PI: dr Piotr Kubkowski
Co-investigator: mgr Justyna Szklarczyk
Funding body: National Science Center Poland / SONATA grant
Project time-span: 2020–2025
The subject of the research is the activity of Polish country lore (krajoznawstwo) practitioners gathered in societies and clubs organizing excursions on Polish lands, photographing landscapes and describing them. The aim of the research is to understand the meaning of these cultural practices for the production of Polish national identity. The research is based on a hypothesis according to which country lore played a significant role in processes of producing national identity. It was produced not just using written and spoken word (although publishing magazines, feature pieces, fiction, descriptions of undertaken excursions, guidebooks, etc., as well as public lectures were all an important part of the activity of the movement), but, most importantly, by walking and looking. These seemingly trivial bodily-sensory practices did not translate into actual assimilation of territories nor unifying them into one state body. It was, however, during those excursions that the canon of “shared” Polish landscapes was established, providing the grounds for founding a democratic, modern “imagined community”, i.e. the nation.