Abstract
Older people in Poland are often discriminated against in both practice and imagination, thus threatening their very status as moral persons. Personhood is especially threatened in institutional care; however, educational institutions (e.g., Universities of the Third Age), where older Poles perform a modern, European, contemporary elder personhood in which health is an unspoken assumption, offer the possibility of inclusion. Across these contexts, older Poles create moral personhood through practices of remembering that involve national memory. As these practices of remembering – which are simultaneously practices of relatedness – invoke the nation, they also invoke citizens of that nation. Practices of relatedness therefore include forms of citizenship, suggesting that we should analyze kinship and citizenship together. Ethnographic research in educational and medical institutions in Wrocław shows that different national imaginaries offers different possibilities for personhood, such that the moral valences of different political periods can adhere to individuals. However, even in contexts that promote a transnational individualized kind of personhood, shared suffering as part of the national past remains the grounds for creating relations and maintaining personhood. This article explores everyday practices of care, memory, and relatedness, thereby elucidating the moral connections that are created between persons and nation. The lasting importance of the national has implications for thinking about the limits and possibilities of European identity in Poland.
References
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Van der Geest Sjaak 2000, Funerals for the living: Conversations with elderly people in Kwahu, Ghana, African Studies Review (43:3), pp. 103–129
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2002, From wisdom to witchcraft: Ambivalence towards old age in rural Ghana, Africa (72: 3), pp. 437–463
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2004, Grandparents and grandchildren in Kwahu, Ghana: The performance of respect, Africa (74: 1), pp. 47–61
Verdery Katherine 1996, What was socialism, and what comes next?, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Yurchak Alexei 2005, Everything was forever, until it was no more: The last Soviet generation, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Beidelman T. O. 1993[1986], Moral imagination in Kaguru modes of thought, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press
Berdahl Daphne, Bunzl Matti, Lampland Martha (eds.) 2000, Altering states: Ethnographies of transition in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press
Brown Kate 2004, A biography of no place: From ethnic borderland to Soviet heartland, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Carrithers Michael 1985, An alternative social history of the self, In: The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history, Carrithers M., Collins S., Lukes S. (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 234–256
Carrithers Michael, Collins Steven, Lukes Steven (eds.) 1985, The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Carsten Janet 2000, Introduction: cultures of relatedness, In: Cultures of relatedness: New approaches to the study of kinship, Carsten J. (ed.), Cambridge–New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–36
Carsten Janet 2007, Introduction: ghosts of memory, In: Ghosts of memory: Essays on remembrance and relatedness, Carsten J. (ed.), Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 1–35
CBOS 2013, “Polacy wobec własnej starości”, http://cbos.pl/SPISKOM.POL/2012/K_094_12.PDF, (accessed April 8, 2013)
Cole Jennifer, Durham Deborah (eds.) 2007, Generations and globalization: Youth, age, and family in the New World economy, Bloomington: Indiana University Press
Edmunds June, Turner Bryan S. (eds.) 2002, Generational consciousness, narrative, and politics, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc
Fabian Johannes 1983, Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object, New York: Columbia University Press
Fortes Meyer 1987, Religion, morality and the person: Essays on Tallensi religion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Franklin Sarah, McKinnon Susan 2001, Introduction: Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. In: Relative Values: Reconfiguring kinship studies, Franklin S. and McKinnon S. (eds.), Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–25
Graff Agnieszka 2009, Gender, sexuality, and nation--here and now: Reflections on the gendered and sexualized aspects of contemporary Polish nationalism, In: Intimate citizenships: Gender, sexualities, politics, Oleksy E. (ed.), New York: Routledge, pp. 133–146
Grundtvig 2012, Kongres Uniwersytetów Trzeciego Wieku, http://www.grundtvig.org.pl/aktualnosci/kongres-uniwersytetow-trzeciego-wieku (accessed 11 September 2014)
Haukanes Haldis 2013, Precarious lives? Narratives of hope, loss, and “normality” across two generations of Czechs, Focaal (66), pp. 47–57
Haukanes Haldis, Trnka Susanna 2013, Memory, imagination, and belonging across generations: Perspectives from Postsocialist Europe and beyond, Focaal (66), pp. 3–13
Howell Signe 2006, Kinning of foreigners: Transnational adoption in a global perspective, New York: Berghahn Books
Humphrey Caroline 1997, Exemplars and rules: Aspects of the discourse of moralities in Mongolia, In: The ethnography of moralities, Howell S. (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 25–47
Jackson Michael, Karp Ivan 1990, Introduction, In: Personhood and agency: The experience of self and other in African cultures, Jackson M., Karp I. (eds.), Uppsala: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 15–30
Kaufman Sharon R., Morgan Lynn M. 2005, The anthropology of the beginnings and the ends of life, Annual Review of Anthropology (34), pp. 317–341
Krzyżowski Łukasz 2011, In the trap of intergenerational solidarity: Family care in Poland’s ageing society, Polish Sociological Review (173: 11), pp. 55–78
Mandel Ruth, Humphrey Caroline (eds.) 2002, Markets and moralities: Ethnographies of Postsocialism, Oxford: Berg
Mauss Marcel 1985[1938], A category of the human mind: The notion of person, the notion of self, In: The category of the person: Anthropology, philosophy, history, Carrithers M., Collins S., Lukes S. (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–25
McClintock Ann 1996, “No longer in a future heaven”: Nationalism, gender, and race, In: Becoming national: A reader, Eley G., Suny R.G. (eds.), New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 104–123
McKinnon Susan, Cannell Fenella 2013, The difference kinship makes. In: Vital relations: Modernity and the persistent life of kinship, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, pp. 3–38
Mosse George L. 1988, Nationalism and sexuality: Middle-class morality and sexual norms in modern Europe, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press
Pine Frances 2007, Memories of movement and the stillness of place: Kinship memory in the Polish Highlands, In: Ghosts of memory: Essays on remembrance and relatedness, Carsten J. (ed.), Malden: Blackwell, pp. 104–125
Pine Frances 2013, Probing the past and imagining the future: Afterword, Focaal (66), pp. 69–72
Porter-Szücs Brian 2011, Faith and fatherland: Catholicism, modernity, and Poland, New York: Oxford University Press
Pozniak Kinga 2013, Generations of memory in the “modern socialist town” of Nowa Huta, Poland, Focaal (66), pp. 58–68
Read Rosie 2007, Labour and love: competing constructions of ‘care’ in a Czech nursing home, Critique of Anthropology (27: 2), pp. 203–222
Robbins Jessica 2013, Shifting moral ideals of aging in Poland: Suffering, self-actualization, and the nation, In: Transitions and transformations: Cultural perspectives on the life course, Lynch C., Danely J. (eds.), New York: Berghahn Books, pp. 79–91
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2013, Challenging marginalization at the universities of the Third Age in Poland, Anthropology & Aging Quarterly (34:2), pp. 157–169
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2015, “Active aging” as citizenship in Poland, In: Generations: Rethinking age and citizenship, Marback R. (ed.), Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 270–286
Snyder Timothy 2003, The reconstruction of nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999, New Haven: Yale University Press
Van der Geest Sjaak 2000, Funerals for the living: Conversations with elderly people in Kwahu, Ghana, African Studies Review (43:3), pp. 103–129
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2002, From wisdom to witchcraft: Ambivalence towards old age in rural Ghana, Africa (72: 3), pp. 437–463
Robbins-Ruszkowski Jessica C. 2004, Grandparents and grandchildren in Kwahu, Ghana: The performance of respect, Africa (74: 1), pp. 47–61
Verdery Katherine 1996, What was socialism, and what comes next?, Princeton: Princeton University Press
Yurchak Alexei 2005, Everything was forever, until it was no more: The last Soviet generation, Princeton: Princeton University Press