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An Ethnography of Memory of the People\'s Republic of Poland Everyday Culture in Postwar Poland 1956-1989

An Ethnography of Memory of the People\'s Republic of Poland Everyday Culture in Postwar Poland 1956-1989

Wojciech Burszta, Anna Jawor, Mirosław Pęczak, Michał Rauszer, Piotr Zańko

Ebook

Cultural participation was seen as a source of prestige, and the requirement of personal development, of becoming a cultured person, gained popularity and became almost an inherent element of the model of social advancement. The intelligentsia was expected to elevate the cultural level of the country, primarily by introducing the less educated parts of society to the national culture. […]

In our study of socialist Poland we wanted to focus primarily on the memories of everyday life of those who lived in that period. Our perspective refers therefore not to the experience of a witness of history, understood as a sequence of significant events, but rather simply to the everyday life of people who lived in this historical epoch. The aim of the study is to show not the functioning of the People’s Republic of Poland but how individual sought to “find themselves within it,” especially ways of dealing with problems, of living and experiencing. That is why we are not concentrating on studying the cultural memory of socialist Poland; rather, we are attempting to refer to the communicative memory of that period. A memory collected in the form of personal and biographical accounts, one analogous to narrative memory.

Table of Contents

7 Introduction

19 Model of a Cultured Person

23 Savoir Vivre

31 Appearance and Table Manners

35 Ms. Pharmacist, Mr. Engineer

39 A Class in Itself

43 In the Beginning Was the Word

49 Books and Theater

52 Cultural Participation—Continued

57 Idealism

60 What Was Valued, What Was Despised: Hierarchy of

Culture

63 Atlas of Culture

68 High and Low Culture

78 The Audiences: Recipients of Culture

84 Folklorism

90 Propaganda and the Alternative

96 Youth and Alternative Culture

122 Free Time or Times of Freedom?

124 Does Free Time Exist?

129 Dimensions of Leisure

135 Holidays and (Working) Class

138 Leisure, Additional Resources and Gender

140 Leisure of Children and Youths

143 Free and Non-Free Time

145 Culinary Culture

150 Restaurants

152 Milk Bars and Canteens

155 Cooking at Home

156 Food Provisioning

161 Memory, Things, Everyday Life

164 Two Types of Nostalgia for Things

167 From Nostalgia to DIY

170 Absence and DIY

172 Objects in a Network

176 Circulations of Things and Their Impact on Independent Culture

177 Things and Status

181 Things and Memory of Everyday Life

183 Conclusion: Remembering the People’s Republic of Poland

189 References

197 Index

  • Title: An Ethnography of Memory of the People\'s Republic of Poland Everyday Culture in Postwar Poland 1956-1989
  • Author: Wojciech Burszta, Anna Jawor, Mirosław Pęczak, Michał Rauszer, Piotr Zańko
  • Translation: Jędrzej Burszta
  • ISBN: 978-83-66056-85-5, 9788366056855
  • Date of issue: 2022-05-10
  • Format: Ebook
  • Item ID: e_2qq1
  • Publisher: Oficyna Naukowa