Anna Malewska-Szałygin
My research interests include anthropology of politics and anthropology of common sense. My work focuses on common sense notions, social imaginaries, metaphors produced, shared, and transformed in local discourses. In the contemporary variety of voices, I am mostly interested in the voice of uneducated people living in rural areas (often omitted or marginalized within public debate). I have conducted my fieldwork in Poland: in regions: Roztocze, Masuria, and Podhale. In subsequent research projects I worked on: stories on the past of the countryside (1984-1986), local discourse on local government (1994-1996), rural images of power, state and democracy (1999-2005), uses of media broadcast in conversations about politics (2012-2016).
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The book draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the early 2000s in the highland region in the south of Poland, focusing on local knowledge about the state, power, politics, and democracy. It describes how rural social imaginaries translate categories derived from the organisation of life and work at the farm into ideas about politics. In this view, the state is seen as a huge farm, the authorities as the farmer or manager, and the nation as the farmer’s family. Politics is perceived as a dishonest but profitable profession and democracy as a political system that could only work in the garden of Eden.