The People That Survived by a Miracle: On Ethnic Self-Presentation of the Kashubians

Abstract

The article focuses on the discursive strategies of presenting ethnicity that are employed by the present-day Kashubians of Poland. Kashubians are a West Slavic minority ethnic group which was legally recognized as a regional linguistic community in 2005. Drawing on the materials of anthropological fieldwork conducted in areas inhabited by ethnic Kashubians, I describe some of the practices of ethnic and national self-definition of the locals and address the ways in which Kashubians experience otherness and use the rhetoric of otherness. Analyzing a range of themes and topics related to the ethnicity of the informants, I show how Kashubians of different generations reflect on the ethnic and linguistic specificity of their community, construct, maintain, and cross the traditional and new social boundaries, as well as ponder over the issue of preserving their group identity within the framework of the Polish national state.