Monument Wars and the Pursuit of Symbolic Dominion over a Territory: Analysis Based on the Case of Germans in Poland

Abstract

The object of this article is to explain ethnic and nationality animosities and conflicts at the symbolic level (e.g,. conflicts over monuments, mausoleums, cemeteries, holy sites, language) based on the case of conflict between the German minority and Polish majority in Poland since 1989. Three explanatory paradigms are introduced, economic, cultural, and political, which, taken separately, express some truths about these conflicts but at the same time offer an excessively reductionist vision of social reality. The author therefore proposes to treat ethnic and nationality conflicts as fights about symbolic dominion over a given territory (i.e., fights over symbolic domains) that guarantees access to large stocks of symbolic capital in the sense intended by Pierre Bourdieu—capital active on different social levels. Through the lens of these categories, the author seeks to characterize and explain conflicts over monuments on Polish territory.