Re-making the Gorale: regional identity, European Union cultural policy and new models of 'entrepreneurial' citizenship in the Carpathian Borderlands

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Title: 'Re-making the Gorale: Regional Identity, European Union cultural policy and new models of 'entrepreneurial' citizenship in the Carpathian borderlands. Duration: 1st November, 2010 - 1st August, 2011.SummaryThe fall of Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 sparked a resurgence of nationalism and nationalist sentiments, the popular perception of communism as a foreign imposition driving the repatriation of the state in favour of the nation. Twenty years after the break-up of the Eastern Bloc, however, the strengthening of regions as political and cultural entities threatens the unequivocal status of the nation-state as the origin of cultural and ethnic identities. The research proposed examines this recent development, and seeks to understand the relationship between regional identity, European Union cultural policy and new models of 'entrepreneurial' citizenship in the borderlands of the Silesian Beskids, Southern Poland. The overall objective is to document and understand how the model of 'entrepreneurial' citizenship is actively appropriated and put into practice in the making of local and regional identities. This work focuses on three major areas of enquiry. The first is the role of 'cultural entrepreneurialism' for the creation of micro-businesses, jobs and cultural policy within the frame of Poland's post-socialist economic restructuring. The second is the importance of European Union cultural policy and its accompanying models of citizenship for the development of regional identities that are supported by such entrepreneurial ventures. Finally, the research questions the ability of such new modes of civic engagement, belonging and identity to challenge to the political, bureaucratic and cultural hegemony of the Polish nation-state. These questions have arisen with the maturation of my current research project Lace and Licentiousness: The Politics of Shared Knowledge, funded by The Nuffield Foundation. The study was originally conceived as an examination of how policies of economic transition influenced innovation, small-scale entrepreneurship and the changing politics of specialist knowledge amongst traditional craft workers (lace makers) in Koniaków, Southern Poland. Long-term fieldwork in the region, however, revealed that entrepreneurialism and European integration are being embraced explicitly as the path to the re-discovery and revival of Highland (Górale) culture, traditions and dialect in the Silesian Beskids. At the same time, cultural funding from supra-national organizations is being sought for activities that strengthen ethnic and cultural ties with Górale groups across the border in the Slovak and Czech Republics. One example that highlights this process is the resurrection of the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Dukedom of Cieszyn Silesia as a 'Euroregion' in 1999. These measures have emphasized the cultural and historical integrity of regional identity, while creating conceptual links between the old, multi-ethnic political formation of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the European Union. Using contemporary bureaucracy, Górale groups are re-imagining and re-instating historical territories, borders, and ethnic and linguistic communities. Together, these developments present alternative models of citizenship, civic engagement and belonging that all challenge the political, bureaucratic and cultural hegemony of the nation-state. The planned six months of field research and archival work will already be completed by the proposed start date. The Fellowship is thus being sought primarily for the purposes of analysis, writing up and dissemination of the research, as well as the development of scholarly debate surrounding the issues in the form of a themed seminar hosted by the School of Interdisciplinary Areas Studies, University of Oxford.