Since the time of Homer, “Pygmies” have been a literary motif in scientific disputes as short stature peoples that no one has ever seen. It wasn’t until 1870 that, in search of the sources of the Nile, G.A. Schweinfurth combined the Homer name “Pygmies” with specific people he met on the edge of the forests of Africa. Since then they have become the subject of scientific research. There are two policies regarding the “Pygmies”. One demands keeping them “in the natural state”, the other requires settling and learning agriculture. Each group has its name, history, language, etc. Unfortunately, they remain a construct – everyone has heard of them, but no one really knows them. The aim of the article is to present the complexity of the “Pygmy” case and show how much the fate of given populations depends on the state of knowledge, awareness of the problem and adopted strategies.

The aim of this article is to discuss the question of “anthropologization” within polish ethnology/anthropology considered through its peculiar institutional fragmentation and diffusion. This reflection is mainly drawn upon the research conducted between 2015 and 2019 with anthropologists practicing in two different Institutes in Cracow. Even though the fragmentation within anthropology and process of “anthropologization” are already established and do not call for the polish context only as well, in the light of the newly introduced policy in Poland doing away the independence of the discipline they require to be revisited. In order to do this, I am examining the consistence of anthropology using analytical tools introduced by Stephen Fuchs’ theory within sociology of science.

The article concerns the history of ethnography in the XIX century Poland as well as the problems of fieldwork and scientific writing itself. It argues that the predicaments related to multiple changes of the researcher’s external and internal point of view in the field and in the process of writing – together with the assumption about the ethnographer as an “outsider” and the “scientific excursions” as rites of passage – are as old as are the ethnographic interests in Poland and Europe.

* Niniejszy artykuł jest fragmentem przygotowywanej książki Etnografia to piękna zabawka w rękach literatów z dworów i miast w Polsce XIX wieku i później.