URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY - AN AREA OF THE CONCENTRATION OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL PROBLEMS (Antropologia miasta - obszar koncentracji problemów antropologicznych)

A proposal of a synthetic presentation of an urban anthropology project, which could constitute a conceptual framework for assorted empirical urban studies sufficiently extensive to encompass an anthropological interpretation of the 'world of the life' of a man of letters. The reflections are preceded by an outline of assorted stages in the moulding of the concept of urban anthropology, both in Poland and in Western science, which the authoress treats as a 'self-reflection' motif in urban anthropology (starting with the conception of 'expanding the object of ethnography' up to a change in the paradigm of anthropology). In a further part of her text the authoress seeks structures 'merging' numerous and divergent urban themes. The fundamental category of being - place, and in the dimension of the humanities - space and place, is a point of departure for anthropological motifs: the multiplicity of the senses and meanings of places in the town in their social, philosophical (the experiencing of 'being in space') and artistic dimension. The second keystone is time. The statement, recurring in 'town planning' literature in the manner of an axiom, namely, that the town is a permanent and complex temporal structure, creates a framework for an interpretation of a considerable part of urban experiences, collective conceptions and social practices: individual and collective memory, commemoration and annulment, revitalisation, nostalgia, etc. The temporal dimension discloses the connection between the town and culture, expressed in an ideological and literary discourse. Yet another fundamental concept of anthropology, i. e. the identity due to people and places, also refers to the past.