Biographical Experiences of Post-Socialist Transformation in Corporate Business: Doing the Neoliberal Path

Markieta Domecka

doi:10.18778/1733-8069.12.2.04

Authors

Markieta Domecka

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8069.12.2.04

Keywords:

Post-Socialist Transformation, Biography, Biographical Work, Neoliberalism, Corporate Business

Abstract

The neoliberal order, introduced in Poland in the course of post-socialist transformation, constituted a context of action, as well as a repertoire of rules and practices people becoming corporate managers had to learn to cope with. As some took it for granted as ‘the only’ way of joining the economies of the idealised ‘West’, and through their daily practices of efficiency and profit-maximisation, they were actually doing the neoliberalism; others, maintaining the distance towards the new world of ‘freedom and opportunity’ managed to develop a more critical stand. These were not actively doing neoliberalism, but merely making do with it, taking it strategically or even instrumentally. In the paper, the role of biographical work and biographical knowledge is analysed in the process of distancing, which enables monitoring and negotiations of the relations between the acting self and the neoliberal context of action.

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Author Biography

Markieta Domecka

Markieta Domecka is a Sociologist specializing in biographical research, pragmatism and critical realism. She holds a PhD from the Catholic University of Leuven and has participated in various research projects on European identities, sustainability, migration, integration and the impact of economic crisis on young people’s life courses, conducted at the Queen’s University Belfast, the University of Surrey and the University of Naples ‘Federico II’.

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