Administrative Technologies and the Governance of Agrarian Reform: Liberal Modernization of the Polish Cadastral Infrastructure

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This three-year research project is part of a seven-year study of cadastral infrastructure governance in relationship to Polish agrarian reform resulting from European Union (EU) expansion. The governance of agrarian reform through the cadastral infrastructure finds itself in tension between government policies and practices of civil society that arose in the 18th century partitions of Poland and was exacerbated by wars, occupations, population displacements, and the Communist planned economy. The ongoing process of EU-promoted liberal agrarian reform and cadastral infrastructure modernization involves the establishment of territorial hegemonic consent through administrative technologies that encounters this tension. With unclear property ownership ranging from 3 percent to 40 percent in rural areas of Poland, the ambiguity about formal land tenure signals the continuing degree of civil and political society tension. The Polish government has sought to modernize the cadastral infrastructure, but since the mid-1990s, proposals to modernize the cadastre have been stymied in Polish parliament. Through an agricultural parcel registry to control subsidy applications, the EU offers the administration a technological solution that may circumvent the political impasse. Discrepancies between this registry and the existing land cadastre are provided to county (powiat) administrations in Poland, but the updating of the cadastral land registry is solely a local decision. The objective of this research is to establish how people, technologies, and institutions create and maintain governance and consent in the face of civil and political society tensions. Comparing Polish local government activities during the process of agrarian reform sheds light on the variability of governance and different roles of administrative technologies.Historical studies of cadastral mapping show that the cadastre is a key part of territorial governance. This research will examine contemporary cadastral infrastructure focusing on how territorial governance develops. The working hypothesis is that the governmentality of the cadastral infrastructure hinges on the development of sufficient local "flexibility" between informal land tenure regimes and formal land cadastre and the corresponding establishment of "flexible," scale-contingent hegemonic consent between civil and political society. The updating of land cadastres by Polish county administrations constitutes a key government intervention in agrarian reform. This research extends Verdery's parcel elasticity concept to consider the multiple roles of the cadastral infrastructure. The science and technology studies concept of boundary objects takes into account the interactions and flexibility between people, institutions, and technologies; these objects in the cadastral infrastructure are essential to creating and maintaining hegemonic consent. The research will rely on interpretative ethnographic methods developed for comparative research over a three-year period. Graduate students at Polish higher education institutes will conduct more than 1,000 interviews with government officials and farmers in six counties. U.S. students will also take part in the interviews, and the investigators will conduct two years of participant observation research in a specific locality.This research will contributes to geography, geographic information science, area studies, science and technology studies, and graduate student education in the U.S. and Poland. The results of the research will inform policy concerning the resolution of ambiguities and discrepancies in cadastral records that constrain agricultural modernization and sustainable rural development. The project will actively involve Polish and U.S. graduate and undergraduate students and scientists, including minority students involved in indigenous studies.