Live Writing in Times of Crisis

Narratives of Homesteading in Times of Crisis: Peasant Economies in the Light of Interwar Polish Diaries

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21827/ejlw.14.42321

Keywords:

peasant economies, agrarianism, modernization, collaboration, economy of attention, media field, interwar Polish peasant diaries

Abstract

This article presents peasant economic ideologies and conceptions examined in the light of interwar Polish diary competitions. Using the tools of Karen Barber’s anthropology of text, I argue that these accounts, partly in defiance of the policy of the time of portraying peasant helplessness and misery, told the story of peasant traditional economic notions tied simultaneously to modern economic ideologies: agrarianism and the cooperative-promoting popular movement. This intertwining of modern and traditional thinking promoted economic concepts and practices forgotten and overlooked by modernization processes, supported by peasants, but also by a socially engaged intelligentsia of bourgeois or landed gentry origin. Peasant economics and economic concepts often avoided extremes: on the one hand, the economic collectivism promised by communist ideologies, and on the other, the liberal individualism associated with the ideology of capitalist laissez-faire. By practicing economic abruptness, they promoted a set of economic virtues forgotten in time of Polish modernization. The description of the process requires a new vocabulary and new historical-anthropological tools. 

Author Biography

Marta Rakoczy, University of Warsaw

Marta Rakoczy professor at the Institute of Polish Culture at the University of Warsaw and head of the Korczakianum – research centre dealing with the legacy of Janusz Korczak/Henryk Goldszmit at the Museum of Warsaw. She works on the anthropology of writing and literacy studies, the history of modernization and cultural studies of childhood and youth. Author of books: Słowo, działanie, kontekst. O etnograficznej koncepcji języka Bronisława Malinowskiego [Word - Action - Context. On Bronislaw Malinowski's ethnographic conception of language] (2012), Polityki pisma. Szkice plenerowe z pajdocentrycznej nowoczesności [The Politics of Writing. Plenary sketches from paidocentric modernity] (2018), Władza liter. Polskie procesy modernizacyjne a awangarda [Power of letters. Polish modernization processes and the avant-garde] (2022).

Published

2025-07-10

Issue

Vol. 14 (2025): EJLW

Section

Live Writing in Times of Crisis

Copyright (c) 2025 Marta Rakoczy

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