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Paper short abstract:

In the history of Polish anthropology phenomenology and semiotics have been permanently effective methodological tools for the discipline in such different areas as economic exclusion, through research on populist nationalism, to the study of the history of anthropology itself.

Paper long abstract:

In the history of Polish ethnology/anthropology, two methodological paradigms have played a special role, whose intellectual and practical power has made them permanently effective tools for describing and understanding ethnographic material. I am referring to phenomenology, which has been developing since the 1930s, first at the ethnological centre in Vilnius, then in Warsaw, and semiotics, which since the 1970s has been a constantly developing theoretical perspective drawing inspiration from a number of theories present outside anthropology itself, but important for the social sciences and humanities. Recent works by Polish ethnologists/anthropologists show that both paradigms are extremely powerful tools for research on the present in its very different areas - from economic exclusion and impoverishment, through postsocialist nostalgia, research on populist nationalism, to the study of the history of anthropology itself. It is important that works written under the influence of these paradigms find recognition also outside the narrow circle of the discipline, are quoted by social scientists of various disciplines, are translated into foreign languages, contributing to the strengthening of the image of anthropology as an important component of science in Poland, although the labels under which they appear evoke incorrect associations with the ways in which ethnology was practised in the past.