Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses experiences of postsocialist transformation in rural Poland. It addresses three issues: it describes people’s strategies of coping with change and uncertainty, it shows how those relate to the mainstream discourse on (post)socialism and it asks whether such coping strategies should be interpreted as specific for postsocialism.

Paper long abstract:

My paper aims at discussing experiences of postsocialist transformation in rural Poland. It is based on a yearly ethnographic fieldwork, carried in a peripheral region in Southern Poland. Its inhabitants face today the problem of unemployment and instability, as not only were the state-owned farms closed but the new political-economic order and Poland's accession to the European Union meant a radical re-shaping of the agriculture. Exploring people's narratives on socialism and their assessment of the present-day developments, the paper puts forward three, strongly entangled, arguments.

First, it describes a range of 'coping strategies' that local people develop while dealing with new challenges and uncertainty. Particularly, it focuses on discursive tools, such as jokes and mockery at the new system as well as nostalgic narratives about the past. Following Berdahl (1999) and Verdery and Burawoy (1999), it approaches nostalgia as a novel strategy which enable people to deal with ongoing changes. Second, the paper argues that 'coping strategies' entail both a rejection of the mainstream discourse - which represents the socialist period in black-and-white colours - as well as a creative appropriation of that discourse. It demonstrates that local inhabitants disapprove of the simplistic dismantling and condemnation of the socialist system, highlighting its positive aspects and continuing to draw on those in everyday life. Third, the paper asks to what extent described practices and discourses should be seen as 'specific' for (post)socialist period and to what extent they account for long-term strategies, developed through centuries by the inhabitants of marginalized areas.