ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author uses ethnography to examine the manner in which discourses of 'enterprising citizenship' frame the contemporary performance of Gorale identity by investigating the effects of models of devolved policymaking on local development projects. Encouraging the use of public-private 'partnerships' between regional government and 'organizational citizens', the principles of European 'multi-level governance' have promoted devolution as democratization. Culture and citizenship have long been vehicles for the articulation of competing ideals of European governance. The post-1989 reform of Polish cultural policy shared this notion that culture, broadly defined, could be a panacea for the pains of post-socialist restructuring. 'The Euroregion Czieszyn Silesia as one of the regions which have a certain thread running through their culture, which bring together microregions which were once a whole, is a little less artificial'. The latent conflict surrounding the role and status of minority identity, then, appeared to be intimately associated with attempts to shore up the integrity of the Euroregion project itself.