Re-placing Work: Economic Transformations and the Shape of a Community in Post-Socialist Poland

Concepts and experiences of both work and community have received renewed attention within contemporary social theory, linking the advent of the ‘new’ economy with the remaking of collective and individual identities within and beyond the workplace. This paper explores the remaking of both concepts and experiences of work and community, and their interconnection, in the town of Nowa Huta in southern Poland. Nowa Huta was founded in 1949 as the flagship project of Poland's new socialist economy and dominated by the (then) Lenin Steelworks, a vast and sprawling plant, employing, at its height, 43,000 workers. As was typical of large state-owned enterprises under socialism, the steelworks supported a wide range of activities and facilities beyond the workplace and became the centre of life as well as work in the town. Particular notions of work and community were employed under socialism such that at times they appeared all but inseparable. With the collapse of socialism in east central Europe and the marketisation and internationalisation of the Polish economy, the connections between these spheres and their influence on identity and everyday life in Nowa Huta are being remade. This paper uses material from interviews and life histories in the town to highlight some of those transformations, to explore the role of various institutions in mediating processes of change and to link the experiences of Nowa Huta to the wider literatures on work and community.

Paper presented to RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Queen’s University Belfast, 2nd-5th January 2002 and Critical Political Economies: Cities, Regions and the International Economy, International Conference of Critical Geography, Bekescsaba, Hungary, 25th-30th June 2002

A summary version of this paper in PDF format can be downloaded here and a full draft here.