The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. By Jan Kubik. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. 322p. $42.50 cloth, $14.95 paper.
The Power of Symbols against the Symbols of Power: The Rise of Solidarity and the Fall of State Socialism in Poland. By Jan Kubik. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. 322p. $42.50 cloth, $14.95 paper.
复制标题
符号的力量对抗权力的符号：波兰团结的兴起和国家社会主义的衰落。
DOI：
10.2307/2082481
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发表时间：
1995
影响因子：
6.8
通讯作者：
K. Sołtan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
K. Sołtan
1989年对人类来说是一个伟大的胜利，但对社会科学来说却是一个尴尬的年份。没有多少人预见到它的可能性。当然，没有人能准确预测，包括准确的时间。社会科学显然不从事这种预测工作。但是，即使事情在我们眼前展开，也很难解释。它们不符合我们的范畴，也不符合我们的公理。也许更令人惊讶的是，自1989年以来，社会科学领域并没有太大变化。对我们的基本分类还没有进行深刻的重新思考。“那些写共产主义、教共产主义的可怜人，”我们对彼此说。“他们肯定搞错了；他们一定很尴尬。”但事实上，我们当中的共产主义学者只是将我们日常交流的思想应用于他们的专业领域。我们所有人都应该感到尴尬。为什么1989年在社会科学界和整个世界都是如此令人惊讶？很大一部分原因是这个世界以及其中的社会科学被愤世嫉俗者所控制。愤世嫉俗者根本不具备理解1989年革命的能力。共产主义的崩溃给社会科学带来的重要教训在于，它迫使我们远离主导我们理论的各种版本的犬儒主义。波兰是一个关键的经验案例。库比克的书对符号和仪式的分析大量借鉴了维克多·特纳（Victor Turner）等文化人类学家的观点，提供了一些非常有用的知识工具。我们已经积累了许多语言的关于波兰工会/自我限制的社会运动团结工会及其在波兰共产主义崩溃中的作用的大量文献。Jan Kubik的书中加入了政治文化人类学家的视角。这本书主要是关于团结工会的文化、仪式和象征，以及它们作为合法化手段和权力工具的作用。20世纪80年代初，作者先后在克拉科夫雅盖隆大学社会人类学系和哥伦比亚大学人类学系工作。这本书是他哥伦比亚大学毕业论文的修订版。在不同的方面，作者对他的主题既是局内人又是局外人。他是波兰人，直接感受过团结工会的象征力量和政治诉求。但他是在远离美国大学的地方，用一门特别适合外人进行文化分析的学科的语言写作的。此外，这本书的大部分内容是关于天主教文化和象征主义的，而作者是新教徒。总的来说，作者以许多对他有利的打击开始了他的任务。其结果是，对于任何想要了解团结工会，或者就此而言，了解共产主义崩溃的人来说，这本书都是必读的。这本书旨在回答三个相关的问题：与其他共产主义国家相比，我们如何解释波兰不同寻常的抗议形式？为什么团结工会出现在波兰？为什么它能在1981年12月13日之后的戒严令和十年镇压中幸存下来？(6页)。这本书确实提供了这些问题的（部分）答案，但它系统地只关注这些答案的一个方面。它的主要见解来源是文化人类学，它对文化人类学家不感兴趣的任何事情都没有太多的看法。例如，它几乎没有提到波兰共产主义制度的经济崩溃，但它详细分析了教皇1978年的波兰之行，70年代末反对派的仪式和仪式，1980年8月罢工的“浪漫”文化（象征，仪式）（团结工会由此诞生），以及工会本身的文化和象征。我强烈推荐这本书，但并不是因为它全面或系统地回答了这三个问题。它或许还有更重要的作用，因为它让我们更详细、更深入地看到波兰共产主义崩溃的一个方面。合法性是库比克这本书的关键概念，也是理解共产主义崩溃能教给我们什么的关键。1989年发生的事件向我们展示了合法性的力量。它们表明，那些缺乏勇气的人是多么软弱，无论他们能挥舞多少胡萝卜加大棒。这些事件也表明，那些拥有合法性的人是多么强大，即使他们一无所有。我们需要将详细和系统的合法性科学纳入我们对国内和国际现实政治的详细和系统的理解中。当然，这里有先例可循，但对建筑本身也有很大的需求。在这方面，库比克的书做出了重要贡献。我认为，最好的解读是，在波兰共产主义崩溃的背景下，它详细描述了合法性的一个方面——神圣的方面——的运作。库比克引用的人类学文献将合法性等同于神圣（广义上的）。库比克的书展示了波兰社会的神圣之处（其基本价值观、宗教和爱国主义象征）如何击败了共产主义政权控制的坦克和监狱。合法性当然不是完全建立在神圣的基础上的（合理性也必须考虑在内），但它在很大程度上肯定是建立在神圣的基础上的。而政治的神圣维度并没有得到太多的分析，当然没有这里分析的那么深入。
The year 1989 was a great triumph for humanity but something of an embarassment for the social sciences. Not many people foresaw its possibility. Of course, no one predicted it exactly, including the precise timing. The social sciences obviously are not in this kind of prediction business. But even as events were unfolding before our eyes, they were hard to explain. They did not fit our categories and were not allowed by our axioms. Perhaps more surprisingly, not much has changed since 1989 in the social sciences. There has not been a profound rethinking of our basic categories. "Those poor people who wrote and taught about communism," we say to each other. "They sure got it wrong; they must really be embarassed." But in fact, the communism scholars among us were simply applying to their special area of expertise the same ideas we all routinely traffic in. All of us should be embarassed. Why was 1989 such a surprise both in the social sciences, and for the world at large? A big part of the answer is that the world—and the social sciences within it—is dominated by cynics. And cynics are simply not equipped to understand the revolutions of 1989. The crucial lesson of the collapse of communism for the social sciences lies in its forcing us away from the various versions of cynicism that have dominated our theories. Poland is a crucial empirical case. And Kubik's book, with its analyses of symbols and rituals borrowing heavily from cultural anthropologists such as Victor Turner, provides some very helpful intellectual instruments. We have accumulated already a very substantial literature in many languages on the Polish trade union/selflimiting social movement Solidarity and its role in the collapse of communism in Poland. Jan Kubik's book adds to it the perspective of a political-cultural anthropologist. The book is primarily about the culture, the ceremonials, and the symbols of Solidarity and their role as legitimating devices and hence as instruments of power. The author spent the early 1980s in the department of social anthropology at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, and then in the department of anthropology at Columbia. The book is a revised version of his Columbia dissertation. The author is, in various ways, both an insider and an outsider in relation to his subject. He is Polish and has experienced directly the symbolic power and political appeal of Solidarity. But he is writing from the distance of an American university and in the language of a discipline especially adapted to cultural analysis by outsiders. In addition, much of the book is about Catholic culture and symbolism, while the author is a Protestant. Altogether, the author begins his task with many strikes in his favor. The result is a book that will be obligatory reading for anyone who wants to understand Solidarity, or, for that matter, the collapse of Communism. The book purports to answer three related questions: How can we explain the extraordinary forms of protest in Poland, compared to those in other communist countries? Why did Solidarity happen in Poland? Why did it survive the period of martial law and the decade of repression that followed December 13,1981? (p. 6). The book does provide (partial) answers to those questions, but it systematically focuses only on one aspect of those answers. Its main source of insight is cultural anthropology, and it does not have much to say about anything that does not interest cultural anthropologists. For example, it barely mentions the economic collapse of the communist system in Poland, but it provides detailed analyses of the Pope's trip to Poland in 1978, the ceremonies and rituals of the opposition during the late 1970s, the "romantic" culture (symbols, ritual) of the strikes in August 1980 (from which Solidarity emerged), and the culture and symbols of the union itself. I recommend the book highly but not because it fully or systematically answers these three questions. It does something perhaps more important, precisely because it allows us to see in such detail and depth one aspect of the Polish situation as communism was collapsing. Legitimacy is the key concept of Kubik's book, and it is the key to understanding what the collapse of communism can teach us. The events surrounding 1989 show us the power of legitimacy. They show how weak those who lack it can be, no matter how many carrots and sticks they can wield. And these events also show how powerful those who have legitimacy can be, even if they have nothing else. We need to incorporate a detailed and systematic science of legitimacy into the detailed and systematic understanding of domestic and international realpolitik we already have. There are, of course, precedents to build on here but also a great need for the building itself. Here, Kubik's book makes an important contribution. It is best seen, I think, as a detailed account of the operation of one aspect of legitimacy—the sacred one—in the context of the collapse of communism in Poland. The anthropological literature on which Kubik draws identifies legitimacy with the sacred (broadly conceived). And Kubik's book shows how what Polish society holds sacred (its fundamental values, its religious and patriotic symbols) defeated the tanks and prisons controlled by the communist regime. Legitimacy is certainly not exclusively based on the sacred (rationality must be also considered), but it is certainly in large part based on the sacred. And the sacred dimension of politics has not been much analyzed, certainly not as deeply as it is analyzed here.