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Still an Awkward Class: Central European post-peasants at home and abroad in the era of neoliberalism

100%

Hann C.

Praktyka Teoretyczna

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2013

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vol. 9

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issue 3

177-198

PL

Artykuł oparty jest na posiadanej przez autora pogłębionej wiedzy dotyczącejwschodnioeuropejskiego życia wiejskiego w ostatnich czterech dekadach. Przed socjalizmem,a także w jego trakcie i po nim mieszkańców wsi ( „chłopi” ) zawsze włączanow obręb szerszych struktur, stanowiąc wyzwanie dla klasycznych teorii z zakresu naukspołecznych. Podstawę ich odrębności stanowi większa zdolność do samoreprodukcji „poza rynkiem”, co odpowiada utrzymującemu się podziałowi na miasto i wieś oraz niesie konsekwencje dla mobilizacji politycznej. W artykule rozwinięte zostają dwuelementowe porównania: pierwsze, między kapitalistycznymi i socjalistycznymi drogami rozwoju obszarów wiejskich, oraz drugie, w obrębie tego ostatniego pomiędzy produktywną symbiozą dokonaną w socjalistycznych Węgrzech i stagnacją nieskolektywizowanej Polski. Niektóre z przeciwieństw między tymi ostatnimi utrzymały się w nowych formach w okresie członkostwa w Unii Europejskiej. Wreszcie, autor wyraża osobistą nostalgię za czasami, w których badania na wspólnotami wiejskimi stanowiły fundament etnograficznego opisu tego regionu.

EN

The paper builds on the author’s intimate knowledge of Eastern European village life over four decades. Before, during, and after socialism, villagers (“peasants” ) have always been incorporated into wider structures, while at the same time challenging standard social science theories. Their greater ability to reproduce themselves “outside the market” is the basis of their distinctiveness; this corresponds to a persisting distinction between town and countryside and has implications for political mobilization. The paper develops binary comparisons at two levels: first, between capitalist and socialist paths of rural development; second, within the latter, between the productive symbiosis accomplished in socialist Hungary and the stagnation of non-collectivized Poland. Some of these latter contrasts have persisted in new forms in the era of EU membership. Finally, the author expresses some personal nostalgia for the days when rural community studies constituted the bedrock of ethnographic writing about this region.

2

The seductions of Europe and the solidarities of Eurasia

100%

Hann C.

Lud

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2019

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vol. 103

PL

Almost 40 years ago, when I was doing fieldwork in Poland, the word Solidarity was on everyone’s lips. One of the popular rallying cries, here and elsewhere in the region, was that of “rejoining Europe”. Similar ebullience was found in many Western countries at the time, justified by the increasingly progressive politics of the European Economic Community (as it was known at the time) and by the intellectual vogue for “civil society” as a key component of the continent’s liberal Enlightenment heritage.Today, in Poland and elsewhere in Europe, scepticism toward the idea of solidarity at the level of the EU runs deep. Populist politicians thrive and liberal civil society struggles. Why is this happening? Where else in the contemporary world can solidary solutions to the problems of the planet be forged? The answer given in this lecture will be radically Eurosceptic. Without denying the remarkable accomplishments of Europe since classical antiquity, it is necessary to place them in wider contexts. The landmass should be conceived as Eurasia, of which Europe is an important macro-region; it is an equivalent of China, not of Asia. The lecture will touch briefly on Axial Age theory, when social solidarities emerged on an unprecedented scale across the landmass, accompanied by ideas of moral universalism. It will also expound Jack Goody’s thesis concerning “alternating leadership” between East and West since the urban revolution of the Bronze Age. If we follow Goody by abandoning the rhetoric of a “European miracle” and look instead to Eurasian commonalities over the last three millennia, we shall be in a better position to create the geopolitical and moral solidarities urgently needed by humanity.

3

The Europe Trap

100%

Hann C.

Lud

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2012

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vol. 96

31-491

EN

This paper takes a critical approach to the “anthropology of Europe” by warning against the treatment of this pseudo-continent as a culture area or Kulturraum. Drawing on the author’s own field research during and after socialism, primarily in South-East Poland but also in Hungary, the paper argues for the contingent, constructed nature of territory-based collective identities in general. Even the primary differentiating criteria of language and religion do not always permit the drawing of sharp lines. Polish ethnographers once had trouble in defining the exact boundaries of a territory they called Łemkowszczyzna and unwittingly found themselves drawn into politics in the process. Similarly, ethnographers of Europe today should be wary of politicians who reify an identity that does not yet exist as a focus of emotional belonging, and link it tendentiously to certain “norms and values” which are allegedly different from those of neighbors. The last section of the paper focuses on issues of historical memory. The revival of older nationalist narratives after the demise of socialism made it imperative to find supra-national antidotes. But as with European identity, invocations of a “European memory” must be approached critically by anthropologists who, by paying close attention to local circumstances, can show how events are refashioned into powerful narratives at multiple levels. These processes were more complex under socialism than is usually admitted, and contestation has become more overt since. In addition to ongoing processes of minority identification among the Lemkos, the paper notes how the freedoms of the new civil society in Przemyśl were exploited by veterans’ groups to foment opposition to the Ukrainian minority and frustrate its attempts to reassert an east Slav presence in that city. It is too soon as yet to speak of a harmonious European memory in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands.

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Still an Awkward Class: Central European post-peasants at home and abroad in the era of neoliberalism

The seductions of Europe and the solidarities of Eurasia

The Europe Trap