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Paper short abstract:

I am going to explore a method of staying with the ambiguity of an analysed narrative in order to understand its meaning in the context of an on-going fieldwork. Based on my research, I am going to make use of the ambiguity to conceptualise the hybrids of the past-present and the bottom-up/top-down.

Paper long abstract:

In the proposed paper, I am going to explore a research method of staying with the ambiguity of an analysed narrative in order to understand its meaning in the course and context of an on-going fieldwork, without rushing to interpretations. I am going to present narratives from my research where the past and the present, as well as the top-down and the bottom-up are entangled. I am going to compare material related to them but different in form – interviews, archival documents but also thick descriptions and photographs. I am going to make sense of the narratives within a meshwork of the discursive, affective, bodily and material. I am going to try to make use of the ambiguity to conceptualise the hybrids of the past-present and the bottom-up/top-down, instead of trying to separate one from the other.

I am going to base this paper on my on-going fieldwork in the allotment gardens in Nowa Huta, Kraków. The district was built as a model industrial, working-class town in the post-war Poland. Under state socialism, local workplaces founded 30 allotment gardens there. The gardens were administered by a board elected by the gardeners from among themselves. Within the framework of my research, I interview, work, rest, socialise with and learn from the original, eldest gardeners, as well as analyse the chronicles and archival reports of the boards of the gardens. I am researching socialism from the perspective of, and in conjunction with, postsocialism.