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Richard ROTTENBURG
Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
A Phenomenological Approach to a Liminal
Dance Floor in Western Poland
Dr. Richard Rottenburg is research assistent at the chair for comparative cultural and
social antropology at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder) and a member
of the F.I.T.
Introduction
In the last two years, I have frequently been a guest in a bar in a small Polish town.
What astounded me on my first visit in mid-1995 has continued to puzzle me to
this day. My frames of reference for interpretation and classification were useless
for classifying and interpreting all that I observed in this bar. Perhaps this fact alone
would not have been all that puzzling and remarkable, except that the various
people, male and female, who accompanied me, even Polish people, felt the same
way. Yet none of my companions seemed to have any useful criteria for answering
the elementary anthropological question, "What the hell is going on here?" And the
real punch-line is that all the people who frequent this bar seem to have the same
perception. This again is a perception on my side which I cannot really prove with
my phenomenology, though I can make it a lot more plausible.1
With my argumentation I will try to come back to an older anthropological virtue:
namely to tell a story using thick description. I will tell a story “about the world”
and not a story about other attempts to tell stories about the world. This does not
mean to contradict the basic understanding that there only can be representations of
representations since there is no direct access to reality. However, it means that one
can nevertheless distinguish between stories that rather try to make sense and
stories that rather try to deconstruct sense making. The best stories, of course,
perform both tasks at the same time, and obviously I hope to satisfy the demands of
both tasks. Yet, I would still insist that most stories tend to develop a certain bias,
and that this is not a sign of imperfection on either side but rather a necessary and
beneficial division of labour. The bias of my presentation is towards sense making.
I offer little explicit subtext and thus I expose myself and my argument to
deconstructive criticism. This is my intention and this is what I mean by coming
back to an old anthropological virtue. If anyway no one believes in objective
realism than exposing authorship is as valid and necessary as deconstructing
authorship.
I should like to make an additional preliminary point clear in advance. I do not
agree with the pessimistic concept of the "moral vacuum" that is supposed to have
been left behind by the collapsed regime. I also consider the optimistic inversion of
the same argument to be equally wrong, by which the vacuum is transformed into a
social stage freed of all restricting certainties, where everything is in flux, a social
stage upon which, consequently, everything is possible.
1
A previous version of this paper was presented at the Standing Conference on Organizational
Symbolism, SCOS, 15th International Conference, Warsaw July 9 -12, 1997. I received some critical
and helpful comments from Michaá Buchowski, Stefan Greuling, Werner Schiffauer, Steffen
Strohmenger, and the participants of the workshop in Warsaw.
2
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
While being microcosmic my argumentation at least tries to indicate the greater
topic to which it might be linked or to which it might be a preliminary contribution.
The transformation of the societies of the former Eastern Bloc, whatever else
distinguishes it from other forms of social change, can be seen as a special historic
event due to the following peculiarity: as in the case of a radical revolution, the
transformation affects absolutely every sphere and dimension of the social order
and daily life at the same time. Yet unlike the revolutionary situation, the
transformation lacks a comparable future-oriented ideology. The transformation
lacks a Utopia. People are not experiencing the novelty of the situation with the
help of an inspiring blueprint of a promising, better world-of which at least a rough
outline can be made out to answer the question “how shall we live?”. Rather, it is
experienced as a sober, pragmatic recollection of conditions stemming partly from
the West and partly from the pre-Communist past which in principle are already
known, in all their banality and contradictoriness. This kind of radical change,
which is relatively unburdened by ideology, seems to make unimagined freedoms
possible in the reconfiguration of the social space. However, I do not intend to give
a general paper on transformation.
I also do not intend to give a final answer to the more specific question relating to
one of the more fascinating cultural aspect of transformation: Does the
classificatory system with its boundaries - being at work within the social space
which I try do describe - presently undergo a change from one stable form through
a period of liminal crisis to another stable form, or does the classificatory system
(Durkheim/ Mauss, 1901 and Douglas, 1996) rather become more fluid?
Instead, I should rather like to remain on a more modest and preliminary
ethnographic level, and illuminate a small facet by turning to the phenomenology
of a dance floor.
A Little Bit of Context
The above-mentioned bar is called Lubusz and is situated in the small town of
Sáubice (approx. 17,000 inhabitants), which was part of Frankfurt an der Oder
(approx. 80,000) up to 1945. Since 1945, the Oder bridge linking the two parts of
the dual city has been a border guard separating Germany and Poland. Since 1991,
German and Polish citizens can cross the border without a visa. Poles may reside in
Germany for up to three months without a visa. In line with the regulations of the
1995 Schengen agreement, all other citizens from non-EU countries need a visa to
enter Germany as EU country. On the other hand, the Polish visa regulations allow
the citizens of the successor nations of the Eastern Bloc free entry and a three-
R. Rottenburg: Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
3
month tourist residence in Poland, or at least a procedure that can easily be
manipulated in this direction.
As a result of its position on this European border with its specific permeability
criteria, Sáubice has become a special town. The bridge has been given a new value;
it has become a topographically important place as a result of the lively traffic of
people, cars and goods. People like myself, who cross this bridge regularly, grow
accustomed to what initially astounded them and made them feel somehow
uncertain, although one does not necessarily understand what causes this
astonishment and uncertainty any better. What is particularly striking is the small
groups of men standing around at all times of the day, occasionally including a
woman in their midst, all of whom are recognisably doing nothing but waiting and
seem to have resigned themselves to a very long wait, too. Only rarely do they
make a movement or gesture that might give you some clue as to what they are
doing. In the final analysis, however, you are at a complete loss.
Interpretations here will certainly differ to some extent, depending on the beholder.
People in Berlin stand around on the street differently than in Warsaw, in Paris
differently than in Cairo, and so on. Nevertheless, I believe I can dare to make a
general statement here. If you look more closely, you fear that the people standing
around on the bridge are not even waiting for anything. They seem to live on the
street. At the same time, you can see straight away that they are not homeless
people, or people out for a stroll, who you might expect to use public space in this
way. Further away from the bridge, in Frankfurt perhaps more so than in Sáubice,
you will hardly ever see people on the street who are neither strolling nor pursuing
some other recognisable and respectable goal-at least they will try to create the
impression. The bourgeois city has an unwritten law that says that you must be
recognisably heading towards some destination when you are in a public space. It is
the natural casualness and unconcealed openness with which these people at the
bridge violate this norm that is the source of uncertainty which they inspire. To put
it in more general terms: these people make one feel uncertain because they do not
fit into any familiar category.
The bridge as a no-man´s land between Germany and Poland becomes additionally
marked as a transitory space by the non-classifiability of the extraterritorial
bystanders. As a result, the activity of crossing the border is experienced as going
through a liminal space-time. Especially after dark, the crossing of the liminal
sphere causes a disconcerting feeling of insecurity. A Polish colleague recently told
me that he always breathes a sigh of relief once he has crossed the limes. He added
that he must admit - to his shame as a Pole - that he is only truly relieved when he
is going from Sáubice to Frankfurt and not vice versa.
4
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
As part of the direct vicinity of the bridge, there is a small, triangular square a few
hundred meters away which the people of Sáubice call the "Bermuda Triangle",
thus putting a name to its exterritoriality. The northern side of the triangle is
marked by a nineteen-seventies-style two-storey building. On the ground floor,
there are two food shops, one household goods shop, a bureau de change, a
chemists and a cafe. The owner of the building is the PSS, formerly a nation-wide
agricultural cooperative from the pre-war period which was decentralised after the
collapse of communism in Poland and privatised in a way that I have never
managed to fully understand. The first floor has been leased to a businessman who
operates a casino with gambling machines and the bar Lubusz which I mentioned at
the beginning. Its sign reads "Cafe-Restaurant-Discotheque". My theory is that the
landlord of the bar is an entrepreneur who is doing business with an auspicious
empty space.
The Bar
As is the case with most Polish restaurants above a certain standard, there is a
cloakroom at the entrance, where you can, or rather must hand in your coat. In front
of the wooden hut-like structure installed for this purpose, there usually sit two
elderly, cigarette-smoking and tea-drinking ladies, who it seems must have been
sitting there for ever. It would certainly be impossible to judge from their outward
appearance what year it is: 1997, 1987 or perhaps 1977. One of them takes the
money for the toilets, the other guards the cloakroom. A young man of enormous
proportions joins them from time to time; it is easier to see which age he lives in.
As we learn later, he is the ticket-seller and doorman for the discotheque and seems
to be in charge of peace and quiet in general.
With a few strategic exceptions, the interior of the Lubusz has remained true to the
aesthetic programme of the lost regime, and thus has an effect on me like a
quotation from the past. It has something of the charm that obsolete articles attain
when, instead of being placed into a museum or simply disposed of, they are given
a new, ironic use. Like Russian army coats worn by fashionable young women in
Paris or Berlin, perhaps even in St. Petersburg. Yet this, I am quite certain, is
unlikely to be the perception of most of the guests in the Lubusz.
The aesthetic design of the room has certainly undergone a series of changes and
accretions in the last few years. Yet it is not easy to identify exactly which element
of the collage stems from which period. In general, what is striking about the
Lubusz is that it has not been radically redesigned since the collapse of
communism. The dance floor is equipped with ultra-powerful loudspeakers, a
revolving light-reflecting globe, a stroboscope, light systems, a fog machine and
R. Rottenburg: Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
5
continuous mirrors on two sides. The disk jockey is enthroned at the head end of
the dance floor and plays fashionable dance music for lowbrow listeners - the kind
of music you can hear in popular discotheques all over the world. The fourth side
opens out to the area where the guests sit at tables. The real change in the design of
the room is effected by the use to which it is put.
The Guests
If you enter this somewhat dingy and musty establishment during the afternoon,
you meet people consuming coffee, tea and cakes, including some respectable
looking families. You might imagine that the generous grandmother has invited her
daughter's family from an other town to cakes during their visit to Sáubice. At
another table sits a conventional looking middle-aged couple, who look as though
they are going through a ritual that is a regular part of their relationship. Another
couple, younger and she much more fashionably and boldly dressed, hold hands
across the table. In a corner sit five girlies in jeans, platform soles and T-shirts, who
are drinking Coca Cola and seem to be enjoying themselves hugely. The waiters,
dressed in strikingly formal, conservative clothes and very correct in manner, serve
the guests in a friendly but firm way. At some of the tables, preferably those at the
covered windows where you can look out over the square through the gaps in the
blinds, small groups of men frequently sit, speaking into mobile phones every now
and then.
All of the guests are usually pretty inconspicuous in themselves. Yet the mixture of
guests in the Lubusz and the relationship between the guests and the ambience of
the establishment generate a peculiar feeling of classificatory uncertainty.
Who are these people, why are they sitting here of all places and in this
combination? What is happening here? My theory is that a liminal and to this
extent empty space is being re-inscribed here.2 But this has to be explained in more
detail.
Later in the evening, the cafe gradually changes into a restaurant with food of
rather modest quality, although you won't find a much better restaurant in Sáubice.
You see individual couples, you see several couples at long tables, you see groups
of men and groups of women. Many are eating their evening meal together; others
are just drinking, mostly beer, although every now and then a group of people
2
Liminal is here used in the sense of Victor Turner´s seminal work on ritual liminality (Turner
1969/1974) without borrowing the structural-functionalist approach of the early Turner. Zygmunt
Bauman (1993) operates with this concept in his reflections on the East European transformation, and
Michaá Buchowski (1996) comments on Bauman.
6
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
orders a bottle of vodka and a jug of tomato or orange juice. From my perspective,
some of these groups look like a typical case of the "office outing". The men are
often extremely casually dressed, some are even wearing track-suits; by contrast,
many of the women are really dressed up - some in line with the fashions that can
be studied in the relevant magazines. In other cases, the gentlemen too look as if
they work in a bank and buy their suits in a boutique in Warsaw or Berlin. The
gentlemen at the window seats are also still here; the girlie group in the corner has
grown larger in the meantime; they are still drinking Coca Cola and smoking
cigarettes.
Dance music is played from eleven o'clock-and turned up so loud that you can no
longer hold a proper conversation. Now the other tables also fill up with new
guests, although there seems to be no overt change in the clientele. Various people
come in for a short time and leave soon afterwards. They behave as though they
were looking for someone or something.
Some of the people milling round apparently aimlessly do then join others at one of
the tables after all. Often, the people at whose tables they sit down then suddenly
appear in a different light from the way you tried to see them before. The girlies in
the corner are now joined by others who are dressed in an excessively provocative
way, so that the already uncertain classification of "adventurous high-school girls"
is further watered down. The gentlemen at the window are joined by women, some
of whom are dressed like prostitutes - at least in many places of the world it would
be the dress of prostitutes. Others are rather dressed like girls from the country.
Two oriental-looking men now join a table with four lively, blonde, middle-aged
women, so that the classification "female colleagues celebrating a birthday" no
longer seems to quite fit. There are now some lonely figures at the bar, some of the
men seemingly waiting for something.
If I am not completely mistaken about the Zeitgeist of my audience, you should by
now feel a certain kind of resistance against what I am doing with my account of
the Lubusz. “What the hell is he doing? Why is he so determined to find
classifications? Does he not simply impose his own classifications, after all?” But
let me add one more example on top of it all before I come back to your scepticism.
There are three couples sitting at the next table, which has been empty up to now.
My first impression is that they belong to my makeshift category "elegant couple".
After a while, I notice that the gentlemen are dressed expensively, but relatively
tastelessly; furthermore, they are wearing heavy gold chains on their wrists and
ostentatiously lay their mobile phones on the table between the vodka glasses. Then
I notice that one of the three women is dressed very much like a Model that you
R. Rottenburg: Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
7
would not expect to see outside the pages of fashion magazines. Once I realize that
the people are speaking Russian amongst themselves I feel how they are moving in
my head into my relatively new "Mafia" category. A glimpse at the table with the
two elegant couples convinces me that the two categories are threatening to cancel
each other out. So I am back to square one.
But why in fact, I have to ask here conceding to your scepticism, does the
appearance of new guests undermine the interpretation of what one has seen
before? And why at all this obviously helpless attempt to classify? Well, certainly
because of the unavoidable desire and necessity to turn unknown into known. But
at the Lubusz, there is no solid ground to eliminate the fundamental ambiguity in
reading the signs. This makes the Lubusz an empty space, and this, I began to feel
during my first evening at this bar sometime in 1995, was the anthropological
fascination inspired by it.
In other words, I share the scepticism you have developed against my account - at
least partly. But firstly, I had to make my point and raising your scepticism was a
good way of doing it, I felt. And secondly, I am convinced (here I am not so sure
about your position) that there is something like an unvoidable cultural practice of
classification that goes on outside this text, that can be described and analysed (and
of course influenced by representing it). A social space with a remarkable absence
of working classifications is therefore a special space that asks for interpretation.
After this little piece of subtext I will now continue with my exposure.
It would be to misunderstand the transformation of the cafe-restaurant into a
discotheque if we were to simply reclassify the place as part of the redlight district
after 11 o'clock in the evening. The point is rather that a process of hybridisation
continues here during the evening and night, which dissolves or at least massively
calls into question the existing classification schemes. This noticeable fluidisation
is, according to my interpretation, what attracts people to go to the Lubusz. Despite
the fact that there are few alternatives in Sáubice, I assert that some of the guests
would no longer come if this fluidisation only irritated them and made them feel
uncertain. Let us therefore see what happens as the evening develops.
The Dance Floor
One by one the people begin to dance. The first to break the ice are individual
couples from the company outing. Then come the elegant couples, later even some
of the lively girlies and the women from the women's table - alone or in groups. At
least the observer from Berlin initially notices that the couples know how to dance
and dance well together, above all that they evidently gain a lot of pleasure from
8
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
rhythmic, co-ordinated movement and are certainly not too shy to use theatrics. I
feel reminded more of film scenes from Buenos Aires than of dance cafes in
Germany. The elegant couples give me the impression that they have got lost in the
Lubusz on their way to a noble dance cafe I know in Poznan, where the upper
classes like to dance to nostalgic live music after a genteel dinner for two.
In amongst the couples, several women and girls dance alone. As the evening
progresses, those with the greatest stamina dance with increasing enthusiasm many of them with their own mirror images. Their challenging erotic movements,
apparently addressed only to themselves via the mirrors, somehow exclude them
from the public space of the dance floor. They create the impression that they are
occupied with something that one should not be watching; yet they are still able to
check out the dance floor quite well via the mirrors - even if they do seem to be far
away. For their adorers, the girls´ play with the mirrors results in a voluptuous
duplication of their view. They do not simply watch dancing girls, but they watch
themselves looking at a mirror reflecting dancing girls which again look at
themselves, and never meet the eyes of their adorers. Dancing as a most direct faceto-face encounter between two individuals of the opposite sex is turned into an
indirect game that shifts the attention to the observation of the observer, and thus
the identities of the players are desubstantialized. The mirrors translate the question
“who is (s)he” into “who am I”.
Against the background of this aggressive girlie game of playing with gender
norms and of lustfully melting narcissism, exhibitionism and voyeurism, and
against the now incredibly loud music, the banks of fog and flickering light, the
elegant and more conventional couples look totally out of place. Yet in the course
of the night, some of the men prove to have less stamina, and some of the elegant
ladies start dancing like the girlies. By their movements and visual contact with the
people watching, particularly with their partners who are now sitting at the tables,
they do not, however, isolate themselves like the girlies; rather they use almost the
same movements to stage a quite different gender relationship and identity
construction.
Amongst the couples and the individual girls and women, those women have
meanwhile also begun to dance who one would classify as prostitutes - less by their
clothing but rather by their open strategy of sitting down at tables with men.
Paradoxically, their dancing style - and partly their clothing and aura - make some
of them look more like shy girls from the country who have landed in the wrong
cafe.
R. Rottenburg: Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
9
So, what does one believe to see on this dance floor? A woman is dressed as a
bridesmaid, wears a white bride's headdress in her hair - as is the custom for
prostitutes on the Balkans and in Turkey - and dances quite chastely in the
expectation that she will find some male company. Is she a prosititute? Next to her,
a young woman sinks to her knees in the ecstasy of her dance making unmistakable
hip movements, and fondles her own body with her eyes via the mirror. Is she a
high-school girl? In the same picture, a woman is dancing with her husband in a
close embrace of stylish harmony. Is she a married, bourgeois woman dancing with
her husband?
The classificatory types I have used in my argument have been picked out from the
public discourse for the sake of my textual strategy. The point of this dance floor,
however, is that there is a majority of dancers of both genders who do not seem to
fit into any of the classifications. And I would go further: Existing classifications
are disputed, and even the basic cultural practice of classifying is rejected to some
extend on the dance floor. This playful contestation and rejection is what turns the
dance floor into a liminal space-time, which for postmodern anthropologists is like
water for fish.
The Companions
In the course of my visits to the Lubusz since 1995, I have been accompanied by a
variety of male and female companions. On the seldom occasions when they did
not broach this subject themselves, I questioned them on how they would interpret
and classify the people and their behaviour. With few exceptions, they had the
feeling that the orientation knowledge they had brought with them was completely
useless in the Lubusz. Yet there were two different tendencies.
Visitors from Germany, all students, colleagues and other academics, tended to
become fascinated by the experience of disorientation. Most of them experienced
the liminality of the empty space as a kind of liberation, the uncertainty and
weakness of the categories as a stimulating intellectual game with emancipatory
potential. The ability of the guests to have fun with each other in this empty space not despite but apparently specifically because it is impossible to have a dim feeling
of belonging to a fixed milieu - seemed to them like an outlook on future, better
times. The Lubusz and Sáubice itself seemed like a cosmopolitan place with a
tolerant form of urbanity, which clearly overshadowed small-time Frankfurt. The
anthropologists among my companions recognised in the Lubusz things they had
first seen in the discotheques of Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Accra and Hong
Kong.
10
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
By contrast, most of my Polish companions, again all of them students and
colleagues, felt somewhat uneasy - or at least out of place - in the Lubusz. The
disorientation in this empty space seemed to them not so much fascinating and
future-pointing as irritating and tasteless or perhaps simply boring. Some of them
pointed out instead a distinction which they insisted on maintaining - perhaps with
some irony - despite the indisputable flux: that the people in the Lubusz are the
"others", they do not belong to "us". It may well be that for some of my Polish
companions liminality has acquired some extend of normality that does not attract
their attention any more.
If there was a discotheque like the Lubusz in Berlin, it would probably become a
secret tip, especially among students, and particularly among students of
anthropology. By contrast, Viadrina students do not go to the Lubusz. Not even - or
rather especially not - the Polish students, even though virtually all of them live in
Sáubice. One of my female students wanted to make an ethnographic study of the
red-light milieu in Sáubice. For her, the opportunity that the Lubusz offered her by
making it possible to be present without being noticed, was more of a hindrance.
She apparently needed a clear and fixed distinction as a starting point. The
negotiations of gender roles on the dance floor did not seem to her to offer a
framework that made the question of the new prostitution in Poland all the more
interesting.
A Polish doctorate student once told me that people in the town of Sáubice believe
that the Lubusz is a cafe for "blacks" - a place one does not go to. In Poland, and I
think in Russia too, "blacks" are people from the East and South-East: from
Bulgaria, Romania, Khazakstan, Aserbaidjan and so on. Since the clear majority of
the guests speak Polish, however, this is evidently another attempt to find some
kind of orientation with the help of an apparently clear-cut classification.
That the game with the classifications really does also have its clear drawbacks,
was brought home to me on one occasion by a group of young men in front of the
Lubusz, in the Sáubice Bermuda Triangle, so to speak. I was coming out of the
Lubusz onto the street with one of those colleagues who shares my fascination for
the opportunities of the empty space. A young man with a bundle of German
banknotes in his hand asked me if I could give him some larger notes in exchange. I
must have instinctively classified him as a con-man, for I said no and walked away
without thinking. He then asked my colleague the same question, who was a few
meters behind me. The colleague instinctively pulled out his wallet and checked his
notes in order to be able to answer the question correctly and helpfully. With a
speed that words cannot describe, the notes changed hands so often, along with
commentaries in Turkish, that in the end my colleague, who also speaks Turkish,
no longer knew how much money he had in his hand. Seconds after the young man
R. Rottenburg: Classifications: Change or Fluidisation?
11
walked away, thanking him in a satisfied voice, my colleague swore at him in
Turkish. This seemed to put the young man in mind of another fixed classification
and he asked: "Are you a Moslem?" When my colleague said yes - which was not
strictly true - he returned and gave him back the missing notes. The avowal of
friendship via the "Moslem" category was concluded with a friendly slap on the
shoulder, and the two separated peacefully.
Conclusions
In my paper, I have described the Lubusz as empty space, inasmuch as it is a social
space in a phase of radical upheaval in which traditional categorisations do not
work and are not supposed to work. In analogy to the no-man's land on the bridge, I
have interpreted the dance floor as a place of liminality that belongs neither to
Before nor to After, neither to the Here nor to the There - and most certainly not
either to the Own or to the Other, but rather lies in-between.
It was not my intention to make predictions about possibly more solid
classifications that will perhaps evolve as transformation time goes by. I feel
obliged, though, to report that while I was writing this paper the citizens of Sáubice
seemed to have enforced one solid classification. The story is this: Certain people
have complained at the PSS management about prostitutes frequenting the Lubusz
and damaging the civic atmosphere on the public space in front of the building. The
PSS management and the Police of Sáubice have therefore asked the landlord of the
Lubusz to close his gates for prostitutes. Since mid of June 1997, the story goes,
there are no more prostitutes at the Lubusz. In this case the classification
“prostitute” received a specific definition: it is a “black prostitute”, meaning a
woman from Bulgaria that sells her body for money in Sáubice. All other cases that
might fall under this classification if the definition was different are not affected.
The dance floor of the Lubusz has thus been deprived of one category of customers
- at least for the time being.
Making a generalisation on the great transformation of Central and Eastern Europe,
I would in conclusion dare to make the following assertion: the radicality and
ubiquity of social change is not accompanied by any Utopia. There is no Utopia at
hand that could do justice to the changes on the level of practices by giving them a
particular meaning and a fixed direction on the level of representations. While this
does not mean that complete arbitrariness has evolved on the social stage, it means
that the practical possibilities are beyond the available interpretative abilities of the
people involved. This can be experienced both as an opportunity and as a threat.
12
F.I.T. Discussion Paper 14/97
References
Bauman, Zygmunt, 1993: Auf der Suche nach der postkommunistischen
Gesellschaft - das Beispiel Polen. In: Soziale Welt 44 (2), 157-176.
Buchowski, Michaá, 1996: The unbearable lightness of metaphor and its discreet
charm. In: Narodna umjetnost 33 (1), 9-24.
Douglas, Mary, 1966: Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and
Taboo. London: Routledge.
Durkheim, Emile, and Marcel Mauss, 1901-03/1970: Primitive Classification.
London: Cohen & West.
Turner, Victor, 1974: The Ritual Process. Structure and Antistructure.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
F.I.T. PUBLIKATIONEN • F.I.T. PUBLICATIONS
F.I.T. Discussion Papers
Nr./Jahr
Autor
Titel
1/96
Szamuely, László
Establishment and Erosion of the Soviet Model of CPE as
Reflected in Economic Science in Hungary 1945 - 1980, 61 S.
2/96
Krause, Günter
Die "Revisionismus-Debatte" in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften
der DDR, 34 S.
3/96
Winiecki, Jan
Foreign Investment in Eastern Europe: Expectations, Trends,
Policies, 14 S.
4/96
Dietzenbacher, Erik /
Wagener, Hans-Jürgen
Prices in Two Germanies, 23 S.
5/96
Pollack, Detlef
Sozialstruktureller Wandel, Institutionentransfer und die Langsamkeit der Individuen, 27 S.
6/96
Wagener, Hans-Jürgen
Second Thoughts? Economics and Economists under Socialism,
19 S.
7/96
Wagener, Hans-Jürgen
Transformation als historisches Phänomen, 19 S.
8/96
Joerden, Jan C.
Wird die politische Machtausübung durch das heutige Strafrecht
struktuell bevorzugt?, 15 S.
9/96
Babinceva, Natal'ja
Die ökonomische Kultur des sowjetischen und post-sowjetischen
Business, 20 S.
1/97
Wagener, Hans-Jürgen
Privateigentum und Unternehmenskontrolle in Transformationswirtschaften, 26 S.
2/97
Chojnicki, Zbyszko
Methological Problems of Polish Economics in the Postwar
Period, 19 S.
3/97
Buchowski, Michaá
Facing Capitalism. An Example of a Rural Community in
Poland, 29 S.
4/97
Eger, Thomas
Insolvenzrecht und Insolvenzrechtsreform aus ökonomischer
Sicht, 24 S.
5/97
Ribhegge, Hermann
Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union als Herausforderung
für die neuen Bundesländer im Transformationsprozeß, 27 S.
6/97
Csaba, László
Transformation in Hungary and (in) Hungarian Economics
(1978-1996), 62 S.
7/97
Csaba, László
Economic Transformation: State of Art and Some Theoretical
Reflection, 22 S.
8/97
àukaszewicz, Aleksander
Polish Economics and Transformation Challenges - 50 years of
Experience 1945-1995, 68 S.
9/97
Csaba, László
Market and Democracy: Friends or Foes?, 11 S.
10/97
Aleksandrowicz, Dariusz
Zweckrationalität und Kulturtradition (in der polnischen
Transformationsgesellschaft), 17 S.
11/97
Csaba, László
On the EU-Maturity of Central Europe: Perceived and Real
Problems, 22 S.
12/97
Gesell, Rainer /
Jost, Torsten
The Polish State Enterprise System - an Impediment to
Transformation?, 28 S.
13/97
Mögelin, Chris
Die Rezeption des Rechtsstaats in Mittel- und Osteuropa, 27 S.
14/97
Rottenburg, Richard
Classifications: Change or Fluidisation? A Phenomenological
Approach to a Liminal Dance Floor in Western Poland, 12 S.