The socio-economic transformations of the 1990s have forced many people in Poland into impoverishment. Hunters, Gatherers, and Practitioners of Powerlessness gives a dramatic account of life after this degradation, tracking the experiences of unemployed miners, scrap collectors, and poverty-stricken village residents. Contrary to the images of passivity, resignation, and helplessness that have become powerful tropes in Polish journalism and academic writing, Tomasz Rakowski traces the ways in which people actively reconfigure their lives. As it turns out, the initial sense of degradation and helplessness often gives way to images of resourcefulness that reveal unusual hunting-and-gathering skills.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Jan Kubik Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: The Anthropologist as a Poverty Inspector An Anthropological Shift in Perspective The ‘Culture of Poverty’: Getting Beyond the Concept Social Trauma and Dependency: Shift in Perspective         Hermeneutics and Anthropology Towards a Method Maurice Merleau-Ponty – the ‘Patron Saint’ of the Present Ethnography Method: (Lack of) Ethnographic Knowledge Pre-textual Ethnography The Most Bitter Side of the Polish Transformation: Fields of Research The “New Poverty” Post-socialism: History and Experience The Studied Phenomena The Field Research Chapter 1. The Szydlowiec and Przysucha Environs (The Świętokrzyskie and Radom Foothills) A World Full of Adversities Unemployment and the Farming Recession Community of the Unemployed: Immobility, Odd Jobs and ‘Tragic Scarring’ Motionless Orchards, Motionless Fields: Failure Dependency and Irreversibility: A Reproof at the World Second-string Ecology The New Face of the Jobless Village Gatherers of Wild Herbs and Undergrowth, Gatherers of Fir Wood The ‘New Ecology’: The Convertibility of the Environment Collection, Conversion, Transition The ‘Culture of Survival’ Chapter 2. Wałbrzych – Boguszów-Gorce From Destruction to ‘Empty’ Communication: The Liquidation of the Coal Basin The City and the Mine The Highly Ambivalent Story of the Wałbrzych Basin Experience and Liquidation: Destruction – The City – The Body How to Speak of Liquidation? (Auto)aggression – Dialogue – Social Muteness Externalized Shame: Empty Communication and Internal Spectacles Facing Reality after the Mines (1) Complaints – Accusations – Triumphs A World Affected from the Outside Bootleg Mines, Diggers, Skills: The Body’s Active Knowledge Rhythm, Jokes, Anecdotes: ‘Scoffing at the World’ Law and Lawlessness: Interior Spectacles The Grey Market: Deal-making and Resourcefulness The ‘Internal Circulation’ and the Fragmentationof Transactions Home-Oikos: The Internal Circulation Freedom in the Mines ‘Do It Yourself’ Equipment Working and Efficiency in Manual Labor: Resources and Deposits Demolition – Collecting – Objects Things Memory Facing Reality after the Mines (2) Chapter 3. The Bełchatów Brown Coal Mine -- The Shadowlands of the Exposed Mine The Mine/ Power Station. The Perfect Balance, an Abrupt Modernization Causative Alienation and Control over the Environment At the Margins of the Great Industry – Marginalization and Exclusion The Mine: Orbis Exterior Violence, Guilt, and the Building Sacrifice The Consequences of ‘Excess’: Metaphors of Exploitation The Mine: Orbis Interior The Players, Their Families, and Their Means of Sustenance Self-sufficiency, Subsistence: Gathering and Processing Goods Hunting and Gathering Wacław Okoński – The Stalker, Orbis Interior Goods and Trophies: The Hunting/Gathering Existence on the Edge of the Mine Records Cabinets of Curiosities, Collectors’ Museums The Work of Memory: Reconstructions, Objects, Collections ‘The Science of the Concrete’: Inscriptions, Journals, Enumeration Hunters and Gatherers – Practitioners of Powerlessness Conclusion The ‘Reality Testing’ Outcome Beyond Anthropology Bibliography Materials