Table of Contents
Foreword Jan Kubik viii
Acknowledgments xii
Preface xiv
Introduction: The Anthropologist as a Poverty Inspector 1
An Anthropological Shift in Perspective 1
The "Culture of Poverty": Getting Beyond the Concept 1
Social Trauma and Dependency: Shift in Perspective 4
Hermeneutics and Anthropology 7
Toward a Method 11
Maurice Merleau-Ponty-The "Patron Saint" of the Present Ethnography 11
Method: (Lack of) Ethnographic Knowledge 18
Pretextual Ethnography 21
The Most Bitter Side of the Polish Transformation: Fields of Research 27
The "New Poverty" 27
Post-Transformation Social Degradation 30
Postsocialism: History and Experience 33
The Studied Phenomena 36
The Field Research 38
Chapter 1 The Szydlowiec and Przysucha Environs-The Swierokrzyskie Foothills 42
A World Full of Adversities 42
Unemployment and the Farming Recession 42
A Community of the Unemployed: Immobility, Odd Jobs, and "Tragic Scarring" 47
Motionless Orchards, Motionless Fields: Failure 52
Dependency and Irreversibility: A Reproof at the World 56
Second-String Ecology 63
The New Face of the Jobless Village 67
Gatherers of Wild Herbs and Undergrowth, Gatherers of Fir Wood 67
The "New Ecology": The Convertibility of the Environment 70
Collection, Conversion, Transition 77
The "Culture of Survival" 83
Chapter 2 Walbrzych-Boguszów-Gorce 87
From Destruction to "Empty" Communication: The Liquidation of the Coal Basin 87
The City and the Mine 87
The Highly Ambivalent Story of the Walbrzych Basin 92
Experience and Liquidation: Destruction-The City-The Body 97
How to Speak of Liquidation? (Auto)aggression-Dialogue-Social Muteness 102
Externalized Shame: Empty Communication and Internal Spectacles 105
Facing Reality after the Mines (1) 109
Complaints-Accusations-Triumphs 113
A World Affected from the Outside 116
Bootleg Mines, Diggers, Skills: The Body's Active Knowledge 116
Rhythm, Jokes, Anecdotes: "Scoffing at the World" 122
Law and Lawlessness: Interior Spectacles 125
The Grey Market: Deal-Making and Resourcefulness 130
The "Internal Circulation" and the Fragmentation of Transactions 137
Home-Oikos: Internal Circulation 142
Freedom in the Mines 145
"Do-It-Yourself" Equipment 145
Working and Efficiency in Manual Labor: Resources and Deposits 149
Demolition-Collecting-Objects 153
Things 159
Memory 163
Facing Reality after the Mines (2) 166
Chapter 3 The Belchatów Brown Coal Mine-The Shadowlands of the Exposed Mine 178
The Mine/Power Station 178
The Perfect Balance, an Abrupt Modernization 178
The Experience of Alienation and Control over the Environment 181
At the Margins of the Great Industry: Marginalization and Exclusion 185
The Mine: Orbis Exterior 190
Violence, Guilt, and the Building Sacrifice 196
The Consequences of "Excess": Metaphors of Exploitation 200
The Mine: Orbis Interior 203
The Players, Their Families, and Their Means of Sustenance 203
Self-Sufficiency, Subsistence: Gathering and Processing Goods 206
Hunting and Gathering 211
Waclaw Okonski-The Stalker, Orbis Interior 221
Goods and Trophies: The Hunting/Gathering Existence on the Edge of the Mine 226
Records 231
Cabinets of Curiosities, Collectors' Museums 231
The Work of Memory: Reconstructions, Objects, Collections 237
"The Science of the Concrete": Inscriptions, Journals, Enumeration 243
Hunters and Gatherers-Practitioners of Powerlessness 250
Conclusion 260
The "Reality Testing" 260
Outcome 264
Beyond Anthropology 266
Appendix 270
Bibliography 278
Index 303
