The great 13th century scholar Yāqūt al-Hamawī, compiled his well-known geographical dictionary – Mucğam al-Buldān – using an incredibly vast corpus of sources that allowed him to describe the lands lying beyond the realm of Islam. The aim of this paper is to identify the sources he used to describe issues dealing with the Slavs or those peoples and areas thought by Arab writers to belong to or be connected with the Slavs. The results shed some light on the state of knowledge of this area among 13th century inhabitants of the caliphate. At the same time, the author’s analysis of the methods employed to compose the material on the Slavs that appears in the Dictionary helped determine the aim and the role of this work in the caliphate.
The text discusses words occurring in the Polish-East Slavic borderlands and prevalent in eastern Polish dialects. Differntiation between old references and loans in this area is not always easy. The material presented here is very diverse. In the case of certain words, identifying them as East Slavic loans with an indisputable source is possible, while in the case of others it is difficult to identify the direct source of the loan. Among the words recorded in the East Slavic borderlands we can find those whose range in Polish dialects seems to indicate the possibility of Ruthenian influence; however, their Polish phonetic form implies their native origin and one should speak about an old reference in this respect. We also encounter Pan-Slavic words, where a doubt arises as to whether they are loans or old references in Polish in the East Slavic area and Eastern Poland.
The paper presents the indicator method as an important tool of research in social sciences with the focus on socio-economic geography. It introduces the notion of indicator in the methodological meaning and concentrates on its basic type, i.e. the inferential indicator. The concept of an indicator is explained using a realistic approach, which assumes that unobservable conceptual properties can be represented by observable real properties. In this approach, an indicator is characterised as an observable variable assumed to point to, or estimate, some other unobservable variable. The indicator method is then a way of the realistic conceptualization and a cognitive operation as well. The paper contains the systematization of cognitive indicators in socio-economic geography. It also shows the examples of the construction and interpretation of applied indicators.
The Cracow districts have the status of auxiliary self-governing units within this city and, generally should be communities of residents living in particular parts of the city, close to them, in which they implement their daily practices. In theer article, the authors, by examining the sense of belonging to the district, undertook to identify its perception by residents and relations between the residents and their auxiliary units, on the example of two such districts this of VIII Dębniki and X Swoszowice. Attitudes of their residents towards self-governing districts were identified on the basis of 1141 questionnaires, obtaining during surveys conducted in 2017. The authors have found relatively weak relations of residents with their auxiliary units, as evidenced by small involvement in initiatives taken for the benefit of this districts. The analysis, however, showed also considerable differences in the detailed assessment of the attitudes of residents at the level of their division according to their age groups, period of the residence, as well as to the type of housing a single-family, multi-family or mixed ones.
Water names, using the genetic-motivational criteria, can be divided into two superior groups: deappellative and deproprial hydronyms. Among the hydronyms derived from proper names, one can distinguish between the detoponymic and deanthroponymic. The names of flowing waters from anthroponyms are the subject of this article. Preliminary statistical data regarding deanthroponymic potamonyms in the Vistula river basin, their chronology, naming models, word formation bases and geographical distribution are presented. The results of the analysis show that the deanthroponymic potamonyms account for approximately 6.8% of the names of flowing waters of the Vistula river basin, estimated at more than 13,500. They appear sporadically in documents as early as in the 13th century, with only 12% visible until the 16th century, with most of them not being noticed until the 19th and 20th centuries. Such a statistical distribution is typical for the names of the flowing waters of that basin. Deanthroponymic names of rivers represent a variety of naming models, but most often appear as a part of compound names created with the suffix -ów, one-word formations with the same suffix and derivatives from the suf. -ka. They mainly identify objects located between the Soła River and the Dunajec River, especially in the Dunajec River basin, so in mountainous and submontainous areas, as K. Rymut claimed. The basis of such potamonyms are mainly personal names with different motivations, rarely being ethnonyms and first names.
The article offers a presentation of one of the most influential currents in contemporary Marxism. The author claims that the vitality of Marxism comes from its ability to conceptualize ongoing transformations of capitalism, mainly the new forms of productions and appropriation of social wealth. The latter day Marxists propose a materialistic theory of common good. Its main concepts (primitive accumulation, enclosure of the common fields, productive labor and re-productive labor) are of Marxian origin, but they acquire a new sense in the new context. These reinterpretations are inspired by three basic philosophical and political sources: post-operaism, radical geography and bottom-to-top history. The article analyzes the connections between these concepts and the Marxism of common good.
The article presents another volume “Slavic Linguistic Atlas”, “Personal Characteristics”. The majority of works on this topic have often been atomic – both in the reflection of some aspects and in terms of linguistic geography. In contrast to them the Atlas materials allow to expand its research and to come into cultural dialectology which aims at the reconstruction of the Slavic “living antiquity”. The author pays attention to the fact that the Atlas maps reflect lexical synonymy in various ways: some of them show unity in comprehension of these or those nominated features whereas others demonstrate the high grade of variability. As a result the semantic density of maps is different. Using the criteria of word number per meaning item, the author reveals the areas of “high language voltage” and proves that they have come from different cultural development of the concrete meanings in different Slavic dialects. The author thinks that the difference in map lexical density proves different cultural socialization of human being in different Slavic dialects which has leaded to their differentiation. Thus the maps of “Slavic Linguistic Atlas” along with dialect differentiation illustrate cultural differentiation of the Slavic dialects.
To study language contact in the Polish-East Slavic borderland, we employ extensive subdialect records from atlases, dictionaries, monographic studies, and various file collections. Significantly, however, all of the above lack historical information about the words they contain. Such data can be obtained by using local names and by taking into account all pan-Slavic references. Such comparisons justify the conclusion that historically many of the presented names extended far further westward than is indicated by typically used materials, mainly from the 20th century, though much less frequently from the second half of the 19th century. This sheds new light on the problem of whether the names in question are loan words, naturally older than had previously been thought, or rather relics of former regional convergence, covering the broad Polish-Russian language borderland, and constituting the Mazovian-Russian community.
The Author discusses the present state of Polish geography against the background of the traditional position, and the rapid development taking place after the Second World War. The introduction of new methods and new directions, as well as new organization are considered to have been reflected in the rising international position of Polish geography. Further topics here include the relationship between physical and human geography, the growing de facto separation of these two branches, and the development of several independent sciences rooted in geography but now existing apart from it (like geomorphology, climatology, hydrology, etc. on the physical geography side, with the element of the environment as a subject of study). On the other hand, social economic geography examines the effects of human activity in the environment, thereby synthesizing spatial management and bridging the gap between the earth sciences, the economy and the social sciences. The degradation of environmental resources, explosion of the human population and climate change have all forced geography (and other sciences) to head in the global direction, as well as towards interdisciplinary cooperation, likewise on the level of the world as a whole. If we are to meet the challenges this all entails, we will need to think about creating interdisciplinary problem teams, as well as activating existing organisational structures in science (notably the geographical sciences), with full benefit taken from research centres that run studies on differing spatial scales, in conjunction with international global programmes like the Future Earth. The geography of the future should not be a closed science, but should draw on the knowledge of scholars of various specialisations, seeking environmental solutions that require intervention on both the global and regional scales. Polish geography should participate in this activity, inter alia as part of Future Earth, as a new venture. It can also be regarded as our task to ensure that society is aware of all the above issues.
The author has presented a short history of the Economic Geography Department of the Cracow University of Economics in the years 1958–2018. The scientific and didactic staff, its basic journalistic achievements and the main didactic activity were presented.