Authors

Joanna Rozmus¹;  ¹ University of Vienna, Austria

Discussion

The nation-wide liquidation of state farms, the restoration of private property rights and the inflow of foreign investments entailed enormous change with diverse territorial impact in the post-socialist countryside. In this paper, I focus on the continuities of power relations and the way of doing business in the Polish countryside. In some rural areas, former state farm land has become a terrain of competition for global players since 1991. Paczółtowice (35 km northwest of Cracow) is a solid case study of a post-socialist village that underwent a radical and diametrically opposed restructuring of its former state farmland. Paczółtowice’s agricultural space was transformed into a recreational space of business meetings and international sports tournaments, to Kraków Valley Golf & Country Club, a glocal encounter of international golf players, businessmen, wealthy city residents and Paczółtowians/country dwellers. The restructuring of Paczółtowice’s vast surface of land went along with a complex entwinement of new and old power relations. I argue that the “new” way of doing business in the post-socialist countryside does not mean a breakup with common habits before 1989, but a continuity of old structures of power realtions amplified with new practices and forms of knowledge - a recurrent synthesis of resilience and flexibility within old powers. Furthermore, the transformation of former state farmland is part of a much larger process of globalisation and an essential factor in the course of emergence of "new ruralities" in the post-socialist countryside.