Dissertation Research: Economic Behavior in Post-Socialist Poland

本项目涉及一名来自约翰霍普金斯大学文化人类学专业的学生的论文研究。这个学生将研究波兰一家工厂的工人，这家工厂已被一家西方公司接管。作为一名在车间和培训车间工作的工人，使用参与观察的民族志方法，以及与公司官员、政府官员和工人的正式访谈，学生将试图描述工作场所身份的“社会主义”模式是如何转变（或未能转变）为“资本主义”模式的“全面质量”工人。从装配线到灵活积累的转变与从社会主义到资本主义生产精神的转变之间的相似之处将被探讨，因为两者都强调了使灵活成为一个更古老、更严格的个人工人责任定义的重要性。通过记录当地人对人们在工作场所的“自然”行为的看法的变化，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。因为类似的变化正在发生在世界各地的工厂，这项研究将有助于不仅了解东欧，但在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.