PREDOMINANTLY A RURAL NATION, Poland is most often depicted with urban scenes: steelworkers, trade unions, Communist party members, and Solidarity meetings. In contrast to this industrial vision, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs views historical and recent changes and their agrarian consequences.During her many years in the Polish countryside, Dr. Nagengast has observed,studied, and worked side by side with farmers and other members of the agrarian class. Here she provides a first-hand perspective on the monumental failures of the Polish version of socialism, which were largely due to decisions that led the nation-state down a distinctly capitalist path to agrarian development. On the basis of her extensive research, Nagengast makes chilling forecasts about the impact of the accelerating development of capitalism on the culture, politics, and economy of Poland.This book will be useful to anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars interested in Eastern European and socialist studies.

PREDOMINANTLY A RURAL NATION, Poland is most often depicted with urban scenes: steelworkers, trade unions, Communist party members, and Solidarity meetings. In contrast to this industrial vision, Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs views historical and recent changes and their agrarian consequences.During her many years in the Polish countryside, Dr. Nagengast has observed, studied, and worked side by side with farmers and other members of the agrarian class. Here she provides a first-hand perspective on the monumental failures of the Polish version of socialism, which were largely due to decisions that led the nation-state down a distinctly capitalist path to agrarian development. On the basis of her extensive research, Nagengast makes chilling forecasts about the impact of the accelerating development of capitalism on the culture, politics, and economy of Poland.This book will be useful to anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars interested in Eastern European and socialist studies

Among the East European nations, Hungary has been noted in recent years for permitting, even encouraging, family entrepreneurship in agriculture. In this highly empirical study, Ivan Szelenyi and his collaborators explore this phenomenon, affording a rare view of the reemergence of private sector activity in a socialist society, and offering new insights into the very origins of capitalism. In the years since the government relaxed its policy of forced collectivization, approximately ten percent of rural Hungarian families have taken up entrepreneurial opportunities in agriculture. Why they have chosen this course--and why ninety percent of family have chosen to remain in proletarian or cadre positions--are central questions in Szelenyi's inquiry. The theory advocated here is one of "interrupted embourgeoisement." Those people who, during the years of Stalinism, found occupations in which they could successfully resist the dual pressures of proletarianization and cadrefication are the ones now able to reenter the interrupted embourgeoisement trajectory. As a result, the communist "revolution from above" has been challenged by a somewhat unexpected "revolution from below," in the process producing a socialist mixed economic system that seems to be as different from Soviet--style communism as it is from Western capitalism. "This is a very, very important work, combining rich primary research by Szelenyi and four colleagues with a major 'step toward a theory of articulation of a state socialist mixed economy.' . . . Using surveys from 1972-73 and 1982-84, the authors traced life histories to identify variables that showed why families responded differently to proletarianization, formation of a new working class, or embourgeoisement."--World Development

Since 1989, the theme of the onset, the course and future of the change in post- socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, was interlinked with the dismantling of the old authoritarian regime and introduction of the new democratic one. It has been at the centre of attention of politicians, media and the public at large, and it has entered the field of interest of the social sciences as well. For ethnologists and anthropologists this theme represents a unique historical experience and it creates the opportunity to observe the key processes of changes in specific conditions of the "living laboratory" of a current social reality. The collection of papers published in this issue has similar objectives. It brings empirical, mostly case studies, of cultural and socio-economic changes in rural and urban communities in Central and Eastern Europe, namely in the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine. Individual contributions explore the ongoing process of social, economic and cultural transformation in post-socialist societies and its impact at the local and regional micro-level.

Ethnographies of children and youth who migrate and are affected by the migration of others

This book shows how Hungary and Poland led the transformations that brought down Communism.

The figure of the Polish plumber or builder has long been a well-established icon of the British national imagination, uncovering the UK's collective unease with immigration from Central and Eastern Europe. But despite the powerful impact the UK's second largest language group has had on their host country's culture and politics, very little is known about its members. This painstakingly researched book offers a broad perspective on Polish migrants in the UK, taking into account discursive actions, policies, family connections, transnational networks, and political engagement of the diaspora. Born out of a decade of ethnographic studies among various communities of Polish nationals living in London, Michal P. Garapich documents the changes affecting both Polish migrants and British society, offering insight into the inner tensions and struggles within what is often assumed to be a uniform and homogeneous category. From Polish financial sector workers to the Polish homeless population, this groundbreaking book provides a street-level account of cultural and social determinants of Polish migrants as they continually rework their relation to class and ethnicity.