Abstract
Typical conversations about political matters are charged with emotion. Political matters are understood here as a thematic field involving talks about central authorities and parliament, as well as comments on news provided by the media. Talks about this topic often occur during neighborly meetings and family or social gatherings. I conducted ethnographic interviews to analyze how rural inhabitants talk about such political matters. During the interviews, especially polyphonic ones, I observed the accom-panying emotions, such as raised voices, faces bloodshot with irritation, lively gestures, the use of irony, and sometimes vulgar language and swearing. Anger, resentment, anxiety, fear, contempt, hostility, and even hatred were unmistakable signals of emotional involvement in political matters and engagement in debate about the common good and public affairs. Thus, the question arises: are such conversations a form of civility?
Highlights
Zizi Papacharissi proposed some standards of civility based on source material comprising online comments about political matters
At the turn of the twenty-first century, social anthropologists showed the inadequacy of the rational model for describing the complexity and dynamics of the contemporary processes of socio-political engagement; this is mainly because this model fails to acknowledge the key component of the public-political life: emotions (Aretxaga, 2003; Laszczkowski and Reeves, 2018; Lutz and Abu-Lughod, 1990; Navaro-Yashin, 2012; Stoler, 2004; and others)
The emotions that accompany everyday conversations and our interviews about political matters are evoked and situationally shaped through real conversations with neighbors, cousins, or researchers; they are entangled in social relations and the positions of interlocutors; they take the form which is specific to the cultural context: in this case, defined by the rural character of the case study village and by the specificity of the highland region
Summary
I searched for answers to the former questions in the source materials of research projects implemented in the first decades of the twenty-first century with the following subjects: Ethnopolitics – conversations about politics with highlanders (1999–2001); Imaginaries about the state, power, politics and democracy (2004–2005); and Ethnography of receiving media messages and the common knowledge (2012– 2014). I conducted these research projects in the villages of the southern part of the mountainous region of Podhale in Poland, and in a marketplace in the town of Nowy Targ (the name in Polish means ‘New Market’) at the foot of the Tatra Mountains in the Carpathians. Interviews were recorded in country farmyards, next to shops, churches, but most often at the town marketplace They often took the form of polyphonic debates with 2–4 interlocutors, and it was especially those polyphonic talks in the town marketplace that frequently became very emotional. Anglophone anthropological publications that refer to fieldwork in the Nowy Targ district (the lower part of the Podhale region) are limited to the works of Frances Pine, who has conducted ethnographic research in this area since 1978 (e.g. 1999, 2000, and 2002). Since 2015, Poland has been ruled by PiS, the party supported by most of our interlocutors.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
