The Kidnapping of Wroclaw´s Dwarves: The Symbolic Politics of Neoliberalism in Urban East-Central Europe

0397602 - EÚ 2014 RIV US eng J - Článek v odborném periodiku
Červinková, Hana
The Kidnapping of Wroclaw´s Dwarves: The Symbolic Politics of Neoliberalism in Urban East-Central Europe.
East European Politics and Societies. Roč. 27, č. 4 (2013), s. 743-756. ISSN 0888-3254. E-ISSN 1533-8371
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378076
Klíčová slova: Wroclaw * neoliberalism * dwarves * place marketing * memory * urban anthropology * action research * East Central Europe * Poland
Kód oboru RIV: AC - Archeologie, antropologie, etnologie
Impakt faktor: 0.225, rok: 2013

This paper draws on the approach to the study of “actually existing liberalisms” with an example from contemporary urban east-central Europe. The author focuses on the city of Wroclaw, a success story of Poland’s economic urban transformation, and considers the symbolic politics embodied in the city’s promotional strategy as a tool of ongoing neoliberal restructuring. She argues that an important feature of the city’s symbolic politics is the commodification and fetishization of dwarves, the historical symbols of an antitotalitarian movement that used the image of a dwarf as a means for people’s deliberative and performative action that helped lay foundations for democracy. Today, the historical legacy of dwarves as a means of associational and performative action has been disguised in the city’s promotional strategy, which has turned dwarves into commodities that help sell the city on the global neoliberal market of intercity competition. The author calls this process of contemporary fetishization, the kidnapping of Wroclaw’s dwarves. Kidnapping refers to the process whereby the symbol’s meaning and historical legacy is turned into a commodity, disempowering it by depriving it of its meaning for social action. At the conclusion of the paper, the author offers a critical ethnographic and pedagogical perspective focused on symbolic politics as a venue for understanding and inspiring critical action in the context of these urban neoliberal developments.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0225225