Auto-ethnographic techniques as an efficient tool for reconstruction of rural social capital and local identity

Many regions in Poland are said to be a unique example of preservation of cultural heritage. These include many examples of Pomorskie, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Wielkopolskie and Dolnoslaskie voivodships. These regions are known to preserve the traditional way of life and customs as well as the architecture, especially the sacral architecture. It is also much easier to build mutual trust and social capital in them, because people from those regions can always refer to the universal values of their ancestors. However, there are also regions which, under the influence of migration and post-displacement processes after World War II, have lost their cultural and social character. Economic emigrants and displaced people from the Eastern Borderlands and Central Poland shared poverty and desire to settle. Will they succeed, and is there a chance to recreate and build a new identity? Those are the questions we are trying to answer, and the following article presents some of the results. By moving the border of autobiographical and ethnographic methods, authors adopt an autoethnographic method (narrative interviews, participant observation, biographical methods), which means turning to narratives as a way of research and as an expression of the search for a different relationship between the researcher and the subject and between the author and the reader. The researchers use their own experiences as a source of description of the culture in which they participate and examine. As a result, the text is a story created by the local community and researchers, aimed at reproducing and creating identity in the post-immigrant rural communities based on experienced and historical memory. The research was conducted in the years 2016-2017 in the above mentioned voivodships