Tomasz Rakowski

Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness

An Ethnography of the Degraded in Postsocialist Poland

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

A dramatic account of the socio-economic transformations of the 1990s in Poland. Tracks the experiences of unemployed miners, scrap collectors, and poverty-stricken village residents. Traces the ways in which people actively reconfigure their lives.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Berghahn Books
• Seitenzahl: 340
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. August 2019
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 19mm
• Gewicht: 494g
• ISBN-13: 9781789205343
• ISBN-10: 1789205344
• Artikelnr.: 56746437

Autorenporträt

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.

Inhaltsangabe

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