Rakowski Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness

An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78533-241-8
Verlag: Berghahn
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 6, 332 Seiten, Mobipocket Unencrypted

Reihe: European Anthropology in Translation

The socio-economic transformations of the 1990s have forced many people in Poland into impoverishment. Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness gives a dramatic account of life after this degradation, tracking the experiences of unemployed miners, scrap collectors, and poverty-stricken village residents. Contrary to the images of passivity, resignation, and helplessness that have become powerful tropes in Polish journalism and academic writing, Tomasz Rakowski traces the ways in which people actively reconfigure their lives. As it turns out, the initial sense of degradation and helplessness often gives way to images of resourcefulness that reveal unusual hunting-and-gathering skills.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Rakowski, Tomasz

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Materielle Kultur, Wirtschaftsethnologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Politische Ethnologie, Recht, Organisation, Identität
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword
Jan Kubik
Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The Anthropologist as a Poverty Inspector

An Anthropological Shift in Perspective
The ‘Culture of Poverty’: Getting Beyond the Concept
Social Trauma and Dependency: Shift in Perspective        
Hermeneutics and Anthropology
Towards a Method
Maurice Merleau-Ponty – the ‘Patron Saint’ of the Present Ethnography
Method: (Lack of) Ethnographic Knowledge
Pre-textual Ethnography
The Most Bitter Side of the Polish Transformation: Fields of Research
The “New Poverty”
Post-socialism: History and Experience
The Studied Phenomena
The Field Research

Chapter 1. The Szydlowiec and Przysucha Environs (The S´wie?tokrzyskie and Radom Foothills)

A World Full of Adversities
Unemployment and the Farming Recession
Community of the Unemployed: Immobility, Odd Jobs and ‘Tragic Scarring’
Motionless Orchards, Motionless Fields: Failure
Dependency and Irreversibility: A Reproof at the World
Second-string Ecology
The New Face of the Jobless Village
Gatherers of Wild Herbs and Undergrowth, Gatherers of Fir Wood
The ‘New Ecology’: The Convertibility of the Environment
Collection, Conversion, Transition
The ‘Culture of Survival’

Chapter 2. Walbrzych – Boguszów-Gorce

From Destruction to ‘Empty’ Communication: The Liquidation of the Coal Basin
The City and the Mine
The Highly Ambivalent Story of the Walbrzych Basin
Experience and Liquidation: Destruction – The City – The Body
How to Speak of Liquidation? (Auto)aggression – Dialogue – Social Muteness
Externalized Shame: Empty Communication and Internal Spectacles
Facing Reality after the Mines (1)
Complaints – Accusations – Triumphs
A World Affected from the Outside
Bootleg Mines, Diggers, Skills: The Body’s Active Knowledge
Rhythm, Jokes, Anecdotes: ‘Scoffing at the World’
Law and Lawlessness: Interior Spectacles
The Grey Market: Deal-making and Resourcefulness
The ‘Internal Circulation’ and the Fragmentationof Transactions
Home-Oikos: The Internal Circulation
Freedom in the Mines
‘Do It Yourself’ Equipment
Working and Efficiency in Manual Labor: Resources and Deposits
Demolition – Collecting – Objects
Things
Memory
Facing Reality after the Mines (2)

Chapter 3. The Belchatów Brown Coal Mine -- The Shadowlands of the Exposed Mine

The Mine/ Power Station. The Perfect Balance, an Abrupt Modernization
Causative Alienation and Control over the Environment
At the Margins of the Great Industry – Marginalization and Exclusion
The Mine: Orbis Exterior
Violence, Guilt, and the Building Sacrifice
The Consequences of ‘Excess’: Metaphors of Exploitation
The Mine: Orbis Interior
The Players, Their Families, and Their Means of Sustenance
Self-sufficiency, Subsistence: Gathering and Processing Goods
Hunting and Gathering
Waclaw Okon´ski – The Stalker, Orbis Interior
Goods and Trophies: The Hunting/Gathering Existence on the Edge of the Mine
Records
Cabinets of Curiosities, Collectors’ Museums
The Work of Memory: Reconstructions, Objects, Collections
‘The Science of the Concrete’: Inscriptions, Journals, Enumeration
Hunters and Gatherers – Practitioners of Powerlessness

Conclusion

The ‘Reality Testing’
Outcome
Beyond Anthropology

Bibliography
Materials

Über Autor(innen)

Rakowski, Tomasz
Tomasz Rakowski is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, specialist in Accident & Emergency medicine. He conducts fieldwork in Poland and Mongolia.

Tomasz Rakowski is Associate Professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw. He is also a medical doctor, specialist in Accident & Emergency medicine. He conducts fieldwork in Poland and Mongolia.