Countermovements: Rural Social Imaginaries Confronting Neoliberal Economics and Politics in Southern Poland

Abstract

During the postsocialist economic transformation, liberal economic and political ideas encountered different pre-existing ontologies of power, work and economics in Poland, which were particularly prevalent in rural mountain regions in the south. This different world-making is the basis for a Polanyian countermovement against marketisation. However, the incompatibility of alternative ontologies does not prevent villagers from achieving economic success. These inherited ontologies are stabilising the uncertainties stemming from economic and political liberalisation through family ties and appraisal tools based on the values of rural culture.

Notes

1 I chose an administrative unit rather than an ethnographic region because of the need to refer to the statistical results of parliamentary elections held by administrative units.

2 Earlier in the 1990s I researched the northeast of Poland, in the Masuria region, where a major change in settlement took place in 1945. The German-speaking population was evacuated and the new settlers who arrived after World War II had been uprooted and deprived of their property, undergoing great hardship in the process. Looking for a new research site, I chose a region with the opposite characteristics.

3 Interview 378, Nowy Targ, 22 October 2001; Interview 382, Nowy Targ, 18 March 2004.

4 See Chris Hann's essay in this special issue.

5 Interview 502, Pyzówka, 28 September 2012.

6 Interview 510, Pyzówka, 19 March 2012.

7 In the period 1945–1952, Poland was officially called the Polish Republic.

8 National Unity Front (Front Jedności Narodu) was active in the years 1956–1983. Later, it continued as the Patriotic Movement of National Rebirth (Patriotyczny Ruch Odrodzenia Narodowego).

9 Interview 241, Gronków, 19 March 2000.

10 Interview 373, Nowy Targ, 20 October 2001; Interview 379, Nowy Targ, 21 October 2001.

11 Interview 389, Nowy Targ, 20 March 2004; Interview 390, Nowy Targ, 18 March 2004.

12 In 2010–2011, another peasant party was sometimes mentioned ‘Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland’ (Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej). In official statistics it achieved about 6% in the parliamentary elections of 2005 and 1% in 2007.

13 Interview 409, Piekielnik, 4 October 2005.

14 See also the essay by Juraj Buzalka in this special issue.

15 First introduced in 2007 when PiS was previously in government, the Karta Polaka (‘Pole's Card’) is a document confirming Polish identity made available to people in areas of Belarus, Lithuania and Ukraine and other parts of the former USSR who can demonstrate Polish ancestry and/or knowledge of the Polish language, irrespective of citizenship. It allows the bearer to study in Poland for free and travel there visa-free for work purposes, and now provides a pathway to obtaining full citizenship.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Malewska-Szałygin

Anna Malewska-Szałygin, Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Warsaw, ul. Żurawia 4, 00-503, Warsaw, Poland. Email: [email protected]