Post-Socialist or Post-Peasant? Reflections on Mountain-Dwellers’ Image of the State and the Authorities

Anna Malewska-Szałygin

Published: 2011-01-01

2011

Post-Socialist or Post-Peasant? Reflections on Mountain-Dwellers’ Image of the State and the Authorities

Anna Malewska-Szałygin

Abstract

The text offers a summary of a research project on “Perceptions of Power, State and Democracy in Rural Areas”, based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in villages in Nowy Targ county in 2000–2005. A knowledge of traditional peasant culture proved to be essential to a thorough interpretation of discussions carried out in the field. The results of this research challenge the idea that the images re-constructed during these discussions are the heritage of socialism and are post-socialist in nature. The contemporary rural image of power and the state were neither constructed or disseminated in the area of socialism, and therefore the term “post-peasant perception” seems more adequate.

Keywords:

peasants (farmers), image (stereotypes), authorities, state, employment

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Malewska-Szałygin, A. (2011). Post-Socialist or Post-Peasant? Reflections on Mountain-Dwellers’ Image of the State and the Authorities. Ethnologia Polona, 73–83. Retrieved from https://journals.iaepan.pl/ethp/article/view/615

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