@misc{Kabzińska_Iwona_The_2006,
 author={Kabzińska, Iwona},
 volume={27},
 copyright={Rights Reserved - Restricted Access},
 address={Warszawa},
 journal={Ethnologia Polona},
 howpublished={online},
 year={2006},
 publisher={Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences},
 language={eng},
 abstract={One of the leading trends in modern ethnology/cultural anthropology consists in studying the cultural border/borderlands phenomenon. This trend is defined as the anthropology of borders or the anthropology of borderlands. In Poland it has been strongly represented since after the year 1989. The political changes and the transformation of the political system which took place at that time contributed to its development. One should nonetheless emphasize that also in socialist times a few papers were published concerning the ethnic/cultural borderlands. The aim of the socialist state was namely to create homogeneous communities of citizens, also from an ethnic perspective, whereas research on borderlands pointed to actual differences, confrontations between ‘othernesses’ and their effects. The author of this paper presents some examples of writings by Polish ethnologists and sociologists which have had a significant impact on studies of the borderland phenomenon, the definition of its indicators and on identifications of its different types. They also present various points of view on the phenomenon. One of them is the perspective of people living in cultural, ethnic and national borderlands. Part of the article has been devoted to the specific category of the borderland’s inhabitant. The author, for instance by referring to the results of her own fieldwork carried out in the Republic of Belarus at the Polish-Belarus border, points to the fact that the behaviour of borderland-people may, to some extent, differ from the model which is usually described by researchers. The article also draws the readers’ attention to a phenomenon consisting in an excessive extension of the understanding of the term ‘borderland’ which is understood as a cultural space, often symbolic, encompassing different phenomena and situations of ethnic/cultural contacts and occurs not only in human communities but also in individuals. As a result the term becomes imprecise},
 type={Text},
 title={The cultural border phenomenon},
 keywords={Border, borderland, Polish research, otherness},
}