Postsedliaci / Post-peasants

In this book, social anthropologist Juraj Buzalka takes a hard look at Slovaks, and matter-of-factly and critically comments on the illusions we have about ourselves and about the world.

Post-peasants are modern Slovaks who believe in the ideal of a homeland from agrarian times and behave accordingly. They profess their rural values, which they consider traditional, vote for populist leaders and are often geopolitically confused. They travel the world, master modern technology and live the finest lives  members of their ancestral lineage ever lived. And yet they feel that the world is unkind to them. It does not take them seriously, and they are not going to beg, melancholically mourning for a world that never was. Their survival strategy is to have no opinion, which is an understandable game of playing-it-safe in order to maintain the status quo - "let's not make things worse". In this book, we seek to build a progressive community garden with them.