Society and Culture in Postcommunist Poland

Timetable

Collegium Historicum Novum, Morasko Campus, ul. Uniwersytetu Poznanskiego 7, room 2.19

Module aim (aims)

Give knowledge about social and cultural aspects of living in postcommunist Poland.

Develop ability to critically asses different discourses about society in Poland.

Develop skills to compare individual and group experiences across places, genders and generations.

Provide a base to study and discuss selected aspects of post-communist realities in Poland at micro and macro levels.

Give understanding of research agenda and scholarly literature concerning society and culture in postcommunist Poland.

Pre-requisites in terms of knowledge, skills and social competences (where relevant)

reading, writing and speaking skills in English

Syllabus

Memory and remembrance in postcommunist Poland

Local memories and spaces of commemoration

New stratifications: poverty

Local economies of transformation

Religious identities and activities

Values and conflicts: religion, politics and health

Sexual minorities

Women – rights and health

Discourses and experiences of migration

Summary: continuities and rupture in postcommunist Poland

Reading list

Bashko, Aliaksei. "Entrepreneurship and ethnic economy employment among Chinese and Vietnamese residents of Warsaw." International Migration online 1 June 2021

Galbraith, Marysia. 2000. "On the Road to Częstochowa: Rhetoric and Experience on a Polish Pilgrimage." Anthropological Quarterly 73 (2): 61-73.

Hall, Dorota.  2015. Antagonism in the Making: Religion and Homosexuality in Post-Communist Poland. In Religious and Sexual Nationalisms in Central and Eastern Europe: Gods, Gays, and Governments, ed. S. Sremac and R. R. Ganzevoort. Leiden: Brill, 74-92.

Kramer, Anne-Marie. 2007. ‘The Abortion Debate in Poland: Opinion Polls, Ideological Politics, Citizenship and the Erasure of Gender as a Category of Analysis’. In Living Gender after Communism, ed J. E. Johnson and J. C. Robinson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 63-79

Kuźma, Inga. 2016: “The sense and the practices of living in a homeless shelter.” Studi di Nuevo Meridionalismo, R. II, nr 3, s. 223-235.

Pine, Frances. 2014. "Migration as Hope: Space, Time, and Imagining the Future." Current Anthropology 55(S9): S95-S104.

Radkowska-Walkowicz, Magdalena. 2017. "How the Political Becomes Private: In Vitro Fertilization and the Catholic Church in Poland." Journal of Religion and Health.  https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10943-017-0480-3.pdf

Stacul, Jaro. 2014. "The Production of 'Local Culture' in Post-socialist Poland."  Anthropological Journal of European Cultures 23 (1): 21-39.

Witeska-Młynarczyk, Anna. 2016. Empowering Files: Secret Police Records and Life Narratives of Former Political Prisoners of the Communist Era in Poland. In Reclaiming the Personal: Oral History in Post-socialist Europe, ed. N. Khanenko-Friesen, G.Grinchenko, Toronto University Press.