This article discusses the premises and outcomes of the ethnographic project “Foreigners in Poznań: Cultural Heterogeneity in Big Cities on the Example of Poznań”, by asking about the place of ethnicity (fundamental for anthropological studies) in the research of cultural heterogeneity. The independent qualitative analysis of empirical material demonstrates that even if generally ethnic identities do not determine directly the identifications of foreigners in Poznań, then the pan- or interethnic identities are a key to understanding how immigrants organise themselves or are organised in groups or categories. An account of cultural heterogeneity through the prism of cultural identities offers a purely anthropological alternative or at least an addendum to socio-economic classification of foreigners implemented within this project.

By the use of critical anthropological perspective, in this paper I unsettle specific theoretical and methodological premises of studies on Opole Silesia, which have in many ways determined resultant images of the region in scholarly literature. In this context, I find particularly problematic essentialised approaches toward “(Silesian) women,” and the more recent discourses of “disintegration,” which dwell on depopulation, migration, and collapsing social and family relations, or Silesian culture. To this end, I discuss social activities of women in the Dobrzeń Wielki commune, exemplified by an educational group focused on family issues, an association acting for a local community, a vocal ensemble, and a sporting team. Variously embedded in the late industrial condition, these activities are conceived as problematisations. Seen through this prism, they become significant contexts for emerging “norms and forms” of gender, Silesianity, and/or locality. At the same time, they encourage critical insights into such “norms and forms,” and their contribution to various idioms of Opole Silesia. Such problematisations allow therefore for revealing “discursive gaps” and “risks” (re)produced in the aforementioned literature on the region. By unsettling subjects and discursive forms with which it deals, the proposed ethnographic analysis turns into a tool for “generating surprises.”

The article is based on empirical research, one of the elements of which was to verify the knowledge, beliefs and ideas of young Wrocław residents about the Jewish cemeteries located in the city. The subject of the analysis was, first of all, knowledge of their history, importance for local culture and community; ideas about the role of cemeteries in Jewish culture and customs related to death and funeral. An important aspect was also finding out what the place of cemeteries is and how they are perceived in the local community, do they function in the minds of young people and in what way, are they really known to them and are they associated with the Jewish community living here, or rather perceived as places of memory and museum space.