EXPLORING THE “SHADOW SIDE” OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ON AGING IN POLAND
EXPLORING THE “SHADOW SIDE” OF ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ON AGING IN POLAND

Summary/Abstract: As a sociocultural and medical anthropologist, my research focuses on understanding aging across comparative ethnographic and historical perspectives. My dissertation research focused on aging in the sociocultural and political-economic context of Poland. I sought to understand how experiences of aging are connected to the political-economic and sociocultural transformations that have occurred during the lifetimes of the oldest generations in Poland. I conducted 22 months of ethnographic fi eldwork between 2006 and 2014, with the longest period occurring between 2008 and 2010, in a range of institutional and non-institutional sites for older people in Wrocław and Poznań. I am currently working on a book manuscript based on this research, in which I argue that similar practices of relatedness exist across diverse contexts. By drawing on theoretical perspectives from studies of kinship, postsocialism, and memory, the book shows that contemporary desires for “active aging” in Poland exceed standard postsocialist narratives and instead are rooted in particular national understandings of the links between person and place.

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