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

在吉莉安·菲利-哈尼克博士的指导下，研究生杰西卡·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的大规模变革的背景下研究老龄化的过程，这些变革发生在最老一代人的一生中。她将研究个人、医学、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)波兰人在国家社会主义项目中的过去参与如何对应于他们当代的个人、社会和政治合法性，以及这两者如何对应于他们对波兰民族的自我认同？2)对较大政治形式的认同如何与波兰人及其亲属的记忆实践联系起来，这些记忆实践如何与波兰人老年人的形成、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人种学田野调查，这两个城市以不同的方式记住了社会主义的过去。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论，而这在弗罗茨瓦夫却没有发生。方法将包括半结构化和非结构化访谈，生活史，案例研究和广泛的参与者观察，在各种机构和非机构设置。这项研究将为民族主义的流行和学术辩论提供一个民族志的视角，这些辩论往往忽略了流行话语与实际生活之间的关系。这项研究将有助于亲属研究、医学人类学和后社会主义研究的实质性和理论辩论。这项研究将是使用决策者谁正在考虑最好的方式来照顾越来越多的老年人在波兰和世界范围内。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.