Kombinowanie : agency, informality, and the poetics of self in Highland Poland

Journal article

This article asks what role local models of agency and subjectivity play in the structure and interpretation of informal economic practices, and how this influences the ways in which people narrate their behaviour to others. Exploring the use of a common Polish idiom for informal activities – kombinowanie – amongst villagers in the Carpathian Highlands, it argues that the term acts as a ‘master‐trope’ for local identity, providing villagers with a narrative model for asserting and broadcasting their social agency to peers. Furthermore, it shows how in this particular ethnographic context, the retelling of instances of informal or illegal activity as kombinowanie can be seen as part of a Highlander ‘poetics of self’, in that each manifestation of the term carries with it a series of implicit sociohistorical and normative meanings that relate to notions of ‘typical’ Górale (Highland) behaviour. By characterizing kombinowanie as a type of tactics, I open up the term for comparative analysis with other local conceptions of agency which value insubordination.

Authors: Makovicky, N

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Wiley
• Journal: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
• Volume: 24
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 493-511
• Publication date: 2018-06-21
• Acceptance date: 2018-04-09
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.12857
• EISSN: 1467-9655
• ISSN: 1359-0987
• Language: English