Paper short abstract:

The paper will debate the questions about attention to different historical situations as important research strategies for cultural identity. It will discuss comparative approaches to ethnic and cultural identity of Lithuanian minorities on borderlands areas in Latvia and Poland.

Paper long abstract:

The issues of cultural identity in current anthropological theoretical debates in some cases differs from ethnographical imaginaries of my long term research in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Epistemological and methodological problems in my research of Lithuanian minority's identities show the importance of theoretical focus to intimate individual's opinions and situational ethnicity in small places. The research results in different places of borderlands in Europe describe aspects of issues in politics of identity and changing models of ethnic and national identity in social organization.

The paper will discuss the questions about attention to interactions of personal and cultural forms of individual and collective identities as important anthropological strategies for further comparative debates of large issues of identity politics. We'll analyze the different cases of transforming community's identities imaginaries.