Taking Better Care of the Fields: Knowledge Politics of Sugar Beet, Soil, and Agriculture after Socialism in Western Poland by Dong Ju Kim A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology and History) in the University of Michigan 2012 Doctoral Committee: Professor Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Co-Chair Professor Brian A. Porter-Szücs, Co-Chair Professor Webb Keane Assistant Professor Krisztina E. Fehérváry ©Dong Ju Kim © Dong Ju Kim 2012 I dedicate this work to my parents, Won-sik Kim and Young-ok Ryu, who supported me with love and patience. This work is also for my late father-in-law Yong-ho Cho, who believed in our choices, and my mother-in-law Young-hee Kim. I also thank Sumi for her caring patience and Hajin for letting me use his own room when I needed space to work. There will be a time when I can return the favor. My enrollment at the University of Michigan was possible with the generous support of the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (KFAS). I also thank the National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research for their financial support in realizing this project. ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank my advisors, Professors Gillian Feeley-Harnik and Brian Porter- Szücs, for their guidance, patience, and feedback, from early on in my coursework to this day. I also appreciate the caring encouragement, reminders, and feedback of Professors Webb Keane and Krisztina Fehérváry. What I have learned during this process from you will become a model according to which I will measure all of my future research and teaching. To the colleagues in Poznań at the Instytut Etnologii i Antropologii Kulturowej UAM, I owe a special debt for an enjoyable and intellectually challenging fieldwork environment. Without the help, hospitality, and connections of Professor Michał Buchowski, this project would have been impossible. I also would like to thank Professors Aleksander Posern-Zieliński, Agnieszka Chwieduk, Iza Main, Jacek Schmidt, and Drs. Natalia Bloch, Natalia Maksymowicz, and Agata Stanisz for their hospitality, concerns, and conversations. Professors Ewa Domańska, Krzysztof Makowski, and Dr. Rafał Witkowski at the Instytut Historii UAM, and Professor Krzysztof Brzechczyn at the Instytut Filozofii and IPN Poznań pointed me into the right directions when I was lost sometimes. Professor Jerzy Karg provided me with clues and perspectives which I would not have encountered without our conversations in his office. I thank Professor Witold Grzebisz for sharing his views in accessible terms with a novice. I also appreciate the company of Professor Ela Goździak and Michelle Brym while we spent time for research iii there, and stimulating conversations with Tomek Rakowski, Renata Hryciuk, and Helena Patzer in Warsaw. Ewa Nowak at the Instytut at UAM always provided prompt help, and Katarzyna Chlewińska and Mariusz Filip have been an enormous help when finding and locating sources and resources. The ethnographic part of this project was possible thanks to Janusz Pierun, Dr. Roman Kubiak, Dr. Henryk Ławiński, Dr. Arkadiusz Wojciechowski, Andrzej Stachowiak, Maciej Grobelny, Marcin Kołata, Mirosław Paluch, Jan Naskręt, and Grzegorz Gorynia. I would also like to specially thank Walerian and Ala Wierzyk for their hospitality and generosity, as well as Tadeusz Spurtacz, Romuald Kamiński, and Mikołaj Pietraszak Dmowski. I extend my thanks to Viola Próchniak, Agnieszka Rabiej, Ewa Małachowska-Pasek, Ewa Wampuszyc, Piotr Westwalewicz for patiently answering many questions about Polish. I appreciate the caring thoughts and hospitality of Dr. Gyu- Young Lee in Vienna, Florian Werr in Eisenstadt, and the Werr and Schuster family in Burgauberg, as well as my friends Jana Grühn, Eun-hwa Cho, and Jae-Ung Kim in Berlin. I would have loved to show the humble result of my studies to the late Fernando Coronil, who urged me to write about sugar. May he rest in peace. I also thank Ann Stoler, Julie Skurski, David Cohen, Geoff Eley, Regina Morantz-Sanchez, Nancy Hunt, Paul Johnson, Jennifer Robertson, Stuart Kirsch, Alaina Lemon, and Matt Hull. Katherine Verdery and Tim Snyder played an important role in introducing me to the scholarship of this region. Michael Herzfeld, Susan Gal, and Matti Bunzl generously read partial drafts and gave constructive feedback. I appreciate the camaraderie and solidarity of my dear colleagues and friends in the Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History, especially Luciana Aenasoaie, Danna Agmonn, Chandra Bhimull, Daniel Birchok, Andrew Conroe, iv Heloise Finch-Boyer, Jennifer Gaynor, Ema Grama, Federico Helfgott, Sergio Huarcaya, Katrin Jellema, Sonja Luehrmann, Oana Mateescu, Purvi Mehta, Ed Murphy, Davide Orsini, Monica Patterson, David Pederson, Kimberly Powers, Tasha Rijke-Epstein, Natalie Rothman, Stephen Sparks, Eric Stein, Ian Stewart, Joseph Viscomi, Christian Williams, and Andrea Wright. Friends in both departments have helped me in one way or other to formulate my ideas and offered support throughout my years at Michigan: Junehui Ahn, Anna Babel, Laura Brown, Liviu Chelcea, Ania Cichopek, Isabel Cordova, Nathan Connolly, Kate Graber, Henrike Florusbosch, Kate Graber, Bridget Guarasci, Emily Hein, Laura Hilburn, Claire Insel, Deborah Jones, Jieun Kim, Kelly Kirby, Alicja Kusiak-Brownstein, Daniel Latea, Laura Kate MacClellan, Ken Maclean, Robin Nelson, Maria Perez, Tam Perry, Janak Rai, Josh Reno, Jessica Robbins, Xochitl Ruiz, Cecilia Tomori, Lenny Ureña, and Vanessa Will. Diana Denney and Laurie Marx were always there to give their help whenever I needed it – I thank you both very much. I also remember the guidance of my teachers at the Seoul National University, Professors Gwang-gyu Lee, Sang-bok Han, Moon-woong Lee, Kwang-ok Kim, Kyeong- soo Chun, Han-seok Wang, and Myeong-sok Oh. Without learning from their enthusiasm and passion towards ethnography, I would not have taken the first step of this path. I thank Yoon-hee Kang, Mun-young Cho, Yoon-jung Lee for their feedback and support during the last phase of my project. v Preface So it is only out of symbols that a new symbol can grow. Omne sumbolum de sumbolo. A symbol, once in being, spreads among the peoples. In use and in experience, its meaning grows… - Charles S. Peirce (1893), "The Art of Reasoning" I have spent most of my life in Korea. I went to college there, and served in the military for two years after my sophomore year. When I returned to finish my undergraduate degree, there was a popular song among students and workers active in the labor movement. It was a time when there was still a sense of solidarity between the leftist student movement and the workers’ movement, and it turned out that this very song was a Polish song. It was titled “Ballad of Janek Wiśniewski” (Ballada o Janku Wiśniewskim), an epic about a young worker who was shot during a street battle between striking workers and the police in Gdańsk in 1970, and was later featured in the well-known movie Man of Iron (Człowiek z Zelaza), directed by Andrzej Wajda. In Korea, people are quite aware of the history between Poland, Russia, and Germany, because there was a tearful story in the Korean middle school reading textbook. It told the story of language education in Congress Poland under Russian occupation, featuring Maria Curie-Skłodowska, who had to speak and read Russian in front of Russian examiners, because she was the most proficient pupil. I am still not sure how this story from a socialist country found its way into Korea, but of course there was a pedagogic lesson to absorb, about the critical role of the mother tongue and its vi importance to the national spirit, no matter what nation and which period of time in history. This post-colonial education was overloaded with national pride in Korea after coming out of Japanese colonization, and forms a parallel with the sense of pride that people in Poland maintain about the nation’s history. The reason that this Polish song had such an impact on me was because I remember some scenes of Gdańsk on TV from my childhood. I was living in Vienna at the time, and I had the opportunity to watch news on TV with General Jaruzelski and Lech Wałęsa on one report and the mass killings of civilians by the military junta in Gwangju, South Korea on another. Within these images of violence, the second world and the third world were presented in a similar tone and voice in the so-called first world. Supported by the Soviet Union and the United States, both governments created an atmosphere where violence was justified from either side, as a way of governing as well as resisting. Anti-communist nationalism, along with foreboding post-cold-war conservative right-wing nationalism, provided a counterweight sustaining national pride within neocolonial situations in both countries. The role of the church during these times in both countries was another thing in common. I was born and raised Roman Catholic in Vienna and in Seoul, where being Catholic meant something different than in the U.S. or Poland, with socially and politically active and engaging Cardinals Franz König and Stephan Soo-hwan Kim. In the context of South Korea in the 1980s, being Catholic meant for me to be progressive in political and social matters, and against the military dictatorship. The Catholic Church in Korea was instrumental in rediscovering the truth about the brutally oppressed Gwangju Uprising by holding photograph exhibits, which led to an earnest investigation, rehabilitation, and ultimately to a rewriting of history vii textbooks. Given the circumstances, it was not a surprise that I became interested in liberation theology and Marxist dependency theory. This Cold War experience of mine from different places shaped my perspective on post-socialism and the post-Cold-War changes in Europe and East Asia.