Conversations with a Polish populist: Tracing hidden histories of globalization, class, and dispossession in postsocialism (and beyond)

Abstract

Building on the work of Jonathan Friedman and of Andre Gingrich and Marcus Banks, I explain the rise of populist, neonationalist sensibilities in Poland as a set of defensive responses by working‐class people to the silences imposed by liberal rule. I trace in detail a sequence of all‐around dispossessions experienced by Polish working‐class sodalities since 1989, when activists with substantial legitimacy among organized workers had claimed de facto and de jure control over assets crucial for working‐class reproduction. “Democratization” and “markets” were shrewd legal ways by which the new liberal capitalist state reappropriated and recentralized those assets from local constituencies. Meanwhile, the reputation of workers, whose fights with the party‐state had been essential for regaining national sovereignty and establishing parliamentary democracy, was systematically annihilated in the public sphere by discourses of “internal orientalism.”[postsocialism, dispossession, class, neonationalism, populism, neoliberalism, globalization, privatization, Europe]

Crisis, Value, and Hope: Rethinking the Economy

“…At the same time, while some institutions (e.g., state, family, church) that regulate moral and political frameworks of responsibility and support the transfer of resources are being undermined in various ways, other institutional frameworks (e.g., religious, ethnic, nationalistic) for guiding human behavior and channeling goods are being created or reconfigured. This creativity, however, may involve exclusionary practices that create and demonize an Other (in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, nationalism, or other forms of human difference), which becomes the target of violence in struggles over access to resources and respect (Gingrich 2006;Hage 1998;Holmes 2000;Kalb 2009). These effects underline the need to understand the ingenuity and creativity, as well as their potentially dark undertones, that social actors deploy in coping with an environment that is largely not of their own making but in which they have to live.…”

Fallen Heroes in Global Capitalism

“…For the role of anthropology in understanding transformation, compareHann, Humphrey et al ( 2002 ); DonKalb ( 2009 ). 2 .…”

The Greek economic crisis as trope

“…The metaphor of the Greek economic crisis is employed in Europe as a threat of dispossession and failure if sociopolitcal reform is avoided (cf. Kalb 2009). Panic and fear spread through un-contextualized claims stimulate public interest, contradicting the commonplace "disenchantment with public politics widespread in modern democracies" (Narotzky and Smith 2006: 170).…”

“…However, Trikalinoi are also critical of the Other within, those who sell out the "Greek people" to foreign demands. Elisabeth Kirtsoglou and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos outline how Western interference fans antiglobalization sentiment that breeds "indigenous reaction to centres of power" (2010: 85; see also Kalb 2009). …”