Androcentrism in the discourse and structure of Polish ethnology. Prolegomena
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Date
2009
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Abstract
The objective of the present article is to make a preliminary study and to create a “map” of the phenom
enon of androcentrism in Polish ethnology and cultural anthropology. Androcentrism – understood as the
domination of masculine norms in culture – has become, since the 1970s, one of the subjects of interest
of anthropology in Western Europe and the United States. Anthropology, inspired by feminism, thus has
coined the concept of “androcentric bias” in this discipline which is both
strictly
scientific and institutional.
The author shall endeavour to analyse the discourse and structure of Polish ethnology using this concept
and this very instrument. He also discusses whether it is possible to overcome the androcentric bias at
the discourse level (or would this lead to ginecentrism, which is equally limiting?).
The actual control and power exercised by men over academic institutions in ethnology and the early
interest in folk culture fully confirm the thesis of a strong androcentric element existing in Polish ethno
logy. Although the author does not aspire to exhaust the topic, or to reach final conclusions, the exam
ples mentioned in the present article show rather unequivocally that Polish female ethnologists – doing
fieldwork, organisational work, conducting lecture and writing – were indeed, following de Beauvoir’s
terminology, “the second sex".
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Keywords
androcentrism, androcenrtic bias, Polish ethnology and cultural anthropology, mythisation
Citation
Ethnologia Polona vol. 29-30, 2008-2009, pp. 77-88