Orientalism and images of Eastern Poland

A much more ambiguous issue revolves around the origins of these regional inequalities and extends to the broader question of how development plans for the region are interpreted and understood. What seems particularly controversial is the diagnosis of the problems of Eastern Poland as a 'natural' function of the link between economic issues and subjective interpretations of contemporary social and political behavior patterns, not to mention reference visions of the region’s past. In this regard, Eastern Poland is usually assigned negative stereotypes pertaining to allegedly innate and clearly detrimental cultural-psychological traits of its populace. These often questionable interpretations, which refer to such notions as specific “mentality” , “culture” or “attitude” as allegedly prevailing in the region, are linked to selected indexes of economic growth which are clearly negative. This is done in order to suggest a causal relationship between the later and the former. In this way, images of a 'backward' region, not only in the sense of material prosperity, but also in the sense of mental and cultural achievement, are produced. As it seems, many of these perspectives do not have sufficient empirical or even moral justification and can thus be considered as instances of symbolic violence exerted on that part of Poland by dominant cultural and economic centers of power. It is worthwhile to look closer at the mechanisms that produce this kind of discourse. Revealing their roots, methods of reproduction and modes of use may be instrumental in understanding the broader question of the production of culturally inferior perspectives of regions in general.