Dissertation Research: Economic Behavior in Post-Socialist Poland

本项目涉及约翰霍普金斯大学文化人类学专业的一名学生的学位论文研究。这名学生将在波兰的一家工厂学习工人，该工厂已被一家西方公司接管。这名学生将使用人种学方法，在车间和迎新研讨会上作为一名工人进行参与者观察，以及对公司官员、政府官员和工人进行正式采访，试图描绘出工作场所身份的“社会主义者”模式如何转变(或未能转变)为“全面素质”工人的“资本主义者”模式。我们将探讨从流水线到灵活积累的转变与从社会主义到资本主义生产方式的转变之间的相似之处，因为两者都强调了使灵活成为一个更古老、更僵化的个人工人责任定义的重要性。通过记录当地关于人们在工作场所“自然”行为的观念的变化，该项目将促进我们对全球经济结构调整过程如何影响工人在工作场所的实际行为的理解。由于世界各地的工厂都在发生类似的变化，这项研究不仅有助于了解东欧，也有助于了解全球资本主义经济的变化。

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.