29 Etnografia Polska vol. XL, 1996, book 1-2 PL ISSN 0071

29 Etnografia Polska vol. XL, 1996, book 1-2 PL ISSN 0071

29
Etnografia Polska vol. XL, 1996, book 1-2
PL ISSN 0071-1861
ANNA MALEWSKA-SZAŁYGIN
Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Warsaw University
COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
THE IMAGE OF LOCAL POLITICAL SCENE*
Current conflicts can be seen as an extension of the ancient debate between
philosophy and rhetoric, expressed today as a conflict between modern science and
postmodern theories of textuality and deconstruction, writes Richard Harvey Brown in
Chapter 1 of the publication: Writing the Social Text (1992). For more than a century,
the majority of Western thinkers believed that science could pursue objectivity by
empirical observation and logical deduction. The reality was independent of the thinker,
who, by systematic observation, could arrive at testable conclusions. If those
conclusions withstood empirical tests and foretold real events, they contributed to the
knowledge. Recent decades, however, revealed erosion of such an image of knowledge,
which has been replaced by an alternative image, according to which theories are no
longer a mirror of the reality, but rather the effect of efforts to adjust the observed
phenomena to the existing canon of understanding the reality and truth. This approach is
a reference to the rhetoric of ancient sophists. Science understood in this way is like an
intellectual experience, a scholarly activity whose place is not above but beside such
disciplines as legal science or literary criticism. The return of rhetoric is not
enthusiastically welcomed. Its language contrasts the univocal ideal of analytic
philosophy, where the voice of the scholar is the only one, authoritative, non-personal,
“transparent” and precise like mathematics. On the other hand, rhetorical figures add an
individual and personal character to a text, which evidently undermines the pretence of
objectivity so eagerly cultivated by the contemporary paradigm. Allegories often act as
interpretation models and give guidance in the choice of experiences and data
interpretation. The role of metaphors and rhetorical inventio in the new paradigm of
science is discussed in greater detail by the authors of the New Rhetoric (Perelman,
Chaim, Olbrechst-Tyteca 1989).
In the field of ethnology, textualists propose a similar view: “ethnographic
writing is allegorical at the level both of its content (what it says about cultures and their
histories) and of its form (what is implied by its mode of textualisation)”; (Clifford
1989, p. 98). At the first level, individual events described by an ethnographer may be
perceived as allegories of universal problems. At the level of textualisation, the
emergence of metaphors is more common and evident. It is typical of ethnographic
monographsfor both levels to overlap: “There is no way definitely, surgically, to
*
This article is a continuation of an essay published in Etnografia Polska, vol. 39 (Malewska-Szałygin
1995).
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separate the factual from the allegorical in cultural accounts. The data of ethnography
make sense only within patterned arrangements and narratives, and these are
conventional, political, and meaningful in a more referential sense” (Clifford 1989, p.
119).
The rhetorical approach seems particularly relevant to interpreting the
contemporary culture. Allegories help create a distance the lack of which is one of the
key problems in studies of the contemporary world. Given the multiplicity and
changeability of things, we seem to be bound to recognise only the patterns that are
already familiar to us, to perceive a new order by revealing the models that we are
already used to and understand, exemplum the postmodern personal models presented
by Bauman (1994).
Colloquial language also uses numerous metaphors. These metaphors are
analysed, among others, by G. Lakoff and M. Johnson (1988). Native metaphors are
described by them as a mental abbreviation or better still as condensation, multi-level
concentration of meanings. Deciphering the meaning hidden in popular metaphors may
be the key to study, for example, the cultural identity (Ohnuki-Tierney 1991). Native
metaphors function at a different level of semiosis than interpretative allegories
introduced by a scholar. Their coexistence proves the multilevel allegoricity of
ethnographic texts, and the differentiation between the respective levels is made for the
purpose of the logical order of the research process and does not imply their
distinctness. Allegories introduced in a text by a scholar – “these kinds of transcendent
meanings are not abstractions or interpretations “added; to the original «simple»
account. Rather, they are the conditions of its meaningfulness” (Clifford 1989, p. 96).
Native metaphors have a meaning within interpretative allegories.
Popular thinking, which uses images, metaphors and mental abbreviations,
provokes interpretation using allegorical figures. Scholars who study popular
knowledge are rarely interested in the convergence between the picture of reality and
the reality itself; what is important is the truth of the narrative, which resembles the
relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. Popular knowledge may become the
subject of studies, as it already is for the sociology of knowledge or, from a different
perspective, for cognitive anthropology. Also, the concept of “everyday knowledge”
may be used as a tool, an analysed point of view, a perspective of observing various
phenomena, which becomes the subject of studies. This concept is only apparently
transparent because, even though we look through it at a specific fragment of reality, we
do not lose the prism from view. Indeed, that prism is in the focus of our attention. As a
result, the researcher and his or her interlocutors look in the same direction, but from a
different perspective. The research process consists in understanding (imperfect as it
always is) of the other perspective. This is only possible in a discursive process and
what unites the participants of the discourse is the topic of conversation.
One of the most popular topics of conversation is public life, both at the national
and local level. The issue of local political arenas is of interest to lawyers, political
scientists and groups of sociologists (Tarkowski 1994; Giza-Poleszczuk 1991; Marody
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1991). The most recent essays concerning this phenomenon were written in 1990-1992
at the European Institute for Regional and Local Development of the University of
Warsaw under the programme “Regional development – local development – local
government” (Jałowiecki 1991; Gieorgica 1991; Szczepański 1992). According to
Bohdan Jałowiecki, “Local Poland means places where social family and
neighbourhood bonds exist with a certain level of integration based on direct contacts”
(Jałowiecki 1991, p. 39). Jan Szczepański supplements this definition by highlighting
the role of the territorial factor: the characteristic feature of local communities is that
“one important element of their internal bond is some sort of a relationship with the
territory where they live” (Szczepański 1992, p. 19). “Local Poland is far from being
homogenous. In fact, it is characterised by significant differences the source of which is
rooted in history and in the cultural backgrounds of the respective regions. The local
communities from the regions of Greater Poland, Eastern Pomerania and former Galicia
are more innovative and creative compared to the conservative and adaptive inhabitants
of the Recovered Territories and former Congress Poland” (Jałowiecki 1991, p. 40).
In 1993, I started a study on the attitude of local communities to gmina
authorities with a series of pilot field visits. I continued the study with a group of my
students in 1994-1995. We focused on two rural gminas in the Masuria region (5,000
and 7,000 inhabitants, respectively). The choice of that particular area was not
coincidental. We were not interested in regions with a long tradition of popular
movements and local governance. Instead, we wanted to see how the idea of local
governance, supported by new law (Ustawa... 1990), was implemented in rural
communities, where public life used to be founded mostly on the prescriptive and
distributive policy. This particular relationship between the local authorities and the
local community as well as the lack of any tradition of local governance resulted from
the discontinuity of settlement in Masuria. The fate of individuals, strongly stigmatised
by historical events, was not conductive to civic activity and involvement in public
affairs. Another factor was the feeling of being only a temporary resident of the area
that prevailed for many years after the war. As a result, apart from a group of better
educated people, most inhabitants of the gminas behave like spectators and
commentators of local politicians and local political events. The term “local political
scene” used by B. Jałowiecki (1990, 1991) and J.P. Gieorgica (1991) is not defined and
may only be specified by reference to a broader model based on a theatrical allegory.
What is constituent for this model is the division into the “scene” and the “audience”.
The “scene” is occupied by persons who, according to our interlocutors, have “the
power”, meaning that they can influence development of the gmina and distribution of
local funds. One of these persons is the wójt, the head of gmina and the central character
on the “stage”, an extremely dominant person in both communities, even though the
domination is not grounded in the law (Ustawa… 1990). His attitude to the gmina
community may be described as paternalistic. The “audience” have very different
opinions about what is happening on the stage and they may be grouped into the
following three main categories:
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Supporters (favourable, from critical acceptance to full, though
superficial affirmation);
Critics (from criticism based on knowledge of the law and activity of
local officials to negation of everything, not justified and expressed through slogans);
Finally people, usually very old and uneducated (at the level of
vocational agricultural education), whose views cannot be classified as supportive or
critical, but can be both. In my opinion, this is the kind of attitude to public authorities
that most closely reflects the description provided by Bułhakow (1973, 1994) or
Uspiensky and Żywow (1990), according to whom the ruler is delegated “from above”,
has special prerequisites to occupy his position and has knowledge that is inaccessible
to others. He has the power to be merciful or cruel to his inferiors, whichever he
pleases. He is beyond criticism and all that his people can do is praise him, if he does
something good for them or complain, if he exploits them;
A separate category are young adults aged up to 25 years, usually poorly
educated (graduates of secondary schools or universities rarely stay to live in rural
communities), virtually uninterested in public life of either their own gmina or the
country.
The stage metaphor is founded on “strong personification of public institutions”
(Jałowiecki 1991), which is encouraged by the fact that the same persons hold office for
many years: in both gminas, the head – wójt – was first elected around 1973 and
democratically re-elected in 1990 and 1994.
The actors of the public scene are perceived as a strongly tied group, and yet,
since 1990, the most prominent persona in both gminas has been the wójt. Until 1990,
the power in gminas was shared between the duumvirate of the wójt and the first
secretary of the Polish United People’s Party (PZPR), who often, but not always,
cooperated with each other, with the leader of the two being the person with stronger
personality or better support “from above”. The position of the first secretary in that
arrangement was somewhat more advantageous, because his rights and obligations with
respect to the gmina community were not governed by any legal regulations, and
besides, he had access to non-administrative channels via which he could cancel the
decisions of local authorities (the term duumvirate and the description of the
interrelations was used by Tarkowski, 1994). In 1989, after the formal dissolution of the
PZPR party, the first secretary left the political scene of gminas (though, in some cases,
he was moved to another position). As a result, the central position was occupied by the
wójt, who was vested with much broader authority and extensive (though not quite
sufficient, according to some) independence from regional and national authorities by
the Local Government Act (1990). In the light of the same Act, however, the wójt is
fully subordinated to the community representatives (the councillors). The gmina
legislator is the Gmina Council, which consists of a number of councillors and is
chaired by the wójt. The Board is appointed to enforce the Council’s rulings. Despite
such legal foundations, the wójt is generally considered to be an independent,
autonomous “ruler” of the gmina, the main originator of all projects and the decision-
33
maker in financial matters. Even though he is widely known for his “univocality”, the
wójt tries to avoid being called a “despot” and his dominant image is that of a “perfect
diplomat” rather than a “dictator”. His leadership on the local political scene is
undisputable. According to the local inhabitants: “the wójt is indeed the most powerful
person in the gmina. It is true that he has extensive power. Perhaps even too much
power, but that depends, in my opinion, on the councillors”. “The wójt is ex officio the
chair of the Board, which is why he is the originator of many projects, because this is
his daily bread”. “The wójt has the most authority, whatever he says must be done. Most
major projects are originated by him, and only sometimes by a group of councillors”.
“The wójt should be subordinated to councillors, but in fact he is somehow able to
convince them to do things the way he wants them to be done” 1 . Consequently, a
positive or negative attitude to local authorities is determined primarily by the attitude
to the person of the wójt. His traits of character, actions and legal powers all combine
into that image.
The most acceptant of the “audience” are proud of the achievements of the
gmina authorities and they fully approve the current development programme of the
gmina. And even though that programme is prepared by the Gmina Board and approved
by the Gmina Council, everyone, the councillors and the local inhabitants alike, stress
that the originator of most projects is the wójt. He determines the hierarchy of priorities
and decides how to distribute funds. They justify such arrangement by his in-depth
knowledge of the gmina’s problems and his being well informed about possible sources
of financing for projects. Projects implemented in the gmina are evaluated from the
perspective of the “wójt’s achievements”: “We have a good wójt. What matters most is
what he has done in our gmina. He has built a water supply system, asphalted the roads,
renovated the cemetery. Moreover, during his term of office, a healthcare centre was
built. A new bank was built during his term of office and at his initiative a House of
Culture was built, which is an added value to the neighbourhood. All this required a lot
of time and effort. […] I am not a specialist to evaluate all this, but my conscience tells
me that I cannot but acknowledge the goods things”. “Evidently, the gmina is
developing. If you had come here let’s say 10 years ago and seen the centre of the
[gmina], well it was all misery, truly, whereas now it is completely different”. “They
have built the teachers” house and all the teachers who used to live in the school
building were moved there. This way, the shift system at school was eliminated. We
even have a secondary school here, so the Gmina takes good care of us”.
The enthusiastic reaction of local inhabitants to “wójt’s achievements” inspires
an interpretation of his image as an “idol” – actor, whose univocal performance causes
worship, not always substantiated by an in-depth analysis. The idol should be popular
and praised: “In the latest elections in June “94, he was the only candidate from his
district and he got more votes than any other councillor”. “He ran for the office of
councillor and he was the only candidate. Farmers from his district said that if anyone
1
The field study quotations are taken from interviews owned by the Department of Ethnology and
Cultural Anthropology.
34
else decided to run for the office, they would break his legs. So there were no other
candidates and they voted for him – such is the farmers’ support for him”. “The wójt has
been here for very long. First as the head of gmina, then as wójt, already for the second
term of office. People trust him”.
The inhabitants of the gmina “shine” in the fame of the “idol’s” achievements:
“in the whole region, we are like a backbone and others follow our example” (this
concerns mainly the fact that the gmina is in charge of the school and healthcare sector).
An idol should embody the ideals of his “admirers”. In the case of inhabitants of
a rural gmina, that ideal takes the shape of a “good farm manager”. Almost all
supportive “spectators” (as well as some of the critics) used that metaphor to answer the
questions: what should be a good wójt like? “Like a good farm manager, he should keep
a close look on everything and keep discipline”. “He should know what is going on and
put his nose in everything, like every good farm manager does”. “It is not so easy to be
a good farm manager when you are short for money, but you should still make the best
use of the little money you have. People say that in difficult times like these, it is
impossible to do anything, and yet he is doing something”. The local “farm
management” metaphor perfectly harmonizes with the comparison of the modern state
to a “garden”. “The modern state was born as a missionary project […] and it assumed
the attitude of a gardener towards the community under its management” (Bauman
1995, p. 37). The “farm management” metaphor also has a more concrete dimension. A
candidate for a “gmina manager” must be a good manager of his own farm, meaning
that he must be a good farmer: “First, you have to show how you manage your own
farm. Who you are. What you do. And only then you can go to people. This is that kind
of community. Farmers will not listen to any waffle. – Does it mean to say that unless
you are a farmer you have no chance of becoming the wójt of a rural gmina? Yes, that’s
quite correct. After all, [the loosing candidate for the office of the wójt – A. M.] was no
farmer. Rather, he was some intellectual from Warsaw, a romantic who had come here
for some reason. Well, you know, we need no romantics here”.
A “good farm manager” takes care of his gmina and of the quality of life of its
inhabitants: “He enlarges the school and makes sure that kids from low-income families
are financed from the Gmina Office. We were the only gmina in Poland to react to the
needs of farmers on disability allowance. The Gmina Office and PSL (Polish People’s
Party) have built a huge apartment building for farmers on disability allowance”. “We
have a nice apartment building for teachers, and a lot of money is spent on water supply
systems – most farmers are connected by now. Definitely, the gmina is trying to do
something for people”. “The gmina has also taken charge of the healthcare centre and
now we have an oculist, a laryngologist and some other specialists coming here once or
twice a week, so we do not have to go to Giżycko [a nearby town - translator] each time
we need to see a doctor”. “Now that we have a high unemployment rate, the gmina is
trying to find work for as many people as they can. However, finding work is one thing
and being able to pay is a different story. It is not easy, but they cope with this problem
somehow”.
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The farming successes of candidates for councillors are a proof of not only their
resourcefulness but also their knowledge, whose significance is emphasised by all our
interlocutors. This knowledge consists mainly in their awareness of the problems of the
local community, the wójt’s “farm”: “He may be a university graduate and still know
very little about our problems. And now the times are difficult. Everything is changing.
And if you don’t know the basics, you won’t be able to cope. You may make a mistake,
if you don’t know the rules [meaning the local connections – A. M.]. And the wójt
knows all the farmers in the neighbourhood, and if someone comes to the Gmina Office,
he already knows what business he has there and he knows what all this is about, he
shows a map, he shows a decision and he explains the problem”. “He spends a lot of
time doing field work. So, when people ask about details, like for example that there is a
road somewhere, then he knows which road that is and who lives there. He has worked
on all the positions here: from clerk to wójt”. “If he manages the whole gmina, then he
should be competent and he should be familiar with everything: from the condition of
local roads to the distribution of gmina funds”. Another critical area of knowledge for a
candidate for the wójt is knowing how to acquire co-financing for gmina’s projects and
how to promote the gmina in the region. In the political system before 1989, these skills
were equally important, and the relationships from the past are still of use now. “In the
times of the People’s Republic of Poland, they would organise meetings at the lake for
the «top brass» from the region, because it was a good way to get more money from
them. In the past, a lot could be achieved via the regional committee of the PZPR party,
and one man from our gmina was the 1st Secretary and he indeed helped a lot from his
position. The present wójt is a member of the regional council (Sejmik Samorządowy),
he is active in the Masurian Lakes Foundation and he knows many important people”.
Critics are suspicious of the wójt’s achievements as well as his knowledge and
paternalistic attitude, so highly regarded by his supporters. At the moment, there is no
organised opposition in either of the analysed gminas, but even when it existed, the
distribution of forces on the public forum of the gmina was, a priori, uneven:
“Dichotomy is the product and at the same time the mask of public authorities. And
even though none of the declared dichotomies would survive without the support of
public authorities capable of separating and sending to exile, dichotomy, once put into
existence, creates a semblance of equality and exchangeability of its components. But
its very appearance proves the existence of a force capable of separating and
differentiating […]. In dichotomies that are crucial for the practice and vision of social
order, the differentiating force is usually hidden behind one of the components of the
opposition. The other component is the alter ego of the first component distinguished in
the act of self-constitution, and it is as a rule the «worse» side, handicapped and
degraded, in a seemingly symmetrical opposition” (Bauman 1995, p. 29).
In both analysed gminas, the first post-war form of organised opposition was the
“Solidarity of Individual Farmers”, which engaged in disputes with public authorities
concerning the farmers’ current problems and did not develop either a coherent program
or any permanent structures. In the larger of the two gminas, the “critical audience”
36
organised itself one more time, in 1990, around the Citizens” Committee formed by a
newcomer from a big city who settled down in the gmina. The failed attempt to change
the person of the wójt caused the group of people who wanted to “act in a different
way” to fall apart. The group is remembered mainly as editors of a newsletter that “kept
an eye on local officials”. “So, there was this opponent in the Citizens” Committee, a
candidate for the office of wójt and former school manager. They had their office and
they issued this newsletter. They wrote about «those things», and they did it pretty well,
they showed the mistakes of public officials. And they knew quite a lot, because they
talked to people, and people were happy to have attentive listeners to complain to”. “We
do not have any organised opposition here. We used to have a newsletter. A pity it no
longer exists, because it was issued for 2–3 years. I think it was quite good. Later, there
was this opposing newsletter, like a counterbalance for the first one. They were both
quite personal. Of course no names were ever mentioned, but still everyone knew who it
was about. The articles were signed with initials. Then, they had financial problems and
problems with renting the office… so, the newsletter died with natural death, but I think
it was quite popular and people were buying it. It would be a good thing to continue
issuing such newsletter…”
Critics are distrustful. They do not trust the “fatherly” attitude of the public
authorities, suspecting it to be populist demagogy only. They watch closely the actions
of public authorities, trying to discover their “second bottom”, the “real motives” of
their actions. For them, the efforts of the “people on the stage” and in particular of the
central personage are supposed to delude the “audience” and to create an illusion of
welfare in the gmina. From this perspective, the projects, already implemented or
planned by the local authorities, are considered as accessories that help create the
illusion. They doubt the purposefulness of some projects, claiming that they are
supposed to raise the prestige of the gmina rather than serve its inhabitants. This kind of
criticism was applied to the enlargement of the local school, given the fact that the
number of school-age children in the area is decreasing. A lot of money was invested in
the school, including money from grants. Critical councillors protested, asking whether
the “project was not too much”. In 1985, the gmina started building a huge Centre of
Culture. The project was financed from regional funds. Critics argued that the main
purpose of the project was not so much to disseminate culture in the rural
neighbourhood, but rather to raise the rank of the gmina in the region: “they [previous
authorities of the gmina – A.M.] thought they would make a kind of showpiece of that
building, the same like in Suwałki: when it became the capital city of the region, the
Regional Committee has ever since been the tallest building there. I don’t know what’s
inside and the building does not even fit into the landscape of Suwałki”. “They wanted
to build a monument for themselves, but it was such a costly project, and still is”. The
more favourable part of the local community retorted that making the gmina stand out
from the crowd was an attempt at winning additional funds at times when the only
money the local authorities could dispose of was the budget allocated top-down. They
emphasised the fact that the Centre of Culture could be very functional in the new
37
times: “The Healthcare Centre will move there. They want to create a large library
there. Some of the space may be sold or rented to earn the money needed to build the
remaining part. There are so many legends and understatements surrounding the Centre.
Some say that the building is a relic of the Communist era and that it should have been
left unfinished, that nobody knows what to do with it. And yet a lot of money and
labour went into that project”. The “critics” stress the remarkable flexibility of the
officials, who could adapt the flagship building of the former political regime to the
“new times”, and with a good financial result, for that matter.
A typical accusation is that officials use their contacts with regional authorities
and knowledge of the law to gain personal advantage. They are also criticised for filling
the posts in the Gmina Office and other important positions with their friends or
relatives. This phenomenon is described by Hanna Giza-Poleszuk (1991, p. 97):
“Institutions are personalised by the sucking of their representatives into “cliques”,
“circles”, “social relationships’”. Thus, all those accusations: “the whole Gmina is one
big clique”, “it is not normal that he is the wójt and his wife is the director of our bank, I
think this is wrong and people say that it should not be like that”.
The discrepancies in the views of the supporters and critics are due not only to
their different opinions by which they try to achieve rationality and coherence, but also
to a different emotional attitude. The divergence in the attitudes of enchanted and
critical audience was very accurately depicted by Giraudoux. His description is relevant
to the theatrical allegory of public life: “Immobilised, inert audience loves with the love
of God towards his miserable or wonderful creations. Such a god, paralysed and
powerless, may be similar to the real God in other aspects, too, but, the same like that
real God, he feels extreme pity and gratitude seeing those creatures with whom he is
linked by brotherhood or fatherhood and who agreed on that very night to suffer and die
instead of him. Critics, on the other hand, as soon as the curtain goes up, stiffen up and
isolate themselves by being focused on themselves, by distrust of themselves that turns
into distrust of the performance; they come to believe that they are judges who are
supposed to either declare guilty or acquit, they do not notice the author or the
personages, but they see a performance that they are supposed to weigh and measure”.
(Giraudoux 1957, p. 29).
Both of the perspectives presented in this essay determine a certain extremity,
thus they can be somewhat exaggerated. There are many more moderate options in
between, which, however, could not be described in detail due to the limited length of
the article. Neither did I describe all the colours of the political “scene”. The “people of
the scene” include the employees of the Gmina Office, and since 1990, the councillors
have played a very important role, too. The picture of the “theatre of public life”
remains incomplete, since the purpose of this article was not so much to thoroughly
analyse the issue but rather to show the extending range of ethnological research, the
new problems that appeared together with social changes that depart from the traditional
scope of ethnographic studies.
38
Translated by LINGUA LAB, www.lingualab.pl, Joanna Piętka-Czech
LITERATURE
Bauman Z.
1994 Dwa szkice o moralności ponowoczesnej, Warszawa.
1995 Wieloznaczność nowoczesna, nowoczesność wieloznaczna, Warszawa.
Brown R. H.
1992 Poetics, Politics, and Truth: An invitation to Rhetorical Analysis, [w:] Writing
the Social Text, New York, Aldine do Gruyter Press.
Bułhakow M.
1973 Mistrz i Małgorzata, Warszawa.
„Co nam zostało z tych lat?”
1991 „Co nam zostało z tych lat?” Społeczeństwo polskie u progu zmiany
systemowej, M. Marody (red.), Londyn, „Aneks”.
Clifford J.
1988 Predicament of Culture, Harvard University Press.
1989 On Ethnographic Allegory, [w:] Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography, J. Cifford, G.E. Marcus, Berkeley - Los Angeles - London,
University of California Press.
Gieorgica J. P.
1991 Aktorzy lokalnej sceny politycznej, [w:] Między nadzieją a rozczarowaniem.
Samorząd terytorialny rok po wyborach, B. Jałowiecki, P. Swianiewicz (red.),
Warszawa.
Giza-Poleszczuk H.
1991 Stosunki międzyludzkie i życie zbiorowe, [w:] „Co nam zostało z tych lat?”
Społeczeństwo polskie u progu zmiany systemowej, M. Marody (red.), Londyn,
„Aneks”.
Giraudoux J.
1957 Improwizacja paryska, [w:] Teatr, Warszawa.
Jałowiecki B.
1990 Narodziny demokracji lokalnej, Warszawa.
1991 Scena polityczna Polski lokalnej, [w:] Między nadzieją a rozczarowaniem.
Samorząd terytorialny rok po wyborach, B. Jałowiecki, P. Swianiewicz (red.),
Warszawa.
Lakoff G., Johnson M.
1988 Metafory w naszym życiu, Warszawa.
Malewska-Szałygin A.
1995 Zarys tradycji stosowania pojęcia „wiedza potoczna”, „Etnografia Polska”, t.
39, z. 1-2, s. 51-63.
Ohnuki-Tierney E.
39
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ANNA MALEWSKA-SZAŁYGIN
COMMON KNOWLEDGE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
THE IMAGE OF LOCAL POLITICAL SCENE
Summary
Recent problems of human sciences, the discrepancy of modern science and
postmodern theories of textuality and deconstruction can be conceived in terms of
ancient debates between philosophy and rhetoric. The New Rhetoric postulates applying
allegories which can function as models of interpretation. According to J. Clifford
ethnographic writing is allegoric on each plane of meaning. Coexistence of native
metaphors and rhetorical figures introduced by the writer is quite possible. The latter
constitute the probable meanings of native texts and the metaphors included in them.
According to this methodology the "texts" to be analysed are the recorded
fragments of native knowledge confronted in the intercultural discourse with the
scholar's knowledge, both specialist and everyday knowledge. The discourse is possible
owing to the subjects of communication. In this case it is the public (political) life on
the local, communal level. The author suggests as the metaphor the model of "theatre of
public life". There is a "stage" occupied by people of local official authority who can
influence the communal budget and schemes of development. There is "audience" members of community, potential voters, local constituency who watch and comment
all the actions of those "on stage". Their attitudes vary extending from the extreme of
"favorably inclined" to "critical". The supporters are convinced of the authorities'
paternalism and good will, especially that of the head of communal council who is the
central character on the stage. They admire his personality, wisdom and activity, they
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perceive his person as "an ideal of a good manager". The critics are distrustful, they
don't believe that the authorities act on behalf of the public welfare, but suspect them of
minding their own interest and prestige. The critics suggest that the people of authority
offer only an illusion of welfare and their enterprises are nothing more than requisites
which are to make them credible.
The article is intended not so much to present a deep analysis of the subject as to
show how far the field of anthropology has been extended, new problems appearing
along with social changes, and how big the distance from traditional interests of
ethnography has become.
Abstract translated by Anna Kuczyńska-Skrzypek
This project is financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part
of the National Program for Development of Humanities, 2012-2014.