Transformacja instytucjonalna Toru Służewiec w Warszawie a jej pamiętanie w obrębie zamieszkującej go społeczności sąsiedzko-zawodowej
The course of institutional transformation of the Służewiec Horse Racetrack and its remembrance within the local professional community

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the issue of the transformation of the State Company Horse Racetrack Służewiec in Warsaw since 1989, and its communicative remembering within the community of the former employee settlements within the Służewiec Racetrack (the current name of the hippodrome).The first part of the article reconstructs the courses of changes which took place in various levels of decision making and policy with respect to the Służewiec Racetrack and horse racing in Poland. The case analysis shows the process of dialectical initiation and the withdrawal of the state from the de-monopolisation and commercialization of these areas. As a result, it led to the emergence of a hybrid and unmanageable body of private and public institutions that are involved in the organization of horse racing in Warsaw.An institutional analysis of the transformation of the Służewiec Racetrack serves as a contextual explanation for the second part of the article, in which, on the basis of ethnographic research, the remembrance of these changes within the neighbourhood of the Służewiec Racetrack community is discussed. For the residents, order to describe the present life and work in the stables at Służewiec, it is essential to preserve the narrations about the past. In their remembrance, the changes which took place during last quarter-century are merging into narrations of the racetrack’s fall, which has its material correlates in vacancies, ruins and demolition sites in and around the Służewiec Racetrack. It is hypothesized that the unclear and exclusive course of the transformation of the institution of horse racing led to the simplification and idealization of images of the past, which play an explanatory function for the present conditions of the racing community.

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