Ethnographic mapping of the Polish Highlanders’ region by Wincenty Pol and other researchers

Abstract

As early as the first half of the 19th century, attempts were made to describe the inhabitants of the Carpathians (Carpathian Highlander Region – Góralszczyzna), taking into account the existing divisions into groups (“clans”) or ethnographic regions. In accordance with the modernist (Enlightenment-positivist) paradigm of scientific cognition, these groups / regions were presented in a “substantial” manner, following the principles of the objective and methodological naturalism. The first researcher who divided the population living in the northern slopes of the Carpathians – analogically to how these mountains are divided – into three “ethnographic groups” and in then into “clans” was Wincenty Pol. He did not present this quite detailed ethnographic delimitation in a graphic form due to the lack of a map suitable for this purpose. A detailed map, presenting the divisions and ranges of the Polish Highlander Region and its ethnographic groups proposed by Pol and several other researchers, was made only almost 120 years later by Józef Babicz. The differences between the boundaries of the Highlander region and the ranges of the groups / regions it contains indicate that the substantial approach to these issues is inadequate to the depicted social and cultural reality. Certain views of Pol may inspire the creation of an alternative concept of ethnographic diversity in general, and of the Polish Highlander Region in particular.