JolantaTransformation Arcimowicz of Polish habit and Mariolacustom in the Bienko early XXIBeata century ¸aciak O Transformation of Polish habit and custom in the early XXI century Transformation of Polish habit and custom in the early XXI century Reviewers: Dr hab Małgorzata Bogunia-Borowska Dr hab. prof. UW Wojciech Pawlik Jolanta Arcimowicz Mariola Bienko Beata Łaciak Transformation of Polish habit and custom in the early XXI century Contents Beata Łaciak • Introduction 7 1 Beata Łaciak • Transformations in custom, tradition, new trends 11 2 Mariola Bieńko • Physiology of taste in contemporary culinary and festive customs 31 3 Mariola Bienko • Culinary fascinations in popular culture 81 4 Beata Łaciak • Diversity of everyday and holiday customs 107 5 Jolanta Arcimowicz • The everyday and the sp ecial occasion of customary administration pract ices – dress code and the Americanisation of offices 125 6 Jolanta Arcimowicz • Public and private administrative celebration in Poland 143 Beata Łaciak • Conclusion 159 Bibliography 169 Introduction The term „custom”, despite functioning in colloquial language and being used in social sciences almost since their inception, is defined in various ways. However, in the deliberations and disputes of sociologists, anthro- pologists, ethnographers, and cultural studies, one can find some common ground. Nearly everyone is in agreement that the term has multiple mean- ings, that it includes repeatable or ritualised behaviours or behaviour models, that customs have a social charact er and pertain to the group, not individuals. There is also consensus as to the esp ecially close or even es- sential ties of the customary sphere to morality. Stefan Bednarek sum- marises this interdependence, „custom gives behaviours a symbolic char- act er – they are significant in the axiological sense, as well as in the semiological.”1 Jacek Kurczewski, debating the relations between sociology of morality and sociology of customs and referring to the social construc- tion of reality concept from Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann2, stated that „theory of custom is simply theory of institutionalisation, while theory of validation is the theory of moral doctrines, among others. (…) Indeed, customs are simply institutions and moral doctrines are autonomous validations of customs. Moralisation of a custom is working out the moral doctrine which validates it.” 3 Barbara Klich frames it slight- ly differently, but also refers to the axiological asp ect of custom when writing, „custom and mentality are difficult concepts to differentiate. One 1 Stefan Bednarek, Badanie obyczaju w persp ektywie kulturoznawstwa. Przykład PRL-u. ?[Examining Customs in the Persp ective of Cultural Studies. The PRL Example, in: How to Study Customs?]. ed. Małgorzata Szapkowska, Jak badać obyczaje [How to Study Customs?] Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Errata, 2007. 2 Petera L. Berger and Thomasa Luckmann, Społeczne tworzenie rzeczywistości. [Social Construction of Reality]. Polish transl. Józef Niżnik, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2010. 3 Jacek Kurczewski, Trzy drogi do socjologii obyczajów. [Th ree Paths to Sociology of Customs], in: “Societas/ Communitas, nr 1/2014, p. 23 7 may assume that mentality is certain ideas, convictions, including religious ones, and so on; that mentality builds the sphere of axiology. The question remains however, how much is mentality building custom, and how much is custom then transforming that mentality. They are conjoined.”4 Our understanding of customs will refer to the above interpretations. In the texts within this book we treat customs as daily and celebratory pract ices, as reproduced models of behaviour, with moral validations and the associ- ated mentality which we attempted to discern and describe. There is little doubt about the idea that customs are a dynamic phe- nomenon; however, their changes are usually examined in the long-term. As Norbert Elias claims, „It is not easy to show the dynamics of the process in a clear, visualized way, and that is because it happens so slowly, as if making baby steps, and furthermore among various deviations and fluc- tuations, forming smaller and bigger curves.”5 Roch Sulima examined transformations in Polish customs and noticed that they are losing their regulatory and performative charact er. He writes, „One could put forth the thesis that custom is substituted today by com- mon knowledge about custom.”6 Customs have ceased to be an element of group or environmental identification. „Paradoxically, it is the media- dominated popular culture, and not moral and social codices, that is be- coming the native environment of functioning „custom self-knowledge” (...) Domination of media „images” and „stories of custom” without sig- nificant obligations or social sanction is a symptom of radical re-evaluation of the role of custom today”7 It is difficult not to agree with this statement. Terms such as „custom(s)” or „lifestyle” show up in media increasingly often. Nearly every magazine has advice on customs or columns devoted to various dimensions of life- styles. There are serialised television programs or even entire channels devoted to issues of custom, websites and online forums, directed mostly toward women. Małgorzata Szpakowska emphasises that, “In the world of mass communications and esp ecially new media, the constant increase in sources is accompanied by, an increase in the number of models. Mod- 4 Barbara Klich, Jak badać obyczaje .Dyskusja panelowa. [How to Study Customs. Discussion Panel] in: ed. Małgorzata Szapkowska, op. cit. p.151 5 Norbert Elias, Przemiany obyczajów w cywilizacji Zachodu [Transformations of Custom in West ern Civilisation]. transl. Tadeusz Zabłudowski. Warszawa: PIW, 1980, p. 109 6 Roch Sulima, Przemiany polskiego obyczaju (ostatnie dekady) [Changes in Polish Custom (of the last decade)], in: Tabu, etykieta, dobre obyczaje [Taboo, Etiquett e, Good manners]. ed. Piotr Kowalski. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego, 2009, p.293 7 Ibidem. s. 293-294 8 ern custom is something that is developed in direct contact between indi- viduals; a constant stream of new ideas coming toward us from all sides.”8 The large number and variety of sources causes the study of customs to be rather difficult and often leading to not fully cohesive views of the issues. This is something scientists agreed on, at the conference in Łowicz in 2005, when discussing how to study contemporary customs. Andrzej Mencwel, taking part in the discussion, stated that when studying customs one may „seek the synthesis of something which has no dominant, which is diverse – indeed, showing the diversity may be a kind of synthesis. Synthesis does not mean an ideal, cohesive, homogenous description.”9 Our book is to be an attempt at this kind of synthetic description of Polish customs in the early XXI century. During our research it turned out that the synthesis will be incomplete. The number of issues and areas which comprise mod- ern Polish custom seems almost infinite. Out of necessity then, we de- cided on a synthesis which would consider only chosen asp ects of the va- riety of customs. One of the significant issues for us was customary change in Poland in the early XXI century. We tried to focus foremost on what new things appear in the sphere of customs, what are the new pract ices, changing models or norms, and also whether there is an awareness regard- ing the new customs, what does it concern and how extensive is it, what role in developing this knowledge is played by personal experience, or by the media, what areas of life do dynamic customary changes apply to, to what extent are they the result of cultural appropriation or borrowing and what is considered lasting and traditional. We studied the diversity of customs – daily, celebratory, in the private and public spheres, showing models of customary pract ices in chosen ar- eas and the sources of their validation, e.g. in tradition, transfer between generations, binding community codices, in contacts with other cultures or media content. We were interest ed in the customs of the private, as well as the public sphere. In our book we interpret the everyday pract ices of custom regarding the dinner table, kitchen, the culinary, as well as organizing family time, everyday enjoyments and celebration of sp ecial occasions. We attempt to show the diversity of customs in these areas. The study of private custom pract ices was complemented with studying custom in the public sphere. 8 Małgorzata Szpakowska, Wstęp [Introduction], in: Jak badać obyczaje? [How to Study Custom?] ed. Małgorzata Szpakowska. Warszawa: Oficyna Wydawnicza Errata, 2007, p. 8 9 Andrzej Mencwel, Jak badać obyczaje. Dyskusja panelowa [How to study customs. Discussion panel], in: Jak badać obyczaje?,…. p.156 9 As the public sphere, which anyone may potentially experience, we con- sidered public administration offices and we used them as examples to track the customary changes, which took place in recent years, in admin- istrative customs. The administrative officials themselves were an interest- ing social category. We focused not only on the customs in the workplace or the functioning of environmental codes, but due to their sp ecific role in the state system, they were also a good source of knowledge about public, local or national models of holiday customs. Our book is based on rich empirical material, analysis of interviews, Internet forums and blogs, press articles, television programs. We assumed that a factor in variety of customary pract ices may be the place of residence, therefore we conducted the studies in four differ- ent environments: a large city in the Masovian Voivodeship (Warsaw), a medium-sized city in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship with a population over 200 thousand (Kielce), a small city in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship with a population slightly over 20 thousand (Chełmno) and in the rural gmina (commune) of Przemyśl. In all the locations, unstruc- tured interviews were conducted according to availability, with residents and administrative officials of various rank (e.g. in district offices in Warsaw, in city, county and voivodeship offices in Kielce.) Studies were conducted between 2012-2014.