Social Imaginaries of the State and Central Authority in Polish Highland Villages, 1999-2005

This book argues that common-sense convictions of rural Polish citizens are “post-peasant” or “post-agrarian”, rather than post-socialist or post-communist. In so doing, it offers a departure from the established terms of scholarly literature on the Central European transition that has focused on such concepts as “homo sovieticus” or the “post-communist mentality”.

It draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the early 2000s in the highland region in the south of Poland, focusing on local knowledge about the state, power, politics, and democracy. It describes how rural social imaginaries translate categories derived from the organisation of life and work at the farm into ideas about politics. In this regard, the state is seen as a huge farm, the authorities as the farmer or manager, and the nation as the farmer’s family. Politics is perceived as a dishonest but profitable profession and democracy as a political system that could only work in the Garden of Eden.