The Nation in the Village : The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914

農民如何將自己視為一個國家的成員？廣泛接受的論點是，民族情感起源於知識分子或城市中產階級，然後“澆灌”給工人階級和農民。 Keely Stauter-Halsted認為，這樣的模型忽視了農民社會的獨立貢獻。從1848年農奴的解放到第一次世界大戰前夕，她探索了奧地利加利西亞波蘭農民的複雜案例。

在解放後的幾年中，講波蘭語的農民比他們的波蘭領主或加利西亞首都克拉科夫的中產階級更容易認同奧地利皇帝和天主教。然而到本世紀末，講波蘭語的農民將為“波蘭萬歲”歡呼，並慶祝為捍衛波蘭獨立而進行的農民起義百年紀念活動。 Stauter-Halsted說，這種轉變的原因是農民菁英與上層社會改革者之間的共生。

她重建了這個艱難而停頓的過程，並特別關注農村社區自身的公共生活和衝突。作者的方法既是比較性的又是跨學科的，借鑒了拉丁美洲、中國和西歐的民族認同形成的文獻。鄉村中的民族將人類學、社會學和文學批評與經濟、社會、文化和政治歷史相結合。

How do peasants come to think of themselves as members of a nation? The widely accepted argument is that national sentiment originates among intellectuals or urban middle classes, then "trickles down" to the working class and peasants. Keely Stauter-Halsted argues that such models overlook the independent contribution of peasant societies. She explores the complex case of the Polish peasants of Austrian Galicia, from the 1848 emancipation of the serfs to the eve of the First World War.

In the years immediately after emancipation, Polish-speaking peasants were more apt to identify with the Austrian Emperor and the Catholic Church than with their Polish lords or the middle classes of the Galician capital, Cracow. Yet by the end of the century, Polish-speaking peasants would cheer, "Long live Poland" and celebrate the centennial of the peasant-fueled insurrection in defense of Polish independence. The explanation for this shift, Stauter-Halsted says, is the symbiosis that developed between peasant elites and upper-class reformers.

She reconstructs this difficult, halting process, paying particular attention to public life and conflicts within the rural communities themselves. The author's approach is at once comparative and interdisciplinary, drawing from literature on national identity formation in Latin America, China, and Western Europe. The Nation in the Village combines anthropology, sociology, and literary criticism with economic, social, cultural, and political history.

Keely Stauter-Halsted  (Editor) 

Publisher:Cornell University Press 

ISBN:   978-0801489969