Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Making and Unmaking Polish Persons: Aging and Memory in Postsocialist Poland

在Gillian Feeley-Harnik博士的指导下，研究生Jessica C.罗宾斯将在波兰进行关于衰老和记忆的研究。 罗宾斯将在波兰社会大规模变革的背景下调查衰老过程，这些变革发生在最古老的几代人的一生中。她将研究在个人，医疗，社会，政治和国家背景下的记忆实践，以解决这些关键的研究问题：1）如何在国家社会主义项目的老年波兰人过去的参与对应于他们当代的个人，社会和政治合法性，以及如何做到这两个对应于他们的自我认同与波兰民族？2)对更大政治形式的认同如何与波兰老年人及其亲属的记忆实践联系起来，这些记忆实践又如何与波兰老年人的形成、转变和衰落联系起来？ 罗宾斯将在弗罗茨瓦夫和波兹南进行民族志实地考察，这两个城市以不同的方式纪念社会主义的过去。1956年波兹南劳工起义的当代纪念活动引发了关于社会主义过去、历史上的波兰民族和当代波兰民族国家之间关系的争议，而弗罗茨瓦夫没有发生这种情况。 方法将包括半结构化和非结构化的访谈，生活史，案例研究，并广泛参与观察，在各种机构和非机构设置。这项研究将有助于民族志的角度来流行和学术辩论的民族主义，往往忽略了流行的话语和实际生活之间的关系。本研究将有助于亲属关系研究、医学人类学和后社会主义研究的实质性和理论性争论。这项研究将有助于决策者考虑如何以最佳方式照顾波兰和全世界越来越多的老年人。这项研究也将有助于培养社会科学家。

Under the supervision of Dr. Gillian Feeley-Harnik, graduate student Jessica C. Robbins will conduct research on aging and memory in Poland. Robbins will investigate processes of aging in the context of the large-scale transformations in Polish society that have occurred during the lifetimes of the oldest generations. She will study practices of memory in personal, medical, social, political, and national contexts in order to address these key research questions: 1) How does the past involvement of elderly Poles in the project of state socialism correspond to their contemporary personal, social, and political legitimacy, and how do both of these correspond to their self-identification with the Polish nation? 2) How does identification with larger political forms relate to practices of memory by elderly Poles and their kin, and how do these practices of memory connect to the making, transforming, and decline of elderly Poles? Robbins will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Wroclaw and Poznan, two cities where the socialist past is remembered in different ways. Contemporary commemorations of the 1956 labor uprising in Poznan have entailed controversy over the relationship between the socialist past, the historical Polish nation, and the contemporary Polish nation-state in a way that has not occurred in Wroclaw. Methods will include semi-structured and unstructured interviews, life histories, case studies, and extensive participant-observation, in a variety of institutional and non-institutional settings. This research will contribute an ethnographic perspective to popular and scholarly debates on nationalism that often omit the relationship between popular discourse and actual lives. This research will contribute to substantive and theoretical debates in kinship studies, medical anthropology, and postsocialist studies. This research will be of use to policy-makers who are considering the best way to care for the increasing number of elderly in Poland and worldwide. This research will also contribute to the training of a social scientist.