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SHORT NOTES

Małgorzata Szpakowska (ed.), Obyczaje polskie. Wiek XX w król-kich hasłach (Polish Customs: Short Entries for the 20th Cen-tury], Warszawa 2008, Wydawnictwo WAB, 503 pp., annex

Five young rcsearchers have carried out an interesting experiment undcr the supervision of the well known anthropologist and historian of ideas Małgorzata Szpakowska. They have madę up a list of phenomena and devices which influenced the Poles’ everyday behaviour during the past century. Their main aim was to diagnose the impact of changes in customs on people’s consciousness. This is why they have madę less use of hard statistical or historical data and have relied rather on belles lettres, illustrated papers, television, films and sometimes also on publicists’ studies. They refer to the methodology used by one of the creators of Polish sociology, Florian Znaniecki, who encouraged the use of artists’ opinions as ‘social facts’. The authors of the book chose, on the one hand, phenomena of a lasting character and, on the other, questions which reflected the most important changes that occurred in the past century. This was a risky approach for the book does not contain such entries as ‘family*, ‘marriage’ which constitute the core of customs in every cpoch but contains the entry ‘divorce* for, as the authors cxplain, the popularization of divorces rcflects the most essential change that took place in the treatment of marriage and the family in the past century. The book is an inspiring intcllectual and methodological proposal and has evoked animated discussions between historians and anthropologists. (KK)