Dissertation Research: Economic Behavior in Post-Socialist Poland

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This project involves the dissertation research of a student in cultural anthropology from Johns Hopkins University. The student will study workers in a factory in Poland which has been taken over by a western company. Using ethnographic methods of participant observation as a worker on the shop floor and in orientation workshops, as well as formal interviews with company officials, government officials and workers, the student will attempt to delineate how the `socialist` model of work-place identity is being transformed (or failing to transform) into a `capitalist` model of the `total quality` worker. Parallels between the change-over from assembly-line to flexible accumulation and the change from socialist to capitalist production ethos will be explored, since both stressed the importance of making flexible an older, more rigid definition of personal worker responsibilities. By documenting the changes in local beliefs about how people `naturally` act in a work-place, the project will advance our understanding of how the global process of economic restructuring affects workers' actual behavior in the work-place. Because similar changes are taking place in factories around the world, this research will contribute to the understanding not only of Eastern Europe, but on changes in the global capitalist economy.