aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] New book: Deborah Cahalen Schneider: Being Goral:Identity Politicsand Globalization in Postsocialist Poland (SUNY Press) (fwd)

[M T Znayenko <znayenko@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:12:57 -0500
From: Serguei Alex. Oushakine <oushakin@Princeton.EDU>
To: Serguei Alex. Oushakine <oushakin@Princeton.EDU>
Subject: New book: Deborah Cahalen Schneider: Being Goral: Identity Politics and
      Globalization in Postsocialist Poland (SUNY Press)

Deborah Cahalen Schneider
Being Goral: Identity Politics and Globalization in Postsocialist Poland

SUNY series in National Identities
http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=61218

The Góral ethnic identity has been at the center of political machinations
in Poland for centuries. The late Pope John Paul II, for example, was a
Góral. This is the first book-length study of the Góral identity and one of
the few studies in English to discuss Górals. Through personal interviews,
local manuscripts, and academic histories of the region, author Deborah
Cahalen Schneider shows how important the Góral identity has been to
Poland’s history. The conflict over the Góral identity in the community of
Zywiec, Poland serves as a lens through which Schneider views national
identity issues and class conflict in Poland at large. The Góral identity
not only gave this community a sense of togetherness under the Habsburg
Empire, but also was a symbol of Polish identity for Polish nationalists
during that time. Schneider shows how the Góral identity has spanned the
rise and, arguably, the fall of nationalism as the primary discourse of
political identity in the post—Cold War, European Union—dominated Eastern
Europe.

“Schneider writes in a lively and engaging style, which creates a sense of
empathy with the people she describes and a consequent appreciation of their
dilemmas and strategies in a difficult situation. That evocation of empathy
through detail is precisely what is missing in most studies of Eastern
Europe, but Schneider puts us in the Zywiecers’ shoes, which allows us to
see the changes in Eastern Europe in a new light.” — Elizabeth C. Dunn,
author of Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of
Labor

Deborah Cahalen Schneider is an independent scholar living in Virginia.

Table Of Contents

1. The Day the Pope Came to Town

2. A Political and Economic History of the Zywiec Region

3. Elite Class Struggles and Authority

4. Nonelites, Family Netowrks, and Identity

5. The Community, the Nation-State,and Globalization

6. Politics, Culture, and Modernityin Postsocialist Poland

Notes
Bibliography
Index