THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF CULTURE IN POLAND: THE NEXT GENERATION?

The basic aim of the article is to analyse and assess the scholarly achievements of the youngest generation of the anthropologists of culture in Poland. The very notion of 'anthropology of culture' relates to a group of scholars active at the beginning of the 1980s. This group, very critical about the conditions of Polish ethnology at the time, formulated a new research programme that opened itself to new trends in the research of culture in the West. Today its representatives are recognized scholars and their works have become part of the local canon. Therefore, the direction in which the youngest scholars have gone, their attitude to tradition and their research areas seem to be of great interest. In author's opinion, the most important research areas, which co-create the picture of the new generation of Polish anthropology of culture, include: visual anthropology, analyses of popular culture, anthropology inspired by feminism, research into the phenomenon of globalization and the Internet. This means that anthropologists try to study what is new in culture, what emerges and what takes shape before their own eyes. Such key categories as a stranger, another, field research, poetics, style are redefined. It should be emphasized that young scholars have not formed any separate group that could be compared to that formed by their predecessors - this explains the question mark in the title. A wide range of their interests, personal passions, their own masters give an interesting multitude of scholarly approaches, unparallel in Polish anthropology until today.