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The Natsyas of the Grodno region of Belarus: A Field Study
Author(s) -
Engelking Anna
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
nations and nationalism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.655
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1469-8129
pISSN - 1354-5078
DOI - 10.1111/j.1354-5078.1999.00175.x
Subject(s) - lithuanian , politics , prayer , state (computer science) , identity (music) , sociology , confusion , national identity , ethnology , gender studies , history , religious studies , political science , law , linguistics , philosophy , aesthetics , psychology , algorithm , computer science , psychoanalysis
. This research was conducted in 1993–4 in several peripheral kolkhoz villages in the north‐west Belarus Grodno province, a religious (Catholic/Orthodox) and linguistic (Belarussian/RussiadPolish/Lithuanian)borderland. The members of the folk communities of this region conceive and categorise social reality differently than it is done by the members of a nationalised and urbanised society, according to religious, and not nation‐state, criteria. People are divided by these criteria into natsyas , i.e. religious groups. There are two main natsyas : the Catholics (also called Poles) and the Orthodox (called Rus' or Belarussians). The distinctive criterion for several natsyus is the language of a prayer: the Catholics pray in Polish and/or Lithuanian, the Orthodox in Old Church Slavonic and Russian. The terms Catholic natsya and Polish natsya (and similarly Orthodox natsya or Rus' natsya ) are synonymous. The language of everyday speech does not differentiate the natsyas; all the villagers speak Belarussian dialect or so called ‘plain language’. The natsya , a concept specific of traditional folk societies, should not be confused with a ‘nation’, a political term of the modem world. None the less, the kolkhoz peasants of the region under study are confronted with a concept of ‘nation’. It results in a turmoil in their worldview and in confusion about their identity; what we see in the Belarussian villages is a process of change. The borderland where the material was collected seems an excellent field for the study of the process of the emergence of nations.