We Just Want to Live Normally": Intersecting Discourses of Public, Private, Poland, and the West (original) (raw)

2003, Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe

about what constitutes the normal life continued, though In postcommunist Poland, discourse on "the normal urban residents with a university education were more life" provides a view into young Poles' identity as inclined to describe their own experiences as normal shaped by processes of democratization, niarketization, than others, who felt the idealized normal life was still and globalization. In this article, I compare uses of impossible to achieve in Poland. In this paper, I show the term "normal" for a group of urban and rural that discourse about "the normal life" functions as a youths during two periods in the 1990s. I show that means of evaluating public structures in relation to normal, like public and private, is a "shifter"-individual experiences and expectations. Just what the because the same term is used in a variety of contexts "normal" entails is difficult to pin down-specific uses to describe various situations, it helps to integrate new of the term shift from person to person, and from context experiences in a way that maintains a sense of to context. Sometimes, it refers to "that which actually continuity with the past. This discourse reveals young occurs most often and is therefore 'typical'," but it is Poles' simultaneous attraction and resistance to used more often to refer to "how things should be" idealizations of the West, and it also reflects the (Wedel 1986:151). Varied characterizations of "the different opportunities available to rural and urban normal life," shaped by ethical stances that inform and residents. These factors, in turn, help to shape young are informed by perceptions of public, private, Poland, Poles 1 orientations toward the future within and beyond and the West, provide a view into young Poles' identity the borders of Poland. [Key words: public/private, as Poles. They also reveal the simultaneous attraction marketization, Poland, globalization, national identity] and resistance to processes of globalization-increasing long distance interconnectedness across nations and "In Poland, times are always interesting. There is never continents (Hannerz 1996)-in post-communist Poland, 'normality'. Rarely is life pretty-there are only pretty I focus on the words of urban and rural youths moments." (Krzysiek, a resident of Lesko, age 21, who were in high school when they first talked to me in 1993) 1992 and 1993 about their lives in postcommunist Poland. I compare their earlier comments with those "To me, this is a normal country. Whatever we don't they made in J999, when they were young adults like, we should change. [The country] is moving in a beginning their own families and professional careers, very positive direction." (Piotr, a resident of Krakow, In the earlier interviews, exclamations such as "we just age 25, 1999) want to live normally in a normal country," or "our normal [what is familiar] is not normal [the way things When discussing their frustrations with should be]" came in response to my questions about everyday surroundings and experiences, high school recent changes in Poland. As I became attuned to these students in Poland during the earJy J 990s often made phrases, I noticed they were used in casual, unsolicited references to "the normal life." As Krzysiek put it conversations, as well. Usually, they were said in a shortly after he graduated from a rural technical high tone of frustration, and preceded a litany of problems school, "more than anything, I'd like to find a little with the existing system in Poland. Most notably, youths lady and get married. I just want to live normally (zyc complained about the threat of unemployment and the normalnie)." Young Poles expressed longing for high cost of living. In my interviews in 1999,1 asked normalcy within both the public and private realm-respondents whether they think Poland is a normal they wanted a stable economic and political system that country. This is consistent with my approach to would enable, not hinder, their ability to achieve their ethnographic research-I listen for significant themes personal goals. Several years later, in 1999, discourse and patterns that emerge in everyday conversations, and JSAE Spring/Summer 2003 then build my study questions around those themes. In defined space of the home, there are public rooms (the these later interviews, I noted a marked split between living room) and private rooms (the bedroom), and each responses of urban and rural residents. Those who live of these spaces may be further divided into public and in Krakow, most of whom have attended university, have private, depending on specific elements and uses. a greater sense of progress toward the normal, and, The public-private dichotomy has been used however they define it, they feel confident that they can to characterize state socialist systems in Eastern Europe achieve a normal life in Poland. Those in the rural by natives and by foreign scholars. The difference was town of Lesko and the adjoining Bieszczady region tend variously described as: the political divide between the to feel more limited and correspondingly were more state-the institutions of the socialist government-and inclined to say that Poland is not a normal country and the nation-the people united by a shared sense of the normal life still eludes them. 1 identity (Galbraith 1997, 2000; Herer and Sadowski Little has been written about uses of the term 1990; Kubik 1994); the centralized, state-controlled "normal," with the notable exception of Wedel (1986).2 economy and what was variously called the black However, because the tension between public and market, gray market, second economy, or private sector private usually informs Poles'characterizations of the (