does not require too many completions, however, she pays attention to the remaining gaps felt in the ethnological achievements of Silesian studies. These involve above all the lack of studies and publications concerning the community and bourgeois culture, a large number of intelligentsia, including technical intelligentsia, work groups connected with the industry, as well as studies of the space of a particularly culture‑creative importance (cemeteries, allotments, sport facilities and others). The contemporary multiculturalism of Silesia is created together with native people and those coming from different settlement waves which constitute a joint culture of borderline these days. A transformation evoked by socio‑economic changes brings a contemporary ethnologist new tasks, both when it comes to the research space and the research strategy. Thus, it is necessary to conduct the already started studies above all within the scope of cultural and social problems of towns, their symbolic space and the image of the culture of various social groups. It is also necessary to modify methods in the ethnological research strategy. Apart from the monographic method, integral or functional so far accepted in Polish ethnological studies a wide array of methods used in other humane sciences, such as a diagnostic, biographic and structural‑semiotic one should be implemented.