Common Culture and the Ideology of Difference in Medieval and Contemporary Poland

Download or read book Common Culture and the Ideology of Difference in Medieval and Contemporary Poland written by Teresa Pac and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Teresa Pac provides a much-needed contribution to the discussion on shared culture as foundational to societal survival. Through the examination of common culture as a process in medieval Kraków, Poznań, and Lublin, Pac challenges the ideology of difference—institutional, religious, ethnic, and nationalistic. Similarly, Pac maintains, twenty-first century Polish leaders utilize anachronistic approaches in the invention of Polish Catholic identity to counteract the country’s increasing ethnic and religious diversity. As in the medieval period, contemporary Polish political and social elites subscribe to the European Union’s ideology of difference, legitimized by a European Christian heritage, and its intended basis for discrimination against non-Christians and non-white individuals under the auspices of democratic values and minority rights, among which Muslims are a significant target.