Kurpie. Antropologiczno-historyczne studium kształtowania się tożsamości mieszkańców Puszczy Zielonej [The Kurpies. The Anthropological and Historical Study of the Formation of the Identity of the Inhabitants of the Green Wilderness]

The author presents the mechanisms of shaping the cultural identity of the Kurpies – a community inhabiting the forested area of north-eastern Mazovia since the second half of the 17th century. The key research category was family and collective memory and the ways of transmitting it. Thanks to it, the Kurpies have retained their family cultural capital based on the transmission of traditional values from generation to generation. The publication uses (sometimes for the first time) archival and memoir sources (starting in the 18th century), studies illustrating “the image of the Kurpies” as seen from the outside in the elite discourse (from the first quarter of the 19th century to the interwar period), documentation and research results (after World War II), as well as the author's own observations and materials from discussions with many local authorities and experts.

Keywords: Mazovia, the Kurpies, ethnographic region, identity, collective memory, discursive analysis.