PI: mgr Katarzyna Łatała
Funding body: National Science Centre Poland / PRELUDIUM grant
Project time-span: 2024-2026
For my grant project, I conduct extensive fieldwork with the oldest allotment gardeners in Nowa Huta, Krakow. My focus is on the period of state socialism as seen through the lens of the present day. Retired steelworkers act as my epistemic partners, teaching me about their cosmoeconomic, ecological and existential experiences and theories. I study the practices of gardening and animal breeding, as well as acquiring materials, building and repairing. The ethos of the oldest allotment gardeners is rooted in a peasant moral economy. It encompasses the reproduction of life, subsistence horticulture, the repair of the world, the maintenance of the commons, and community celebrations. My aim is to recover alternative memories of state socialism and peasant and working-class knowledge and culture in order to learn about community economies and ecologies.
