Anthropology in a Nationalizing State: Three Case Studies from Interwar Poland

Abstract

Three case studies depict different attitudes of anthropologists toward the politics of nationalism promoted by the prewar Polish state. Ethnographer Stanisław Dworakowski, involved in a governmental Committee for the Issues of Petty Nobility in Eastern Poland, elaborated a study on this social stratum. Although based on reliable field research, it can hardly be considered scientific work, as it has many features of political propaganda. Quite opposite is the case of folklorist Joachim Chajes, secretary of the Ethnographical Commission of YIVO. Contemporary Soviet folklore was one of the fields of his research, which Polish anticommunist and antisemitic authorities found suspicious. Accused of communist activity, he was imprisoned. Social anthropologist Józef Obrębski can be situated between those two extremes. His field research among East Slavic peasants in Eastern Poland, concerning their developing national identity, although conducted within a national scientific program and financed by the state, is an example of intellectual independence. By revealing the negative attitude of the peasants toward Polish authorities, Obrębski achieved an outcome, which did not fulfill the official political expectations. These three trajectories show competitive coexistence of the meta-field of power and the scientific field, focused on their respective stakes: power and recognition.