Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness: An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland

by Tomasz Rakowski

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785332401
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	10/01/2016
Series:	European Anthropology in Translation , #6
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

Foreword Jan Kubik viii

Acknowledgments xii

Preface xiv

Introduction: The Anthropologist as a Poverty Inspector 1

An Anthropological Shift in Perspective 1

The "Culture of Poverty": Getting Beyond the Concept 1

Social Trauma and Dependency: Shift in Perspective 4

Hermeneutics and Anthropology 7

Toward a Method 11

Maurice Merleau-Ponty-The "Patron Saint" of the Present Ethnography 11

Method: (Lack of) Ethnographic Knowledge 18

Pretextual Ethnography 21

The Most Bitter Side of the Polish Transformation: Fields of Research 27

The "New Poverty" 27

Post-Transformation Social Degradation 30

Postsocialism: History and Experience 33

The Studied Phenomena 36

The Field Research 38

Chapter 1 The Szydlowiec and Przysucha Environs-The Swierokrzyskie Foothills 42

A World Full of Adversities 42

Unemployment and the Farming Recession 42

A Community of the Unemployed: Immobility, Odd Jobs, and "Tragic Scarring" 47

Motionless Orchards, Motionless Fields: Failure 52

Dependency and Irreversibility: A Reproof at the World 56

Second-String Ecology 63

The New Face of the Jobless Village 67

Gatherers of Wild Herbs and Undergrowth, Gatherers of Fir Wood 67

The "New Ecology": The Convertibility of the Environment 70

Collection, Conversion, Transition 77

The "Culture of Survival" 83

Chapter 2 Walbrzych-Boguszów-Gorce 87

From Destruction to "Empty" Communication: The Liquidation of the Coal Basin 87

The City and the Mine 87

The Highly Ambivalent Story of the Walbrzych Basin 92

Experience and Liquidation: Destruction-The City-The Body 97

How to Speak of Liquidation? (Auto)aggression-Dialogue-Social Muteness 102

Externalized Shame: Empty Communication and Internal Spectacles 105

Facing Reality after the Mines (1) 109

Complaints-Accusations-Triumphs 113

A World Affected from the Outside 116

Bootleg Mines, Diggers, Skills: The Body's Active Knowledge 116

Rhythm, Jokes, Anecdotes: "Scoffing at the World" 122

Law and Lawlessness: Interior Spectacles 125

The Grey Market: Deal-Making and Resourcefulness 130

The "Internal Circulation" and the Fragmentation of Transactions 137

Home-Oikos: Internal Circulation 142

Freedom in the Mines 145

"Do-It-Yourself" Equipment 145

Working and Efficiency in Manual Labor: Resources and Deposits 149

Demolition-Collecting-Objects 153

Things 159

Memory 163

Facing Reality after the Mines (2) 166

Chapter 3 The Belchatów Brown Coal Mine-The Shadowlands of the Exposed Mine 178

The Mine/Power Station 178

The Perfect Balance, an Abrupt Modernization 178

The Experience of Alienation and Control over the Environment 181

At the Margins of the Great Industry: Marginalization and Exclusion 185

The Mine: Orbis Exterior 190

Violence, Guilt, and the Building Sacrifice 196

The Consequences of "Excess": Metaphors of Exploitation 200

The Mine: Orbis Interior 203

The Players, Their Families, and Their Means of Sustenance 203

Self-Sufficiency, Subsistence: Gathering and Processing Goods 206

Hunting and Gathering 211

Waclaw Okonski-The Stalker, Orbis Interior 221

Goods and Trophies: The Hunting/Gathering Existence on the Edge of the Mine 226

Records 231

Cabinets of Curiosities, Collectors' Museums 231

The Work of Memory: Reconstructions, Objects, Collections 237

"The Science of the Concrete": Inscriptions, Journals, Enumeration 243

Hunters and Gatherers-Practitioners of Powerlessness 250

Conclusion 260

The "Reality Testing" 260

Outcome 264

Beyond Anthropology 266

Appendix 270

Bibliography 278

Index 303

Editorial Reviews

“[T]his book is a treasure that will be mined by anyone interested in the human costs of Poland’s market economy, in comparative studies of postsocialist societies, and in experiences of marginalization, de-industrialization, and de-modernization around the world… As an example of anthropology at home, this book raises many important issues of theory and method.” • Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI)

“The virtue of Rakowski’s book lies in his exact observation and the way the author pays attention to the way change is experienced – bodily, metaphorically, in everyday practices and yearning – and he links them to symbolic meaning and patterns of thought and behaviour, both synchronically and diachronically.” • Anthropological Journal of European Cultures

“In Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness, Rakowski has produced a haunting and beautiful book. The ethnographic writing is extraordinary. It is an unusual skill, to be able to write about degradation but also to convey the dignity of individual lives. Anyone interested in postsocialism, poverty, or economic anthropology more generally should read this book.” • Journal of Anthropological Research

“Tomasz Rakowski presents a theoretically reflective and empirically rich ethnographic study of ‘the degraded’ in three geographical locales in Poland which were ravaged by change… [His] study does these people justice and represents a significant intellectual achievement.” • Slavonic and East European Review

“With a very unique voice and perspective, the ethnographer examines the phenomenology and ontology of postsocialist Poland, where people have been driven to an almost pre-modern (the author even says pre-Neolithic) mode of existence, reformulating their experience of the environment and their relationship to objects created and abandoned by the retreating industrial system.” • Anthropology Review Database

“This is an important book that is both theoretically insightful and ethnographically rich. It provides a look into the “other side” of the postcommunist, neoliberal transformation in Poland, focusing on those who experienced social degradation—they lost social status as the country has gained position in the global economy.” • Marysia Galbraith, University of Alabama

“Rakowski is consistent in following his outlined path, trying to return the culture of poverty its human, inner face. Hermeneutical evidence, backed by extraordinary field work experience and thick description, give desired results. Polish ethnological tradition combined with inspirations drawn from world-class anthropologists, the achievements of Polish researchers of poverty and the classics of sociology and philosophy, result in a work of unquestionable research and intellectual value. A real breakthrough in studies on marginalised people, victims of progress.” • Michał Buchowski, Adam Mickiewicz Universityin Poznań, European UniversityViadrina

“In his book Rakowski studies the most tragic dimension of the postcommunist condition, by immersing himself in the lives of those who experienced the total, if temporary, collapse of the economic and social foundations of their existence. He produces three nuanced ethnographies of social and economic resilience in the face of not just an economic collapse but also a cultural catastrophe. [...]Rakowski, an heir to the tradition of Bronisław Malinowski and Florian Znaniecki, takes it to a new level, enriching it not only with the results of his own trail-blazing ethnographic work, but also with novel interpretive threads, taken for example from Marleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. It is hard to find a better ethnographic example of the work that is 'ontological' in its spirit.” From the foreword, Jan Kubik, UniversityCollege London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies

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