The nation in the village : the genesis of peasant national identity in Austrian Poland, 1848-1914 / Keely Stauter-Halsted.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-262) and index.

Politics in the postemancipation Galician Village -- Emancipation and its discontents -- The roots of peasant civil society: premodern politics in the Galician Village -- Customs in conflict: peasant politics in the Viennese Reichstag and the Galician Sejm -- Making government work: the village commune as a school for political action -- The construction of a peasant pole -- The peasant as literary and ethnographic trope -- The gentry construction of peasants: agricultural circles and the resurgence of peasant culture -- Education and the shaping of a village elite -- The nation in the village: competing images of Poland in popular culture -- The village in the nation: Polish peasants as a political force -- Conclusion: The main currents of peasant nationalism.

"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."--Jacket

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